Young Grit Podcast Episode 18 Transcript (Formatted PDF)

CB 0:05
For for me, entrepreneurship is all about service. You are you’re competing with other people on how best to serve. You know your customers when when I I can go out and slave and pull weeds or like the teenagers in the neighborhood are competing against the yard landscaping companies to try and win my business to see who can serve me the best at the best price. You know, restaurants right? They’re all competing to serve you best provide you a delicious meal a great customer service experience. You know what?

SD 0:36
Alright entrepreneur families. Welcome to another episode of young grit podcast. We have an amazing guest today. I am so excited. This is my friend Connor Connor boy. He is the author of the Tuttle twins, which I know so many of you love if you have not heard of the Tuttle twins book series. Get over there now and get them while they’re hot. Tuttle twins is Connor remind me here, over a million and a half books sold.

CB 1:02
That’s right.

SD 1:03
A million and a half books sold, tripling their sales, Justin’s COVID started. These books are unbelievable books about free market books about law books about civil duty books on entrepreneurship. Some of the coolest books set in a cartoon setting with kids going through hero’s journeys. It’s one of my favorite book series to do my daughter’s four. She’s almost at the level. So we’re going to be reading these together over the next couple years, every single one of them. So Connor, welcome to the podcast.

CB 1:35
Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. And for your daughter early next year, we’re coming out with a new little series of Tuttle twins books for toddlers, we’re going to come out with some board books for the younger age. So we’re, we’re pumping out a lot of stuff right now. We’re super excited.

SD 1:49
Oh my gosh, I love it. Okay, so I didn’t get everything. So you’re the president of Libertas Institute, right? thinking through free market ideas. You’ve got Tuttle twins tv.com. In the works, that you want to tell the world about soon, we’ve got nine, a lot more books in the works for families. For those of you who know about Tuttle twins already, make sure to keep an eye out. There’s a ton more coming. And that’s
just the start. There is a lot coming in this world. And I think, Connor Tell me tell the audience, why do you think people are so excited about these books?

CB 2:22
Well,
I could claim that we are like doing this amazing thing. And we masterplan this whole thing. I gotta tell you, our success has been a surprise to me. And I’ve tried to figure out why just these things are catching on like wildfire. And there’s a couple theories based on talking to a lot of parents and kids and in past years, trying to be like, why do you like these? Like, why? Like, why are you recommending them? I’ll tell your friends. And the kids like that. Because by and large, the feedback we get the kids like them, because we’re not talking about kids stuff. We’re talking about big kids stuff. We’re talking about adult stuff. And the kids are sick of reading these fluffy books about nothing, right? Like, you know, Bob and Jane were at the playground and big whoop, right? Like whatever they did there, it doesn’t matter. Right here, we’re talking about some and we’re telling in simplified ways, we’re telling it in storytelling, there’s beautiful illustrations. But we’re talking about these, these kind of big ideas. So the kids like it, because it’s big, because it’s kind of new and exciting. The parents like it, interestingly enough, because it’s simplified. All of our children’s books are based on like classic, important books that have been written for adults over the decades that have persuaded and impacted the lives of like millions of people. And so we take kind of the main ideas from those books and turn them into these, you know, weave them into these little stories. So the parents like them, because they can, it’s like the Cliff’s notes version, right? They can gain access to all of these ideas in a simplified way. So they don’t have to maybe read the original books, but then also they’re reading alongside their children. They’re learning about these ideas together. And then I think the final thing is, there’s just been a void for content like this for a long time. I think a lot of families recognize that the schools are not doing so hot a job at teaching these like classical American founding father type values, classical liberalism, free markets, property rights, justice, personal responsibility, if anything, kids in school, whether from the curriculum itself or their peers are taught quite the opposite. And a lot of parents are very concerned about that. And so then they find Tuttle twins and it’s kind of a think of like, you know, the arrows of you know, socialism and collectivism and, and, and whatnot coming after them. Intelligence is kind of the shield that parents can hold up to kind of defend their family and say no, like we we value these ideas, these books help us understand them better, so that we can talk about them and defend them and better practice them and have better lives because of that. So there’s just lots of reasons but, but it’s been honestly kind of accidental for us that we’ve just kind of like, hit a little sweet spot that a lot of people, it’s resonating with a lot of people.

