This Golden Hour
In this podcast, we specifically serve new homeschool families through engaging conversations with homeschool parents and families at all levels of experience and expertise. Listeners will increase their confidence and assurance about their children's education and future while diminishing their fears. This podcast helps you know how to begin homeschooling, navigate challenges, and answer questions for all stages of the journey.
The name “This Golden Hour” has meaning. First, this name refers to the years parents have to raise and teach their children from birth to when they leave home to be on their own. As parents, we have a golden opportunity to teach and learn alongside our children during these formative and essential years of growth and development. Second, “This Golden Hour” points to this same period of childhood as the children’s chance to read, explore nature, and enjoy an inspiring atmosphere of family, love, and learning.
This Golden Hour
94. Matt Beaudreau and Apogee Strong
In today’s episode, we get to spend time with Matt Beaudreau, homeschool father of 3 and founder and CEO of Apogee Strong. In our conversation, Matt explains how he ended up homeschooling, and why he cares so much about self-directed learning and raising self-reliant, sovereign children. Matt shares his personal journey from a traditional educator to a pioneering figure in alternative education, discussing the development of Apogee campuses and his family's unique lifestyle on a self-sustaining farm in North Carolina. Listeners will gain insights into creating purposeful education environments, the importance of family values, and the power of questioning conventional systems.
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when it comes to my family and when it comes to math, cool. I'm like, I really want them to know what, if they know the basics. Basic edition, basic subtraction, basic, the stuff that comes up like this that I use every day. Cool. That's what I want. They've got that, and by the way, they got that in like five to six hours. Like it was a done deal. They've all got that. Yep. Now I want them to be exposed to like when we go pay bills and how money works and how that cash does flow and our p and ls for the business and all that. They come in and they're exposed to that because that's what we're making normal for them. What do you wanna make normal for your kids? Hi. I am Timmy Eaton, homeschool father of six and Doctor of Education. We've been homeschooling for more than 15 years and have watched our children go from birth to university successfully and completely without the school system. Homeschooling has grown tremendously in recent years, and tons of parents are becoming interested in trying it out. But people have questions and concerns and misconceptions and lack the confidence to get started. New and seasoned homeschoolers are looking for more knowledge and peace and assurance to continue homeschooling. The guests and discussions on this podcast will empower anyone thinking of homeschooling to bring their kids home and start homeschooling and homeschoolers at all stages of the journey will get what they need and want from these conversations. Thank you for joining us today and enjoy this episode of This Golden Hour podcast. As you exercise, drive clean or just chill. You're listening to this Golden Hour podcast. In today's episode, we get to spend time with Matt Borow, homeschool father of three, and founder and CEO of Apogee Strong. In our conversation, Matt explains how he ended up homeschooling and why he cares so much about self-directed learning and raising self-reliance. Sovereign children. Matt shares his personal journey from a traditional educator to a pioneering figure in alternative education. Discussing the development of Apogee campuses and his family's unique lifestyle on a self-sustaining farm in North Carolina. Listeners will gain insights into creating purposeful education environments, the importance of family values and the power of questioning conventional systems.
Timmy Eaton:Welcome back to this Golden Hour today. We are very grateful and excited to have with us Matt Borow from North Carolina. Matt, thanks for being with us. Honor is absolutely my own. I appreciate
Matt Beaudreau:you asking.
Timmy Eaton:Thank you very much. So I just wanna give you a little intro and then we'll jump right into some questions. Matt Borow is the founder and CEO of Apogee Strong. As a career educator, Matt has delivered TEDx talk, served as a consultant to Fortune five hundreds, launched innovative K through 12 programs, written books in particular collaborative homeschooling and manifesto for a 21st century education after COVID-19. Spoken on stages, created programs that have helped to push education into the 21st century for men, women, and teens. More importantly, he's a devoted husband and father of three, so we could go on, but thank you again, Matt.
Matt Beaudreau:Oh, man. That's awesome. Thank you. And just to be clear, I'm a husband to one and father of three. I think I wrote that badly, oh, I'm not married to three different ladies, so
Timmy Eaton:No that's not,
Matt Beaudreau:man.
Timmy Eaton:I think we're, we understand it yes, sir. So I like to get right into it what was your initial exposure to home education? And then tell us just like your journey through home education to where you are now.
Matt Beaudreau:Yeah, I appreciate that. I didn't grow up home educated. I grew up in a time where all the homeschool kids, quote unquote, were the weird kids, right? And the weird families and all that. So I grew up under the same myths that still, you know,
Timmy Eaton:same here, Same here. Right?
Matt Beaudreau:So it's all those myths that, that still exist today that I think are provably myths. And I think more and more people are seeing that at this point. I grew up under that whole thing and went into education really assuming that I was going to, quote unquote make a difference in, in the system. And so I was a public school teacher and public school administrator, and private school teacher and private school administrator. And ultimately I went, man, all right my kids. Are either going to be home educated or I need to build something for them. It was really that deep dive into the system, working in the system, seeing how the sausage is made, so to speak. Yeah. And so that was the initial conversation and my wife was like, oh, okay. All right. I'm not sure about this home education, because she had grown up under the same things. And I'm not sure I know the problems that you're seeing here. Do we want to build? So my kids have gone to campuses, but they've never been anywhere that I didn't build. And that's when we still lived in California. I built it for them, but man, it took off and we had multiple campuses. Once we left California we left a little over three years ago. We came out and bought a farm out here in the mountains of North Carolina where we live now. And that's when the home education journey started for us. There was not a campus obviously out here that I had built yet. And so we just went, okay. Let's figure out how we want this to look for our family. So the last three years, my kids who are now 14, 12, and nine have been home educated out here on the farm. I asked them the other day, I said, look, we've launched I think it's 104 campuses in this last year under Apogee that have either opened or are scheduled to open by this fall. 104 new ones. Yes, sir. Over this last year. Oh. And so I said, if if somebody decided to open one out here, would you guys want to go?'cause your only experiences have been either campuses that I built or home education here. And they're like, man, they thought about it. And all three of'em went, ah, there's pieces that we, ah, I don't know. We just, we love what we're doing here. We're like, we're thriving so much. I don't know if we would change it.
Timmy Eaton:And maybe it doesn't have to be a question of either or, and that really, like I always talk about it doesn't home education being a misnomer anyway, and it's just learning and lifestyle the way that you guys choose,
Matt Beaudreau:that's what it is, man. It literally is that simple. It doesn't mean it's easy all the time, but it literally is that simple. And I know you've gotta have those same conversations like I do over and over with so many people where you're like, look man, it's not as complicated as you're making it seem. It really isn't. Gk Chesterton had a great quote where he talks about education not being anything to do with subjects. He talks about it simply being a transfer of a way of life. And I love that because that's really what it is. It is what is the lifestyle I want to transfer to them, and who else or what else do I give permission to transfer their way of life to my kids to. I look at everything through that lens and it simplifies everything.
Timmy Eaton:This is probably hard to ask right on the spot, but this is something I've struggled with a while.'cause you can't really go back on it now'cause it's so pervasive, but I don't like the term home education. What word or like short phrase would you use to describe your family's? Experience with education and lifestyle.'cause what I always talk about is homeschooling is really, it's a lifestyle choice more than anything. It's learning and living, it's shepherding, it's all these things. But what term have you come up with to describe what your family does for basically preparation for your children's futures?
Matt Beaudreau:Yeah. It's, we're sovereign people and that term alone gets hijacked now there's people that have hijacked that to mean that you have certain things you do, like, where you're like burn the birth certificates and the burn social. And that's not what we mean by that. I was asked by, a gentleman named Seth Godin, Seth is a brilliant human being and amazing author and just one of the smartest people I've ever met, and I remember him asking me years ago, said what should education before. And I went, man, I've been in this field for a long time and nobody's really asked me to think about it like that. So I, I put some thought into it and I'm like, man, all it really should be for is so that you understand how to build the life that you want. That's it. And and without having to ask permission to somebody else, not if you can have that life in general. So that's what we mean by sovereignty. We're a sovereign family, meaning we do what we want to do when we want to do it. Without having to ask somebody else's permission, without having to, integrate things we don't want. And it allows us to live the life we want, take care of the people that we want to take care of, like it's sovereignty. That's really what we're after. That's it.
Timmy Eaton:Yeah. And I've heard you mention that in different interviews. The idea this, the concept of sovereign. I love it. And I think you termed it like with Seth Godin the Game of education, like in coupled with your experience at Stanford. Maybe talk about that for a minute, but before I get to that, can I just ask you that's actually rare for the father sometimes to take on the questioning of what are we gonna do with our kids? Yeah. And so is that how it went down with you guys or is it really a very together, obviously you made the decision together'cause it involves so much. Yeah. Of the mom, but like I'm saying, you were asking those questions first to,
Matt Beaudreau:I was asking the questions first, and one of the biggest mistakes that I made for better or for worse. I have done that for a long time, meaning I question everything, for better. And I, and I think so, but the way I've done it, I've had to learn and grow and mature in that because. What I've come to understand is if somebody else is not there, what I was doing wrong was I was questioning things, and then I would go, okay, I don't wanna burden anybody with my insatiable curiosity. I'm gonna go ask these questions and I'm gonna go, okay, that's a tough one. And it just gave me more questions, which I took as a good sign, right? So it's okay, so I'm gonna go a little deeper. I'm gonna pull that string a little more, and I'm just gonna see how far it goes. And then once I get to, after, days or weeks or month, once I get to a conclusion and conclusion, meaning, okay, this is the best evidence I can find. And so I think this is the answer. I reserve the right to change it if I find better evidence later, right? But once I get there, then I'm gonna go spring it on everybody. So I would do that and then be like, okay, honey, by the way, I know we haven't really talked about this yet, but we're homeschooling now. And it's wait, what? I'm like, no, trust me, I've done all the research. But she's but hold on a second. And so that's, I did that. In this regard. And so there was an initial okay, what do you, I love you, I trust you. What are you talking about? What does this mean? What does this look like? So I've had to learn to just be open about, this is the string I'm pulling right now. Do you wanna pull a string with me? Do you want to check in Right? Anytime when we have these conversations. Initially it was like, okay, what are you talking about? There was some pushback. Now, obviously that we've been doing this for a long time. She is no question. She's like, how could we have done this any other way? I can't imagine.
Timmy Eaton:I look at the list of mentors you had on your website. Yeah. I just can't believe how extensive it is, but yeah. And I just know I've listened to so many of those people and I'm going, how many of those people have seen the light of just true education and living in sovereignty, like you say. But when you were asking those questions though, were you a lot of people ask those questions because they're reading some literature of some kind as far as homeschooling, that kind of thing. Sure. Where did you start going, okay, how do you actually do this? Or how do you actually Yeah. Implement this? Or did you have some particular authors that, that you, I've heard you talk about, gato, yeah. John Taylor Gatto and of course John Holt and others. But yeah. Where were you getting stuff from?
Matt Beaudreau:Yeah. Gato and Holt and some of the newer, Fargo, who I know you've had on
Timmy Eaton:Yes.
Matt Beaudreau:Before. And Peter Gray and as Neil and Summerhill and Yes. Some of the, those classic Montessori Ivan, I, so many of those classic, everybody, yeah. It was so many of them, but my curiosity around it wasn't born out of reading those, I read those because of the curiosity that was born prior to that. Yes. And so a lot of that was again, for better or for worse, I've always been the guy who. Watches and goes that seems hypocritical or that doesn't seem, I've always been that. I remember being a kid, hearing my dad say one thing and going, but your life, what you're doing is this. And we had, Craig Valentine came on last night as the mentor for our men. And I love the way he put it. He said, so many guys give level 10 effort to their level one priorities. And then they give a level one effort to the level 10 priorities, and they wonder why they're always busy and they're too busy for things to change. And I looked at that and go, man that's how I saw so many people living, even as a young person. And then as I got into working in schooling and education, I'm like, okay, we're saying the kids are the priorities, but then we're defining what the priority is for them. And I know this kid, that's not the priority for this. That's not how I'm gonna help him most. It's not this, this, this, or the, the top things are, that's not what he needs. So there's a problem here. There's a disconnect, right? And so like, why do we do things the way we do if we're seeing this? And if you ask that question and you really look at why we do the things we, that's where I started finding John Taylor Gado and those, and at that point I had a decision to make, in integrity. I couldn't keep going.