SD 5:11
Well, and you’re making it fun, right? I mean, some of these things people think about are they’re just so hard to teach kids, we can’t teach them this, they got to wait till they’re adults to get crazy ideas from the founding fathers to civil liberty to understanding the Declaration of Independence. And I’ve always
said, Wait a minute, kids are way smarter than we we give them credit for. They can pick things up so much faster. In fact, you know, we we were told at the beginning of my first sale that, you know, you can’t teach kids about the economy, most economists don’t understand the economy. And we said, No, it’s it can be simple. The economy is just finding a need and filling a need in your commute. And if you find a need that someone needs solved, or a want than they want solved, then you can solve it, they’ll pay you for it. And and they’ll and you The goal is to make them pay you more than you spent on it. And that allows for profit for you to provide for your family put food on the table and reinvest to grow. And if everyone tries to find needs and help each other out, that’s the economy. It is the simplest way of explaining it. We’ve done it with 1000s of kids. And it just makes things easy. And kids aren’t scared of it anymore. It almost demystifies the whole idea. And so about I 100% agree with the model that you’re going after is make these ideas easy for kids, and they’ll take them and run with them for life.

Unknown Speaker 6:28

That’s exactly right.

SD 6:30
Awesome, man. Okay, well, I want to get into your first business before we get into any of this. So now you’re running an amazing whether it was by happenstance or chance or Providence, whatever, but you have an amazing business and you guys are growing fast. I want to hear about your first business. So what was the first thing that comes to mind when you were young when you were a kid? What was it?

CB 6:52
So you know, when I was super young, I did like a little Kool Aid Stan, I live in San Diego. So that’s kind of my version of lemonade stand. But my first really serious kind of business, you could say where I actually was trying to more than just an afternoon, for example, was I in high school was I learned how to do website development. I learned how to code HTML, this was in the late 90s. For the parents out there back in the days of like, Netscape Navigator and stuff like that. Yeah. And so I started trying to figure out how to build websites. And my mom is an attorney. She was kind of connected politically to people. So my first paying gig was for this lady who was that my mom introduced me to that was running for elected office. And she needed she wanted a campaign website, everyone was, like, wanting to get their own website was this new, exciting thing. So I built a website for her and she paid me, you know, good chunk of money, I think a few $100. And then she gave me a bonus, or she offered a bonus if she won, right that I would kind of get a bonus she ended up losing. So I didn’t get the bonus. But But that was the first time where I was like, wow, like, I actually enjoy learning this. It’s really interesting, technically to learn. I was, uh, I ended up developing websites as a full time thing and having my own freelance company for 15 years before I then transitioned into what I’m doing now. And so for me as a young, like, 16 year old I think it was at the time, it was like, This is amazing. Like, I want to do way more of this because I can I have this expertise I can develop that not a lot of people have and so they’ll pay me,
right? They don’t want to figure out how to build their own website. They’d rather just pay someone else to do it. And I can be that person.

SD 8:35
Right. Oh, that’s awesome. high margin. high need. And you loved it. You just found a sweet spot right there in as early as high school early High School, right? Early mid teens. That’s brilliant. I love it. And what was the biggest? Let’s go back to your family kind of grown up. Okay. Okay. So what, what started that because a lot of times people asked me they’re like, you know, is it caught? Is it taught? Is it in your blood? Is it something that you you know, your parents can teach you at a young age? What was it about your growing up years that made you want to jump into this entrepreneurial lifestyle right away and ultimately become an author with your own, you know, business.

CB 9:14
So I actually didn’t really have a family upbringing that pushed me towards entrepreneurship. Mine was kind of the conveyor belt. traditional path, right? Like you go jump on the conveyor belt, everyone else I went to public school, I went to college, that’s what that’s what you do to get a job. And so, you know, I got a job when I was 15. And then had jobs working at Target and subway and Einstein brothers, bagels and all the traditional teenager jobs that you do to you know, and so the the website thing was almost kind of like an accident that I stumbled into myself. I was I was learning the web stuff, actually. So I was in a band. I was in a ska band because in the 90s in San Diego, that’s what you did. And for some of us, that’s what We still do but. And so I was in a band, I played the saxophone. And we wanted a website to put some of our music on there and kind of have a presence. And so we kind of had a division of labor and so forth. And so my job, I kind of volunteered like, Hey, I’ll figure out the website stuff. So that incentive that little need is what prompted me to learn and then it kind of organically happen, like kind of happen on its own, where my mom was talking to her friend, and oh, my son’s learning how to do websites. And she offered it to me, I wasn’t out there trying to sell and stuff. And so it kind of fell in my lap, where I’m like, wait, people will pay me money for this, like I was learning it for some other reason. And then that fell in my lap. And and it didn’t really, it wasn’t until like after, actually, in the middle of college is when I finally started thinking like, wait a minute, like, rather than working full time somewhere else, like I could actually do my own thing, like I’ve kind of dabbled with before. So it was a little later in life, when I started to really focus on how I can grow my own business and how I can get my own clients rather than working to you know, enrich someone else, I could actually try and build my own wealth and focus on my business. And so I didn’t have the benefit of an upbringing that was really trying to like, instill that in me, I’ve kind of like stumbled along the way to kind of pick up at it. And then now that I’m kind of fully in it, you know, it’s just all I can do to learn as much as I can to do it even better.

SD 11:22
I love that. You’re hooked from childhood figured out something you loved. If you do something you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. Because there is some of the best advice I ever learned growing up what

CB 11:33
I tell my wife when I’m gone so much, honey, it’s not work.

SD 11:37
It’s not work. It’s a hobby, it’s fun going to play. Yeah, going to play if you could wake up and have that mentality that I’m going to play every day. It’s the best life It really is. You know, people people ask and I want to ask you this to people ask what is success mean kids always think about this is success. Money is success. A trophy is success and a on your project. What is success? At the end of the day, and I think we’re starting to touch on it. But what do you think success is Connor, what were your mind

CB 12:07
you were mentioning something like this a little earlier, I say it a little bit differently for for me, entrepreneurship is all about service. You are you’re competing with other people on how best to serve, you know, your customers, when I I can go out and slave and pull weeds, or like the teenagers in the neighborhood are competing against the yard landscaping companies to try and win my business to see who can serve me the best at the best price, you know, restaurants, right? They’re all competing to serve you best provide you a delicious meal, a great customer service experience, you know, websites, right? Like I’m serving someone to help build their company, they consider it, I’m trying to help them. So I see entrepreneurship as service. And when, even if we’re talking about like in a charitable aspect of service, like, you know, Lady down the road is in the hospital, right or someone’s in an accident and you want to bring them you know, a dish or something for their dinner, like you know how that feels, you know how it feels to positively impact people’s lives. Now, obviously, we can’t just always be giving everything away, we have to build models where we can sustainably help people, which is why in the market, we do that they pay us and then we can reinvest that and serve even more people, people attack like the Jeff Bezos of the world for having all this money. And all I look at that is like he figured out a way to serve a ton of people, people who are wealthy by and large, you know, they’ve gotten wealthy because they figured out a way to benefit a ton of people’s lives. I love that I can click a button. And then the same day or the next day, I get that pair of shoes or that book like that’s amazing. I don’t have to I can be lazy, I don’t have to go to the store and spend gas money and all that stuff. So anyways, for me, success is serving people I love. Every day, I get six to 10 on average, emails, social media posts that I directly see our team sees way more and they just kind of deal with them. But But when people reach directly out to me, multiple times a day, oh my gosh, thank you. Let me tell you how these telephones books have impacted my life. My kid hates reading. But he’ll read the telephone books over and over again, my daughter’s dyslexic. But the tunnel twins books are written in a way that she can read them and it’s helping like just constant messages like that are so extremely motivating to see that I’ve
positively impacted people’s lives. And that to me is success. And what does that do? That makes me think how can I serve even more people more quickly, right? I need to like run as fast as I can and serve even more people. And so then you’re learning advertising and marketing and direct response media and all this kind of stuff to say like I need to reach way more people because I know the benefit this the Tuttle twins books have had on the people over here, but I need to reach all the people out here. So