Timmy Eaton:So that's like your character. That sounds like that's just like how you came to this world is like you were going to, like you said, be curious. You were gonna ask questions. That's my wife in our situation. And I hate to admit that because I would've been the total mainstream go to school kid.'cause that's what you do. No questions asked and Sure. It's been a slow process for me to start.'cause it's good to ask those questions. But again, I'm not trying to fault the system, but the system doesn't train you to do that. And very much I was a product of that system. So if somebody were to ask you, hey, so like when you started out, what did homeschooling or whatever, what did education and lifestyle look like in the Borow home? And as to what it looks like now?'cause your kids are 14 under, right? Yeah.
Matt Beaudreau:So yeah. 14, 14, 12, and nine.
Timmy Eaton:Yeah.
Matt Beaudreau:So we've got a unique journey because I launched the campuses that I launched and those campuses were centered around, really an individualized journey as it was, right? I, that we were creating campuses around getting the young people as close to self-directed as we could, as quickly as we could. And there were elements of that I liked. There are elements of that I've changed my mind on too over the years. I believe self-direction is a great thing. And I use martial arts as an example, as a lifelong martial artist and somebody that I just think that exemplifies it really well. I could have kids self-direct their own juujitsu journey by watching some videos and getting on and rolling and just trying and p and they'll get some element of it. But man, if you got a black belt coach in there too. Dude, you just, yeah. You like, it makes, it just makes sense. But at the same time that black belt coach isn't just gonna stand and lecture them about things and then have them regurgitate and repeat back and so that to me is a great parallel to what we're talking about. So there was really this focus on self-direction. So they had that background. And at home there was really an emphasis on creating a strong family unit that was not hypocritical. Here are the family rules, quote unquote a contract we're all gonna come up with together. You have every right as a young person to call me out if I'm being hypocritical on anything. So that was the foundation there that really helped so that when we came out here, man, like they already had experience winning from not just an academic standpoint, but my girls, they bought horses at nine and seven, like they had run business. They made good money. They had then taken on the responsibility not just to buy the horses with their own money, but then to take care of the horses so they already had this sense of responsibility and so now it's so much more simple to go. Okay. What are the meta skills we think everybody in this household needs to go after? Where do we schedule those? Yeah. And then what are the things that you want to go after? Where do you schedule those? And then how do mom and dad help? And by the way, we're gonna grow too. And as we grow in things and we're learning new things, we're just gonna bring you along again. It's just, it's lifestyle. That's it.
Timmy Eaton:And if somebody said to you, what about the, the nitty gritty of reading and what subjects, especially new homeschool families, and I get it all the time, they wanna know I saw a clip of you talking about that once when you were explaining like Apogee education, you were kind of saying people always approach it. And of course I understand why as like, okay, but what time do you get up and do this? And what time do you study math? And that kind of stuff. Yeah. I like the way you're approaching it. And when you have a seasoned homeschooler or just somebody who's thought about education, they don't approach it in the traditional way. Which actually is weird that it's a traditional way because you're just naturally going, how am I preparing my children for the future that's gonna be successful? And how am I helping them develop their characters and you don't have to even wrestle with some of those questions that are in, you don't have
Matt Beaudreau:to wrestle with it. So when people ask me things, what I like to do is ask and I try to preface it and make sure they know I'm not trying to be an a-hole when I'm asking'em these questions, but they're like what about these subjects? I'm like what do you do for those subjects? Yeah. What do you mean? I'm like, that's exactly what I mean. What do you do for those subjects? What do you do to study math? I don't study math. How come? Like, why don't you study math out of a textbook? Or why don't like well, because math is, I just already have, so they have this assumption that it had to be somehow programmed earlier via this, and then you get done. Yeah. And then you're all set, right? And so I try to get them to shake those things. And they're like what about grade level? I'm like, what grade? What grade level are you in? Are you at, 50th grade level or 42nd grade level? Or that's a weird thing to say because it's just weird. Not because you're older. It's just weird. Because it's weird. That's not a real thing. It's a thing we've made up so we can take a look at. I just try to break things down into meta skills and then individual skills. So the way we define meta skills is simply what does every person on the planet need? They always will. What are the skills you need? I think communication is always a, and let's define every single one of these. So when we say communication, what do you mean by communication? Orally, I mean written, okay, cool. How do, what do you want those to look like? And then how do we develop those things? So we'll take a look at those. Your physical health, your physical fitness, meta skill. You're always gonna be in your body. You need to know how to be healthy. Cool. Let's dissect that and see, but outside of that, it becomes this interest thing I tell families all the time, part of being sovereign is you're gonna have to make a choice and make a decision if it's gonna weigh on you because academic math, cool. Unpack it. How do you want to implement that? That's fine. Also, take a look at how do you do it for yourself. I got straight A's all through school. I got As in trig, I got as in calculus. I took a standardized test for some parents. A few years ago. I took the standardized test and I got a quote unquote sixth grade math level on the standardized test. I had always gotten straight A's. Yeah. And the day before, I'd been paid like 40 grand by a company to go stand on stage for an hour. I have a specific. A trust system set up in my house. And then we've got the way cash flows. I understand the p and l. We've got cash flow system that goes through a business trust, to a family trust to a private foundation. It protects our assets. I can explain to you how we rock all of these things. A standardized
Timmy Eaton:test.
Matt Beaudreau:I can't go past a standardized test right now, even though I got straight A's, all through high school and college and quote unquote, learned all of it, right? So again, it's just like breaking these assumptions and going, okay, can I go back and teach myself calculus if I ever decide I needed it? Sure I can. I'm good with that. I don't actually use it. So when it comes to my family and when it comes to math, cool. I'm like, I really want them to know what, if they know the basics. Basic edition, basic subtraction, basic, the stuff that comes up like this that I use every day. Cool. That's what I want. They've got that, and by the way, they got that in like five to six hours. Like it was a done deal. They've all got that. Yep. Now I want them to be exposed to like when we go pay bills and how money works and how that cash does flow and our p and ls for the business and all that. They come in and they're exposed to that because that's what we're making normal for them. What do you wanna make normal for your kids?