SD 14:55
absolutely same boat here. We’re learning webinars and podcasting and you name it. Right, trying to understand what are ways that we can serve more people with content, our product, our service, it is the most, to me the most moral way to help a community grow, right? You can provide for a society at gunpoint by taking people’s you take from one person, and you give that money to somebody else that you think needs it. Now, that’s one way to think about it. I think that that’s actually stealing from one to give to somebody else. But what if there was a better way? Which I think the free markets if done, right, right, you don’t want to steal, you don’t want to have crony you don’t have all this stuff. If you can do it, right. And in a safe way, and in an honest way, it’s the best most moral way to help everybody. You’re not stealing from one and giving to somebody else, or creating competition, like you said, Whoever serves better wins. And so the person who might not have might now be able to get things more affordable, they might be able to buy things cheaper, right? Because people are competing for the business. And so you’re getting what you want cheaper, right? Or it’s a better quality or faster, right? I mean, how many people now can do Amazon, like you said, with Jeff Bezos because of Amazon Prime, which isn’t very much money for the whole year. And shipping is all included. It’s just crazy. I mean, that’s an amazing benefit. Right? The first cell phone, what was the first cell phone? Do you remember?

CB 16:24
I remember I had that like matrix style one like the flip one that looks super cool. The Motorola

SD 16:30
a huge one that looks like a brick a giant brick.

CB 16:32
Yeah, yeah,

SD 16:34
I think the first one was like 1000s and 1000s. of dollars, I know the first computer was $100,000, at least maybe a quarter million dollars in the 70s. Now you can get a laptop, you know, at Best Buy for a
few $100 or a Mac for $1,000. You know, or the iPhone, which is basically a computer or an Android a computer on a screw a tiny screen in your pocket for less than that. So

CB 16:57
to the point in Africa, there are impoverished villages all over Africa, where people lack, you know, formal schooling and nutritious food. But what do they all have smartphones, they are all sending and receiving digital currency, they can access the internet, the eternal opportunities that that unlocks is just crazy. And so yeah, it’s just amazing to see how free markets or free ish markets have you have allowed people to serve one another. And so for me that success, I just love being an entrepreneur in the sense that it’s really about finding more ways to help more people. And it’s just it’s very exciting at the end of the day to know that you’re making a positive impact in someone’s life.

SD 17:42
I love having kids think about how can I help, right? What can I solve? What problem can I fix? Can I do that better? Can I do that cheaper? Can I do it faster? Maybe there’s a different way of solving this problem in my community. The more kids that think that way. I think the better off we’re going to be, don’t you?