Timmy Eaton:So good and such good questions. What I love about those questions is it empowers the parent, it empowers individual to like, yes, take control and go, okay, this really is mine. I like you said, don't ask permission. And that's been my personality. It's been to ask permission, but we've been homeschooling for almost 20 years and I say that because what I realize is that we've been doing this from the womb, like Ando just'cause it's my wife's way and now my way. Yeah. So then today, what is the day in the life of the bores look like?
Matt Beaudreau:Yeah I love that question. And what's funny is everybody knows what everybody is doing all the time. And that's what I want parents to understand too. I'm not saying you have to do it this way, but this is something that has worked very well for us, is we. Have a very clearly defined schedule for our day, but we're not slaves to it either. We've got a very clearly defined schedule where we all know what we're doing and what other people are doing at what time, but there is built in time for flexibility. There's built in time for if things go wrong and a tree falls down on our fence, we can all go out there and fix it and switch things. And there's built in time for the kids for boredom, so they can just go create. There's things that they're not going to do during that time, like they're not gonna go jump on screens but they have time to go. Wander to go create, to write, to think, to read whatever they want to do on that too. We are again, very intentional about our days.'cause I don't want to build this sovereign life where we stop moving forward. We're a purpose-driven family where it's look, we want to do what we want to do. But there is an element of a DNA thing in here. We're built to create and to serve and to lead. And so that's what we need to do, right? And so we fill that schedule as well. As it stands right now we purchased a live event center out here in the mountains. And so my kids are over there cleaning the live event center right now. That's what they're doing right now. And I know they'll be there for another hour doing that while I do podcasts in a couple meetings this morning. But on a traditional day they're gonna get up and go, it depends on the season.'cause we are farmers now too, so right now there is milking to be done first thing in the morning. And then they'll come back in and we'll all do breakfast together and then go back out to finish the chores. Post chores there's a little bit of wiggle room and free time, and it's usually a creative building time of whatever you want to do. So my two younger ones are in the process of building a lot of things right now, inside and outside. My oldest is writing her third book, I believe. I'm talking like 300 page books, so they'll do a little bit of that. And we didn't teach any of our kids to read. They're all voracious readers. We didn't teach any of them to read. We just made reading fun and we read to them and with them, and it really was that simple. I wish I could tell you, but here's what. Nope. I know, man. I know. We made super fun and exposed them to it. My oldest was reading at four, the next one was reading at five. My boy took he was seven before it really clicked for him, but he's nine reading a book a week. Easy. Loves it. That's awesome, man. And we still read to him, so he's got multiple books at the same time. So
Timmy Eaton:Isn't it funny, like when you say that, it just reminds me,'cause that's our experience too, and it's just so funny that there's so many programs out there and stuff, and it's dude, read to your kids. And I know some people really struggle. I'm not trying to make light of that. Sure, a hundred percent there are, but I'm saying by and large we try to make systems for like crazy things that are just so natural. If you just spend
Matt Beaudreau:time, we overcomplicate everything and we do it too early and we put a lot of fear around it that we have and we transfer that fear to them and we just make it this big thing that doesn't need to be made. So yeah, that's exactly it. So by, usually by 11 o'clock, most days, that's when they will start their self-directed quote unquote academia. And the academia for them really does usually center around math. Over really anything else. If there's math stuff that they are working on. Synthesis has been a really cool program, an AI program. We, we like synthesis. My oldest two don't really love traditional academic math, so they'll do it more in a p and l type format in a business related type format. That's really what they like to do for their math style.
Timmy Eaton:So I don't know. Synthesis. I'm glad you're saying that because all of Yeah. Synthesis is,
Matt Beaudreau:is it's interesting man. It's almost like this AI tutor real problem solving sort of deals. I don't love a lot of the, I know Sal Khan. Khan Academy's great. It's fine. IXL and Beast Math and all, you got all these programs and they can be great man, they can be great tools. But Synthesis is pretty unique. So that's, my boy really, really likes that.
Timmy Eaton:Oh, thank you for that. That's good.
Matt Beaudreau:So yeah, it's a, that's a solid one. And so they'll do that for about an hour and then we'll have lunch together and then after that they're working on projects. I mean they really are whatever has fired them up for the time being. That's what they're working on for the next couple hours until we go out and start doing our experiences, which is, my middle is a competitive gymnast, so she's a practice, 10 hours a week of practice there. My boy kickboxing and wrestling and Ninja Warrior. My oldest is now working 30 ish hours a week out with horses. She knows that's what she wants to do. And so she's out working, training other people to ride. She's out riding, she's out working in barns and cleaning stuff up and so she's doing a whole lot of work in the field. And we have dinner together every night. Oh, yeah. That's really about it. I'm obviously working a ton. My wife runs the farm. But that's really it for them, man. It's not crazy
Timmy Eaton:I just have to tell you're in like an amazing stage just because, like that's how things were functioning. And then, I don't know I don't want to get into it, but like our kids have done school sports, like basketball, football, and Yeah,
Matt Beaudreau:Yeah.
Timmy Eaton:And it really changed things in our into that. How so? Because the schools around here allow them to come to play the school sports. Yep. They make the teams and our kids really like it. But it just takes over because like now you're tied to the school schedule and the whole point got is to have your own life. And I look at my brother-in-law, he owns his own business and then he's gone with his family to Hawaii surfing and they have their own schedule'cause they're not tied down, but his kids are 13 and younger and then, got it. So I'm just saying cherish that and I don't know how, keep that going, man. That's all I, yeah, it's the
Matt Beaudreau:best man. They're very much into these individual type activities that. Don't tie us to a crazy schedule like the kickboxing, the wrestling, the ninja. Like those things are, they're happening all day long. And so we get to choose when that happens. Gymnastics during the competitive season, we're tied a little more to that, but that's fine. We're okay with, we're okay with that and we can work everything,
Timmy Eaton:but you eat your meals together. That's just, that's, it's prior
Matt Beaudreau:it's priorities, right? Like we don't, we schedule our priorities. That's it's like, what are the priorities for us? We'll schedule everything else around that. Yeah. That's really the way that's it. What do we wanna do? When do we wanna do it? And everything else goes around that.
Timmy Eaton:It's what you said. Who, whoever that was last night. You said that was visiting and teaching that, the one and 10. Yeah. That's exactly right. That's anytime you have a struggle, it's because you've what is it? The, you can't, that, that what matters most be at the mercy of that which matters least. And we all do that to our own peril and
Matt Beaudreau:bingo. So it's, if it's a level 10 priority, then it's gonna get level 10 effort.
Timmy Eaton:Good. So good man. So founder and CEO of Apogee, that's how you started. When you were asking questions about home education and just education in general, you weren't like going, I wanna be a homeschooler. You were going, what's going on with this system? And then you started immediately thinking of starting something for your own kids and then campus stuff.
Matt Beaudreau:Yeah, exactly. So we started going hard. Do we want to do something here and just keep the kids home? Or do I want to build something else? If I was going to leave the traditional schooling system, okay, cool. What was I gonna do to provide for the family too? And so that was really that initial conversation. And so when was
Timmy Eaton:that? What year was that? Like
Matt Beaudreau:how 2000, 2016?
Timmy Eaton:So this is, so 2000, this is not a long time ago.
Matt Beaudreau:Yeah. So no, 2000, about 2016 was the last time I was in any sort of conveyor belt schooling program was the 2015, 2016 school year. Yeah. And so I was asking those questions during that time, and so we went, okay, I think I want to build something. But while I'm building, I still need to provide for the family too. So I actually ended up building two businesses simultaneously. I had done a bunch of speaking just off the cuff and little workshops here and there, and been asked to go speak at little conferences here and there, and I'm like, all right, maybe I'll lean into this a little bit and let's see where this goes. And. I want to build something that my kids can go to. And we'll invite the, we'll invite the community too. I started speaking, the speaking career took off as well, which was great. But great to the point of I'm doing 60, 70 keynotes a year for a while now. So I'm on the road a bunch, doing a whole bunch of flying around and speaking. And when I'm home, I'm building out this campus and building out a community and talking to strangers and having breakfast and lunch and dinner with strangers. So there was a lot of collaboration there in those years with, with my wife to make sure that we were lockstep and solid.'cause that was a, that, that year in particular building that was really tough. But, took a year to get the community together. Launched a campus by talking to a whole bunch of people, and we ended up launching with 55 kids that were interested and created our own little private school 55 kids. And it took off, man. So within, the first year we had a hundred kids, and by year three I had a second campus. By year four, I had a third campus. It took off. We built multiple campuses there. I stopped traveling to speak so much so that I could stay and help operate the campuses. And so we built a number of camp. We built three campuses in California, Oh. Which was rad. So that's where the kids went. But obviously we were serving the community.
Timmy Eaton:Cool. If you can take us through some of that like, because you say it like. Then I did the speaking thing and I built some campuses. That's like work and and just the the red tape you have to go through to get like campuses. Tell us about like, how did you do that? First of all, how many campuses are there right now?
Matt Beaudreau:So these were three campuses under a different kind of, under a different umbrella. Yeah. And under that umbrella, that's when Tim and I started talking about Apogee, which started out as just the mentorship part for young men. That's what it started as. Cool. And that eventually went young men to men. To women back to the teens. And then we went, look, we really have our own ideas of what we want to do together underneath a school, at these campus umbrellas. So it's only been in the last year that we've decided to launch Apogee specific campuses, and that's what we've got a little over a hundred of right now. And more and more applications of people all over the world to open one in one year. Yeah, man, I can't,
Timmy Eaton:I can't understand that. That's a, it's
Matt Beaudreau:been bananas. And so how did
Timmy Eaton:you hook up with Tim Kennedy? What was the, what's the relationship? Tim and I, so I used to
Matt Beaudreau:fight too. Not anywhere near to the level that he did at all. And so he and I had connected as young bucks in our twenties in California. And didn't necessarily stay in contact, but I had followed, along a little bit of his journey and I heard him on a podcast to say that he wanted to start a school, and I had started these campuses already, and so I just reached out and went, Hey man, I know how to do that pretty well. If you're really interested in that at some point, I'm glad to help. And it's like, all right, cool man. Yeah, that sounds good. And we got together and worked out and kicked around this idea of the mentorship program and started that first, which again, took off and has created all of these things. But yeah, starting the campuses, especially in California.
Timmy Eaton:Yeah, I was gonna say you started that in California, places like Yeah.
Matt Beaudreau:Luckily I had played the game in California, right? I'd been in the public school system. I'd been in the private school system, so I knew the game. I knew how I could launch to keep the government away from me as much as possible. And that's really the biggest thing is I don't want the red tape. I don't want to ask permission. So I launched it in a way that really didn't give me a whole lot of red tape to work with, but I was seven days a week for a number of years. It really was like, that's just the reality of it. And my wife and I had to make sure we were both on board with that level of effort to get this up and running. I outworked like I, not in the cliche sense, I just freaking outwork everybody. And that again was part of the obsessive I need to get this for my kids. That really is what I can't, there's nothing sexy about it. And
Timmy Eaton:that's, and that's modeling for your kids too. I talk a ton about ING and when your kids see that they typ they tend to mimic a
Matt Beaudreau:hundred percent. That's, one of our, we got those, that family contract, one of the rules there is be the hardest worker in the room, and especially if you're by yourself. So it's, I'm gonna outwork myself too. Yeah, so it was, it, there was years of that to get that up and running and get out. So what
Timmy Eaton:do you do for that though? Do you have to put forth a proposal to California state and all that kind of stuff. Is it depends on how you wanna run it, man.
Matt Beaudreau:I didn't want to I put forward nothing. I put forward my mouth into the community saying, I wanna serve your kids who wants to come? And I'm gonna find a building. We're gonna figure this out and we're gonna do it as more of a homeschool co-op from a legal standpoint than a private school because private school's gonna invite other red tape. So we're gonna do it more from a homeschool co-op perspective, but we'll do it collaboratively, we'll do it collectively. And so it was just playing the game.
Timmy Eaton:Wow, that is so impressive. And I'm just wondering how did you transition then, and then how did you decide on North Carolina? And then the other thought I had the whole time was like, what did your parents and your wife's parents and your siblings Oh yeah. What were they all thinking through all this stuff?