CB 18:02
I totally agree. It’s the the problem solving skills, critical thinking skills, is what makes strong and successful adults and a lot of parents, frankly, in my experience, struggle to figure out how to help their children develop those problem solving and critical thinking skills, the I don’t think the schools are very well set up to facilitate that. And again, if anything, they teach quite the opposite. Sit down and shut up, do what you’re told, follow orders, don’t think outside the box, you know that that is not very helpful for an entrepreneurial type of setting in which you can think creatively and innovate and do different things and experiment and fail. And so that’s why these little entrepreneurship activities, selling things interacting with customers, putting yourself out there, and and failing. And learning from your favorite week, I’ll share this brief story. We did a kid’s market here in our home state of Utah. And we do it every year. This this particular one took place about three years ago. And at the gas station, a couple days after one of the markets we do about a dozen a year. And I was at a gas station filling up and this woman at the next little stall was in a van with some kids and she says hey, you’re the the entrepreneurship guy, right? I was like, Oh, yeah. You mean the market? Yeah, yeah. And she proceeds to, like, tear into me and criticize me. My kids didn’t make anything. We paid your $10 registration fee. They didn’t sell anything. We had terrible experience. You know, my kids didn’t even make their money back. You know, I was like, okay, and I was caught off guard. And I don’t know for the parents out there listening like the old Seinfeld episodes where George Costanza would get in a verbal argument. And then like half an hour later, he was driving on the freeway. And then suddenly, the Epiphany comes of what he should have said, so he turns around the car and goes back in busting the door, and he delivers that line, right. And that happens so many times in Seinfeld, and that’s exactly what I felt like right here. This
woman’s like Terran enemy and I’m just kind of like whoa. But later on is like you know the argument I should have made that the GA stands Eliana should deliver and that is you are doing a disservice to your children. Failure is a fantastic learning opportunity for 10

SD 20:15
bucks. They pay 10 bucks to learn one of the best lessons of their entire life. That’s what we should have said to her.

CB 20:21
Absolutely. And but but unfortunately, I don’t think they learned the lesson because the mom was helping her children perceive themselves as victims. Yeah, we are victims. You harmed us. You didn’t help us You didn’t do this right. It’s your fault. Nothing we did had anything to do with it. You should have done something better so that we made money. And lady come on, like, this is a great time to sit down with your kids and say, Well, what were we trying to sell? Oh, you know what? Going to Costco and buying some bags of chips and reselling them for 25 cents more a pop probably isn’t a great idea when there’s like homemade churros. And the next booth to you right? Like, right. And so let’s analyze what are we trying to sell? Did it cost too much? Was it not that great? Was it? Did it melt? You know, was it that our sign wasn’t big enough? That is where you can like my failures have been amazing learning opportunities, like yes, at the time. But then you can look back and be like, Oh, I’m so glad like I figured that out earlier, so that later on, I could succeed way more. So it was it’s tough because we want those problems solving, solving skills. We want kids to think about what are the problems that I can help solve? And that is my entrepreneurship opportunity. But if we see ourselves as victims, if we don’t look at ourselves internally and say, What am I doing wrong? How can I improve? Well, I don’t think we’re gonna succeed nearly as well as quickly as we otherwise could.

SD 21:37
Yeah, that’s so good. This I think the victim mentality has to go if you want to raise successful kids that take personal responsibility, that have grit that can be resourceful that can learn how to learn that can really grow into mature adults you got to take that away no matter what because everybody I mean, you could make everybody a victim in some way shape or form right? Everybody has downfalls everybody has problems just you know every single person it doesn’t you’re not escaping it there’s no way out of it even if you’re a kid it doesn’t matter who you are where you’re from. Everyone has tough things but what the Mark I believe of maturity is and character is is to take those hard things in life and and push past them and turn them into something good right? Yeah. Right we you know, I I love the story we have a couple years ago one of our fairs now we’re doing the my first sale, you know, digital fairs and in person fairs. And so there’s all these kids learning from each other, right? All the time, they’re passing on best practices, they’re looking at another kid’s, you know, virtual page to sell. And they’re like, Ooh, that’s a good idea. Well, we had like seven booths that were slime, okay, every single one of the seven and they were all in like, a little area right? And these kids come back every year
because they love trying a new product try new thing, but this one particular that there were seven slime booths within like 20 yards of each other. And it was amazing to watch how the kids went through the fair. One of them realize oh, they have multicolor slime. Oh, right. They have a really cool sign. Oh man, these people are like walking through and give it having people like try out the slime to get more sales. Oh, this these guys are giving a bundle three for the price at two. Oh, I got to do that. That’s they’re literally growing as they’re struggling through this. They’re learning the whole entire time. And the next year, they all had a completely new way of either doing slime or a completely new product,

CB 23:32
right ice.