Matt Beaudreau:They all thought everything was crazy. They're all, it's, I didn't come from an entrepreneurial family at all. And neither does my wife. It's at all. So to them, all of this was nuts. All of this was risky. Homeschooling was a horrible idea. Starting a business is a horrible idea. None of this is good because again, all of this security is gone. In their mind. In their mind. Which to me, I'm like, man I look at your jobs and what you don't love about your jobs and who you're asking permission for on when you can retire. And then you've got all this over here in the stock market and you're hopeful that this for retirement is going to give you, I'm like, that seems way more insecure than me taking the reins and just going, I'm gonna make something happen to me. I can't lose my job unless I quit. Yeah. To me, that's security. I control it.
Timmy Eaton:So
Matt Beaudreau:they all thought it was crazy. They thought the whole thing was crazy. And that's okay. It is what it is. I What do they think
Timmy Eaton:now?
Matt Beaudreau:I will say now they see, they obviously see the trajectory and they have more trust in us figuring things out and doing things. They do have more trust. But it is funny, man, because I will still say things that they are that are so outside their wheelhouse. My mom was over a couple weeks ago and she's the best man. I love my mom to death. She was over a couple weeks ago and I said something about, I had spent.$50,000 on something and through the business. And she's wait, you spent that for that? And I'm like, and she's you got scammed, huh? You still don't know how to spend. I'm like, okay, cool man, you have no idea what the return is for this money.
Timmy Eaton:I said
Matt Beaudreau:50,000, and she took it as I, it's not the business, it's Matt. Spending some, without having an idea of a return. It's just, that's a ridiculous amount of money to spend for something, so there's the disconnect there, which I get because you've never done it, you don't have any idea what is really being talked about. It's a same vocabulary, but different definition.
Timmy Eaton:Yes.
Matt Beaudreau:It's that sort of thing where you're saying the same thing, but you're not because you don't have the same definition of it.
Timmy Eaton:So is she back in North Carolina or is she still in California? She's back in
Matt Beaudreau:North Carolina now. Yeah. Yeah. She came back once we moved out here, she moved out here and it was really a. We had gotten the campuses to the point of not needing me to have to be there on site. I had a good team and everything was thriving. And we had that, I had still traveled enough and spoken in every state. We knew a few different states that we really liked. My wife and I born and raised California. We had great people in California, but we weren't ever lovers necessarily of California, and so we had these dreams of a farm and this farm became available. Somebody sent it to me. It was like this non-listed sort of deal, and they're like, Hey man, check this out. It's a self-sustaining, again, sovereignty, right? Yes. This is a farm that is self-sustainable. Everything can be converted to solar. You can go totally off grid if you want to. There's all this security up and down the mountain. There's all this electric fencing. There's 11 buildings on site. There's a processing hut on site. Like you could completely be self-sustaining here, and the owners are willing to stay for a couple of months to train the new people on how to do everything. And it was just like this once in a lifetime sort of opportunity where we're like, this would cost us millions to try to build all of this out in California. Or we could sell this little mini ranch that we had moved into. And come out there for far less and have all of it there and be trained on how to use it. The level of sovereignty just increased exponentially. That was the key decision making. That's what, that's
Timmy Eaton:what puts you over without the decision. That's what put us
Matt Beaudreau:over.
Timmy Eaton:Yeah.
Matt Beaudreau:So if things, the proverbial whatever hits the fan, we can be taken care of.'cause that was the level of sovereignty that we didn't have yet. We weren't providing our own food to ourselves. And that was something that was interesting to us. I'm not saying it already happened. So
Timmy Eaton:what are some animals, what, tell me what do you got? What's happening? The,
Matt Beaudreau:the majority of what we have here are goats, rabbits, and chickens. So we've got a ton of goats. We've got a bunch of babies running around right now. We've got hundreds of rabbits. We got chickens we got gardens and trees and fruit trees and all that kind of stuff. The rabbits for meat. Yeah. Meat rabbits, meat goats, dairy goats as well. So we got goat milk, we got goat meat, we got rabbit meat, we've got chickens for eggs. And then we will, we'll add cattle eventually, but we've made friends with a local, third generation cattle farm as well. And so that's where we get our cow, right now. But we'll eventually add cattle too.
Timmy Eaton:So I'm just gathering about you the more we talk'cause like you said, there's work ethic, you'll outwork people, but then there's also capacity. And it has to be about your wife too, because to be able to do all that simultaneously while having your kids have this amazing experience. And if you're not even that directly involved with these campus experiences. Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit how, like, how do you get them set up to run give us a, yeah. An example of one campus that gives us an idea Yeah. How it initiates and then how it starts running and gets on its own. Yeah.
Matt Beaudreau:So our campuses very much, all of this happens because there is a team involved, right? So as we grow and scale anything from a family side to a business side or whatever, as we grow and scale, you've gotta learn to be able to prioritize. You gotta be able to say no to certain things. You gotta be very intentional about the things you will do, and you gotta put a team in place to, for things to be able to scale. Yes. That's just, there is no other way to be able to do that. And from a campus standpoint, what we're doing is we're helping people launch their, it's their business, right? Their campus. Tim says, I wanna launch one out here in Canada. Alright, cool. Let's go through a background. Let's make sure you're a good guy. Let's make sure you're solid. Let's go through a process to make sure you like what Apogee is all about. That we like you that we see the same thing in terms of values. We don't need to agree on everything in life.'cause hey, that's impossible, but let's make sure we got the same value set. Yes. And the same mission on this. And then Cool. Then what we're gonna do is, so we're launching affiliates and what we do is we take these affiliates and we train them start to finish on everything that takes to make a profitable business out of this. It's not just the pedagogy around it. But it's also how to make this a business that can sustain your family. As well. That's what we're doing. So we're partnering with people and walking them through that entire thing. So we've got an entire training system, an entire training network, and multiple levels of how much assistance do you want and need. You can come out and do a couple days of a workshop with us and there is no affiliation at all. I'm willing to just help, like we just wanna spread the mission. So if somebody's I just wanna do this in my hometown and I just wanna do it myself, cool. Come on out for a couple days. We'll take you through everything. Start to finish, pedagogy to the business side, all of it. If you affiliate, you can come in with us and we have weekly trainings on everything from. The running, the tech, we'll set up your websites for you, running the tech, running the payments and all that kinda stuff. We'll do that. We got office hours from our coaches on, everything from running Socratic discussions to running the academic portion to project based learning. We got coaches for every single one of those things. You can come in and be a part of the mentorship program and meet with all these men and women that you've seen en listed on the site. We'll have these conversations with these folks every week just to keep you going and keep giving you more and more tools. We got the entire system set up for you and an internal network where you're connected to all of the other owners as well. So you're learning from them the entire time. Then
Timmy Eaton:there's that collaboration and that there's
Matt Beaudreau:all that collaboration and that's it. And then, there's the white glove service part of it where we'll have some of our coaches literally go out with you to help you find your buildings, to host your open houses, if that's the level that you want, is somebody to really come out. Where did your
Timmy Eaton:campuses range from? I saw like all over the US and then so what is it? Some in the islands, right? Australia. Like where, yeah.
Matt Beaudreau:We're all over the us. We got one in Australia. We've got a couple in that are launching in Canada. Predominantly US, but yeah, that's all. So us, Canada, and Australia and we just added Guatemala. Wow. What's the typical
Timmy Eaton:way that it spreads? Is it that people come to you or that you are pushing different areas? How does it go
Matt Beaudreau:man? It has all been where we have not run a single ad. We've not run it is. All been word of mouth. Tim and I have big mouths on social media or podcasts, and so that, that helps. We've got our mentorship programs again for men, women, young men. So a lot of our affiliates have come out of the mentorship program too, where they're like, look, we want to go do this now and launch our own business. It's like people
Timmy Eaton:listen to my podcast, they hear this, and then they look up at Apogee and then they,
Matt Beaudreau:and then they apply to, to potentially affiliate. Yeah.
Timmy Eaton:Tell us right now what people do. What should they do? Like I'm saying like if anyone listening right now and they're going this is awesome, man. Like where do they go? What's the initial Yeah.
Matt Beaudreau:They can go to apogee strong.com and there's under education, you can put your information in there and we can start a conversation. They can reach out directly to me, Matt, at apogee strong.com. It's really, so that's where we are now. We're having to put systems in place now because it's so much word of mouth. So we're putting systems in place just to make it again, more efficient. Right now I can just, people wanna reach out and I can set up a time to talk and that's great. That won't last forever. So we need to have bigger systems, to have more discovery calls, we'll get a team around all of that too. As we grow, we gotta add more people to, to take care of more things. But that's really it, man. It's been an organic thing.
Timmy Eaton:That's amazing, man. Yeah, it's pretty wild. And what's like your family's worldview and what drives you spiritually, that kind of stuff.'cause I. I, I just find that's somewhere in this whole thing
Matt Beaudreau:for sure. For people. It is somewhere in this whole thing. Yeah. We it's, and I like, I love that question. So we, I grew up Diet Catholic is what I say where it was like a, you just go on the holidays, deal, but you don't really have any. Yeah. But again, that inquisitive nature, man, I was, it was like 19, 20 years old where I started going, all right if there's a God, I better figure out who this is, and I'm gonna go ahead and take everybody's point of view and see what makes sense. So I'm gonna go down all the rabbit holes, let me read the Bible, lemme read the Quran, lemme read the, the Talmud. Let me go read the book of Mormon. Let me go read. Let's go see, let's go see. And so then slowly start going, okay, cool. I get what they believe also. That seemed crazy to me. So I'm gonna check that one doesn't fit the test for me, whatever that is, right? And here's why, from a logical standpoint. I've gone down that road for a number of years. The last 10 years has really been working with a group of people to. Go through the Dead Sea Scrolls and translating directly from Hebrew and so I'm always in this state of, I think I have a pretty good idea who God is. I will never say I have all the answers, every time I dive in, especially through the Hebrew. I go, cool. That just gave me way more questions. And every one of those questions is far more enlightening on that. Yeah, very much a big part of our life and very much a big part of our programs. It is not a, you have to believe this, right? It is, I know enough to be dangerous to where I can make you start to question it. And yeah, questioning. It's either gonna give you a new insight or it's just gonna strengthen what you have right there. Which I don't think is a bad thing. So yeah, it's very much a big part of the journey.
Timmy Eaton:That's awesome, man. No, I appreciate it. And I'm sure your family is blessed because of all those underpinnings, man. So
Matt Beaudreau:very much isn't
Timmy Eaton:it cool to think of their future?'cause like you and I didn't have this. Could you imagine if you just were totally, if it was instilled in you, like from the get go? I just feel like that your capacity stretches in your potential stretches when you have this beginning. It's ev it's evolution. If we're, if education is changing for that way for so many families, especially in the us I'm seeing yeah. So many, so like homeschooling for example is booming. And do you find that are families that come to Apogee, are they typically homeschool families? And that's a hard question because who's gonna define what that kind of family is? Yeah, it's, but it's families asking questions, that's for sure.
Matt Beaudreau:It's families asking questions and it's, it ends up being a mix. And so when we go to, even before I say that, there was one thing that you said right there that I absolutely owe, that I absolutely love and I want to expand upon really quickly too. You're talking about when this had been cool, if this was us and thinking about the kids' future and that foundation we are setting. And it is such a cool thing to be able to look and go, man, what are they going to do? But here's what I also know to be true. We have no idea what the world's gonna look like 3, 4, 5 years from now either, right? So I. That in of itself, I will only allow myself to go so far into the future because there are so many things that we have no idea and can't control. So what I always encourage parents to do too is take a look and go, look how cool it is now. Just look at who they are now. And the more I think of it that way too, the more I've learned to actually hate the question of what do you wanna be when you grow up? I hate that question because I work with, right now, I work with we've got a thousand men in our men's program and these guys are 40 and 50 and they're like, I don't know what I want to do with my life. They're so forget when you grow up. Who are you right now? What do you want to be right now? What do you want to create right now? That's always the question. I don't care if you're 14 or if you're 44. That's your question.
Timmy Eaton:And if you give attention to right now, if you give attention to the present. Then the future takes care of itself because you're at peace and you're developing, like you said, bingo character. Bingo.