SD 23:33
They were in diff they said, Oh, that person has slime and I have slime Can I be on this side of the entire fair and they’re on this side. So we don’t have the same competing for the same customers. That is a an MBA level style, you know, learning that Alex yearold set out of nowhere. Oh, you know, instead of slime, I’m gonna do origami like origami things another kid and they sold five times as much because no one had origami right? So that’s really a valuable lesson to teach your kids is you can you can try things you can fail things right? You can do as much as you want. As long as you’re learning as you go. There’s no losing there’s learning winner learn. That’s kind of the personal mantra.

CB 24:14
We had the same problem we had when fidgets spinners blew up we literally had 15 booths in one of our markets where they were all selling fidgets spinners my kids included and it was amazing right because across the way hey there’s a $4 yours or five Do you think you’re gonna sell any? Maybe you got to lower your price well can you What is your product price? What are some upsells that you can offer to try and increase you know total customer purchase price and be like can you offer anything additional to incentivize them to buy from you so great a learning opportunity for them to see like how the world really works?

SD 24:44
Absolutely, man, that’s so good. I love how we think alike. It’s fun to watch like a microcosm of entrepreneurship when kids because kids are so raw, right? Like kids have raw emotions. They learn things in real time and their parents learn along Side them, right? This is one thing I found is as the more we talk to people we do the more we talk to kids and ask kids good questions and watch the kids learn and frame things. The parents are always kind of looking over their shoulder. They’re like, Oh, that’s a brilliant way to put it. Right? You must get that with your books all the time. Totally. Yeah, no, it’s

CB 25:19
exactly what happens. And honestly, like, a lot of the parents who read the Tuttle twins books with their kids, what they tell us is that we’re helping them put into words, things that they believe, but they’ve never really been able to put into words, like, think of like the birds and the bees, right? A lot of parents when they want to talk to their kids about like sex ed, and bodies and all that kind of stuff. They struggle, maybe it’s a little awkward, or whatever. And so you go to Amazon. And there’s all kinds of books out there that like break it down for little kids and age appropriate ways. So you can take a complex idea, right? And you can even a controversial idea, right? Yeah, I can simplify it, and have a conversation about it in an age appropriate way. And so that’s exactly what we’re doing here. These are complex, even controversial ideas to some, right, we can boil them down in simple ways, and the parents who want to communicate this important thing to their children, and now have kind of a vehicle to do. So they’ve a language to do so. And so like at the end of our books, we always have discussion questions, right, like now that you’ve read this, here’s how you guys can talk more about it and have dialogue. And that’s, that’s where the learning really happens. It’s really fun to hear the stories of like, you know, mom is at the grocery store with the kids. And the kid is like, wait a minute, there’s like 18 kinds of potato chips. Oh, that’s that’s like, specialization and division of labor. And yeah, and, and spontaneous order and like, and they start to like, see the ideas from the books, they’ve been learning about playing out in the real world. And so then mom will later on Send us a little, you know, tag on Instagram or something, check out what my kid just said, and I love that stuff.

SD 26:54
That’s so good. And I’ve realized parents, sometimes in as a parent, three little kids, having somebody else say it, even though I believe it. And I’ve tried to say it 100 times having another person who my kids respect or love or really want to, like be like, or are they you know, like the books, they actually can say something I believe in from another perspective that that it’s like, they’re like, Mom, Dad, you got to hear what I just learned about this is the coolest thing. And in the back of our mind, we’re like, we’ve been telling you this for 10 years. Yep. You know, so it’s one of those perfect ways to sort of be a compliment, right? It’s like a support system. You know, this is why kids should go to like, sports teams. So the coach can also mentor them. This is why kids should do like Big Brothers, Big Sisters or have mentors in their lives that they can talk to that aren’t mom and dad, because as much as they love mom and dad, they’re not going to tell the mom and dad everything. And sometimes you just need a village to raise the tribe and teach the kid

CB 27:53
right, that third party voice who can kind of echo what you believe in and validate kind of your perspective. I totally agree.

SD 28:00
Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Okay, so let’s talk parenting real quick. And then I know we don’t we only have a couple minutes left. But so you guys have a couple kids. Right. And that was the reason for doing Tuttle twins. Correct. It was trying to help them learn these lessons and find ways to kind of fill in maybe gaps that are in the their education system. What have you found let’s talk about you as a dad, like as you guys raise your kids what comes to mind as some of the most valuable things that you want them to learn and experiences that they’ve had together? What sort of things come to mind that you’d want to share with the audience?

CB 28:34
So I wrote a book A few years ago, based on some presentations, I had been given a different educational and homeschool conferences and eventually decided to turn into a book. It’s called passion driven education. And I wrote that book because a lot of things went wrong for me in school. As I said, I was in public school, I cheated. You know, I was supposed to get good grades and the quickest shortcut to doing so with the least amount of effort was to copy from other people and now like whatever I could do to just get the good because that was the goal learning wasn’t the goal. intellectual curiosity wasn’t the goal. That was never you know that the system did not help me kind of understand why learning you know, is important on itself. I couldn’t stand being forced to learn things that everyone else was forced to learn in one year out the other pump and dump

SD 29:28
and just wanted to get over with the fastest easiest way pass cram

CB 29:31
cram for the test as much as you can Oh, and then after that, you don’t need to remember that stuff anymore. Let’s move on to the next subject right like it totally graded it like so is kind of a Liberty lover individualists, you know, like a graded against my sense of self that I had to be. You know, like plugged into the matrix. I had to be like a cog in someone else’s machine, where some bureaucracy said here’s what every child should learn. At every age, everywhere, always in forever. That just rubbed me the wrong way. So anyways, fast forward to get out of college and make my way off the conveyor belt. And it wasn’t until after college where, from a few things happening in my life, I developed a curiosity in American history. And so I started reading and I had time I didn’t have tests and homework and stuff anymore. I had time I had mental energy to like, think about these things. I wasn’t so preoccupied by elda schooling. And so I started reading and that just Alice in Wonderland down the rabbit hole, right, like at one thing led to another I was learning political science and economics and, and I was just soaking it in like a sponge. I couldn’t read fast enough. And as I started then learning about education and pedagogy, and john Taylor Gatto and all this kind of stuff, what I finally was able to realize for myself was, you know, when you learn something you you are interested in, you’re going to retain it in your mind, you’re going to apply it, you’re going to remember it because it’s valuable to you. Yep. And why in
the world do we subject kids for years to this conveyor belt process of you have to learn what we say, to only later in life have the time to you know, so anyways, I wrote passion driven education, because for me, as a father and my children, I, I don’t want to project onto my children who I think they should be or who some curriculum committee thinks they should be. Yeah, I feel like my goal is, and I believe whether you know, religiously or not, I think that every person has unique, individual traits that they’re kind of innately born with. And any parent of more than one child knows this, right? Like your kids are wildly different. In some ways. I feel like my job as a parent is to not parent the same discipline, the same, educate the same, but to adapt my discipline, adapt my parenting, adapt my education of my children to their own unique interests and desires. And so whether you can do that in a full on homeschool setting, or you’re doing it kind of as a supplement to public school, or whatever. I feel like and so the reason why I wrote passion driven education was there are ways to not subject kids to the conveyor belt, and then later in life, allow them that intellectual curiosity. There are ways earlier when they’re kids to find what are they interested in? And then let’s build kind of an educational program, if you will, around what they and that’s how we as adults learn, right? It’s how we as humans learn. And so why don’t we give that to our kids? That’s what I want every parent out there to consider. And so for those interested, passion driven education is the the book where I make the case.