Matt Beaudreau:A hundred percent. That's the way we look at it. But as far as the parents that are coming to these campuses it's an interesting mix and this is one of the challenges for the affiliate owners is finding the quote unquote right. Families. We want to serve anybody and everybody that wants to come. What we want to be very careful of is there is still this pervading myth of quote unquote alternative schools when all we're saying is we're all alternative to the conveyor belt program. Anything alternative to that? There's still this pervading myth of okay, that's where you go if you are, on your way to juvenile hall, but not quite yet. So you just go there'cause that's the alternative school. Yeah. And we're like, Nope, that's not what we are either we've got a higher set of standards here, any more intentional. Way more intentional. So part of their challenge is illuminating that fact that, look, this is actually a place of higher standards, not just for the kids, but for the parents too. We want parents to grow. Parents go into the men's and women's program. If your kids go here, parents go into the men's and women's program, that's part of you paying tuition as mom and dad are gonna grow too. If we can get that message out there, then the families that are coming to us are those families that share really, those values of honor and integrity and bravery and compassion and service and leadership. And it's families that are really servant leaders more than anything else. There are families who are still we are running away from school. We're actually running away from standards. And we heard this is different. And so there are families that will go there, but we work with our affiliates to be like, Hey, that's not it. That's not it. The values have to match. If the values match, let's rock and roll. And we've got multiple foundations as well, nonprofits to try to make this accessible to everybody too, because there is a cost. We are running a business, but we do wanna make it accessible. Two people. And so we're working on that too. So we gave out a hundred and a little over a hundred thousand dollars in scholarships last year. We're hoping to at least double that this year.
Timmy Eaton:So how many people are in the campuses? What, is there like an average of what a campus consists of? Or is that, I'm sure that's all over the place.
Matt Beaudreau:It is all over the board depending on where people are. We've got some campuses that are, that just launched and they're small with, 10, 12 students. We got some that are already at a hundred, in their first few months. So it's literally all over the board because the scenarios are so different and some of our campuses have more full-time students and then some of them have more where they really just connect with the homeschool communities.
Timmy Eaton:Yeah, like a co-op or something.
Matt Beaudreau:Like a co-op. And they've got students that are coming, some students come Monday, Wednesday, and some come Tuesday, Thursday, and.
Timmy Eaton:So cool.
Matt Beaudreau:They, and again, that's their choice. They're running their business. We provide that support. We'll provide the projects, we'll provide the trainings, we'll provide everything they need. They need to pick and choose what makes sense to serve my community, to build what it is that I want to build with this.
Timmy Eaton:What was the first campus? It was in California. What year?
Matt Beaudreau:I built campuses that weren't technically Apogee campuses yet because we hadn't built that brand.
Timmy Eaton:You hadn't connected with Tim yet?
Matt Beaudreau:I hadn't connected with Tim and built that brand. So technically the first Apogee campus was his, in Texas, in Cedar Park, Texas. And then Oh, cool. Yeah. And then this last fall, we had another 36 open all over the place. And then, so we've got another 70 that are ready to rock and roll this coming fall
Timmy Eaton:and tell people why Apogee. Yeah, so it, that's, it's,
Matt Beaudreau:Apogee means like the highest point of something, getting to the highest point, right? You're always climbing towards the highest point. It is continuously going. We talk about the fact that perfection is not possible, but it remains the standard. And when that remains the standard, you realize you always have room to grow. That's it. So you're always moving towards the apogee and you might get to the Apogee have one mountain and you realize there's a whole lot of higher mountains and I gotta go climb those two. So yeah. Yeah, I've
Timmy Eaton:heard it said new level, new devil, it is just higher and higher. That's just and it's just cool to say, I just like saying Apogee, so it rhymes, but yeah. No a
Matt Beaudreau:yeah. Apogee. Yeah I agree. It was actually one of Tim's guys man, that we were we were all sitting around virtually trying to figure out. What we wanted to call all of this as we were going. And this guy his name was Justin. I don't even remember, I don't even think he works with Tim anymore, but he was another special forces guy. He just, he goes, what about Apogee? We're like, Ooh, we like that name. What the heck does it mean? And then he explained it. We're like, Ooh, okay. All right. That might be what we're doing here. Yeah, it's cool.
Timmy Eaton:Man, this has been awesome and again, I really hope that we can do this again. why not do something good and that blesses people and that's what you're doing. So thank you. And that's
Matt Beaudreau:it, man. That's the whole thing. We only have time, we had a finite amount of time, finite amount of energy, and you can use it to. Theoretically fight against things that you may or may not be able to change, or you can use that exact same amount of energy to go create something that can help as many people as you can help. Just makes more sense to me.
Timmy Eaton:Amen. This has been Matt Boro everybody. Check everything out at so apogee strong.com and then what was your, if people actually wanted to connect, you said
Matt Beaudreau:people wanna reach out, man, matt@apogeestrong.com. And either myself or my team will get back and help however we can and schedule whatever we can do to, help you out.
Timmy Eaton:And is there a latest project that you are doing or is it more just more of just, you're trying to keep up with all the demand?
Matt Beaudreau:It's more, yeah. The biggest thing is the more campuses. It's just, it's laying out, so there's four ways that we're gonna be able to help everybody. We have a book that will come out that we're trying to put all of our strategies start to finish in that book and try to make that freely available. So if somebody wants to just I would like to do this in my hometown, but I don't ever want to talk to that gray bearded guy. Cool, man. Sounds good. Take the book. Go create something. Go serve. So it was the book be first level, the workshops that we're doing out here at the live events. If you want to come hang out for a couple of days, stay at the cabin out here in the mountains. And we just spend a couple days together and I'll show you how to do it. And you never wanna see the gray bearded guy again. Cool. You can do that too. Then there's the affiliation, then there's the white glove service of affiliate. And myself and my team will fly out to you and we'll spend a year really walking you through start to finish to make sure you're up and running as we got all of those levels. So it's just pouring into all of those.
Timmy Eaton:Thank you again for being with us. We appreciate it.
Matt Beaudreau:Honor's mine, man.
That wraps up another edition of this Golden Hour podcast. If you haven't done so already, I would totally appreciate it if you would take a minute and give us a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify. It helps out a lot, and if you've done that already, thank you much. Please consider sharing this show with friends and family members that you think would get something out of it. And thank you for listening and for your support. I'm your host, Tim Eaton. Until next time, remember to cherish this golden hour with your children and family.