SD 32:32
All right, passion driven education. I love that man. I’m, again, this has got to be a shout out here to a lot of the schools because you know, we’ve I’ve served 5000 schools, private charter public, they’re, the schools that treat kids like an assembly line, are the schools that don’t do well. The schools that really care about what you just said, is find the kid’s passion and let them run wild. Those schools, even in a public setting can do amazing, right? They get great ratings, they have incredible programs, they do a lot of STEM programs, they do a lot of project based learning with their kids, their family networks are so much stronger. And it is that curiosity. It’s that passion driven, every kid’s unique. Every kid has a gift to give the world total and it can be done in a public setting, it is a lot harder, I will admit is a lot harder. But it’s amazing to see when you know my wife was a teacher for a long time. That was her biggest thing it was every kid is completely different. And we have to set up a system where kids can learn differently. Kids can have different environments, different projects, different things they fall in love with because my my son cannot get enough of trucks. My two year old loves trucks. He wants every book you can ever find on trucks. My daughter could care less about trucks. She actually loves the the it’s like Mary Poppins style old fashion books she loves like the old fashioned Disney Peter panish. She loves this, like fairy tale mindset. You know, she’s got these amazing things. But then, like she’s in cartoon world, right. So I know she’s gonna love Tuttle twins because it’s like the cartoon fantasy world meets real life lessons and and of civic life, civil liberty and, and law and personal responsibility, all that kind of stuff. So every kid is different, and they can transform at any moment. So our job as parents is to almost be like the coach like, okay, what’s the best way to help them next? What do they need next? Right? And no, so few parents analyze. It’s like, you got to cram through the blender, because we’re all tired. And we’re all getting through this together. Right? Right. Great advice.

CB 34:35
A lot of parents don’t see themselves in that light. They want to defer to someone else to do it. The teachers the school system, hey, go babysit my kids. You’re responsible for, you know, teaching them and I think that’s the sad fact that led to some of the realities we see in the world around us today with the rising generation. And I like to think of it I think use the word coach. I like mentor. I think they’re the same thing. Right? Like, for me, I don’t and this is honestly why it most homeschool parents get burned out. They feel like they need to be the English expert, and the math expert and the history expert to then teach like, No, no, like, you don’t need to be an expert in anything, you are a resource provider, you are a facilitator. Right? Your job is to not know all the things. In fact, that’s hubris you don’t want to convey to your child that like any adult knows all things. What we do know is critical thinking and how to find what we need. And so when we have a question, we can go find the answer, not that we have all the answers. And so your job is to go research online, go to network and find who they can job shadow with when they’re teenagers and set up an apprenticeship with and what are the best online resources for this subject or that subject? Let’s learn alongside my child, right? I don’t know all the things I’m not going to teach you. Let’s go find an expert or Let’s go find someone who does know and learn together. It is so much more invigorating for parents who take homeschool parents specifically who take this approach because it’s a burden off their shoulders. Anyone knows how to Google anyone knows how to ask for help on a Facebook group or whatever. And so when parents realize that they’re just that facilitator for their children, and not the knower of all the things, it’s very liberating, and I’ve seen a lot of success with

Unknown Speaker 36:12
it. That’s so cool.

SD 36:13
Well, there you go. Some of the best parenting advice I’ve heard well done. I can’t wait to meet meet your family someday. kids. The kids I know that are raised this way are just fantastic. Kids. They’re curious. They’re respectful. They’re fun. They always are dreaming new cool things. Right. And that’s the kind of kids I want to raise. So thank you so much for this today. What a great

Unknown Speaker 36:36
conversation, man. Appreciate it.

SD 36:38
All right. Well, that’s it everybody. We’ll see you next time on the next episode of young grit.