Carey Renee Sharpe - Bloodlove, Leaving Healthcare, Acton Academy, and Violin - Ep. #49

0:00 What's up friends, Welcome back to Rooted Wisconsin. Appreciate you for clicking another episode. Appreciate you for being you back with another one today and not on a normal episode drop day. That's for good reason. We're going to talk about that in a minute. But first, a bit about our guest, Carrie Sharp. Fascinating career path is what drew me in from pediatric nurse practitioner to business owner of the Howard and Oshkosh, to writer and star of Blood Love a Vampire Rock Popra. How can that not call you in, right? We talked about each step of that journey, starting with leaving healthcare because of a story that we've heard kind of come out the last five to 10 years about burnout and feeling heavy with that line of work.

0:43 Rightfully so, right? So we talked about that. We talked about her path to entrepreneurship and then of course, back to the creative with blood, love, and kind of rekindling A childhood thing that she did with playing the violin. She's been playing the violin for a long time. Music has always been central to what she does and kind of bringing that back front and center in life. So we talked about all that and the Acton Academy. She also brought a franchise of the Acton Academy to Oshkosh, which is kind of a different way to look at K12 education. Education is a particular area of interest of mine. So that was fun to talk about as well. We talked about those things and a whole lot more. Hope you enjoy it.

1:25 Now, why we're dropping an episode, not on an episode drop day is because we've got a new partner with the, with the podcast coming on in August, Carouser, you might have seen a little bit of that if you're following us on Instagram or our socials pumped up to have their cans on the table. But when I recorded Carrie's episode, we didn't have the agreement in place yet. So getting this one out so we can start in August with our new partnership with Carouser, of course, even for this one and all of them. Big shout out to Riverside Pizzeria, our friends there with Ryan and the crew doing an awesome job. Big things to come with Carouser. They'll be on the table starting with our first episode drop of August. Before we get there though, enjoy this one. Carrie Sharp.

2:11 So have the ways we try to lift our neighbors. Talking about it makes me not want to eat breakfast anymore. Yeah. It's like, man, I, I don't know, we tried, I tried keto recently. That was kind of difficult. Like carnivore is the the thing right now. But I can't couldn't go full carnivore because I like vegetables. But we lasted like a month and I was. Like, oh, that's pretty good.

2:56 It was all right, yeah, but yeah, it's tough with a three-year old. Do you have kids? You've. Got a six year old and a nine year old OK, but they don't eat anything. All they're picky. Eaters, they're super picky, especially my son, my younger, he doesn't eat anything. So I don't think we could put him on a special diet. He just, yeah. What? What are his go TOS milk? Milk, white rice, plain noodles, no butter. Very very limited diet. OK steak and salmon. That's pretty much it. OK, so protein avenues any? Yeah, kid doesn't eat anything. OK. And then the other one. She's better, she'll eat a little more normal, but OK.

3:39 Yeah, yeah. Our dude eats pretty well. We've since the beginning, like we've leveraged the things he likes to eat, things that he didn't want to try. And I think maybe that was helpful 'cause he, he does pretty well loves, he loves salmon and steak too, but he'll eat things that you wouldn't expect a three-year old to eat. Like he likes random vegetables, like he loves broccoli, Like loves no matter how we cook it. Like it can just be steamed with no seasoning and he'll just pound it like that's. Yeah, actually, right. I'll eat that too. But there's a few random things he'll eat, but it's just kind of limited. It's frustrating, like trying to cook for kids that don't want to eat anything all the time so.

4:20 Oh goodness, are you the cook in the household? Not so much anymore. A little bit, but I mean, it's pretty easy to cook for the kids too, 'cause they don't eat much. So it's just like boiling noodles, Yeah. Yeah, I cook in our house. That's like coming up with what to eat Is is just like this task, constant task. And then when we threw a kid into the mix. Yeah, it got way more difficult 'cause it was just my wife and I like I got a good feel of what she eats. We've been married for like 8 years now together for like 11. So like, I know what she digs. Then it was pretty easy. But then when you get a, a child that like evolves seemingly every week and like last week it was like, I love this. This week it's not. Oh man.

5:02 It's annoying, yeah. Super. It never ends. I'm not a big eat. I'm just like not a big food person in general. I'm definitely a like, I eat to live, you know, So I just don't care. Yeah, like sustenance. And that's what it's for, yeah. Yeah, just don't really want to put time or effort into it. Get that? Well, there's plenty of other places that it seems like your time and effort are going yes. So first, let's start with blood love a little bit. I, you know, I can't watch in any way, so I don't know what the what, what it is, but from you what what is blood love to you. Well, it's an all original musical that we've been working on now since 2020. So it's already 5 years in the making and that is very typical for the musical like development process. It takes quite a few years, but it's a it's a vampire musical really.

5:52 It is Essence, but it's very modern. The music is pop and rock driven, so it doesn't necessarily feel like typical musical theater music. And I've been working with a team that is not from the Broadway world necessarily. So it just has a very different feel to it, even though we are now moving it in a more traditional direction towards theoretically Broadway. But we're going to be going Off Broadway in February. OK, yeah. And that's probably part of that evolution, right? Part of that evolution is now that from what I could find online, you did it a few times in different places. And then it's like, OK, now it's going to be this here. Yeah, that's probably fun, right? The creative aspect of it. It's, it's super fun, but you know, every time we have to kind of reinvent it. And so it really has evolved over the years. And every time we do a new space, you kind of have to make it fit in that theater in that space, like for what exactly you're doing for the production.

6:47 And so this one is going to be a challenge because this is the biggest departure we've had so far from what we've been doing over the last four iterations of it. This one's going to be the biggest change. So it, it feels like it's going through a major overhaul right now. We haven't. We're not like rewriting a lot of it, but it's production wise is going to be very different than it has been historically. Yeah. What does that look like in when you get a new venue like that just from like the the not, not so much the creative aspect, but like the operational aspect, Like what is it? It's it's got to be very in depth and involved to get a new place to go. And what's this run going to look like? Like how long is it? How does that all work? Well, the first couple of iterations I did at my own theater. So I was very involved in every single aspect of it in the first two productions that we did.

7:33 The last couple that we've done most recently the one in Los Angeles, we had a bigger production team that was doing kind of that end of it the the theater in the space because that was really involved. We had quite a build out involved for that LA run. This one we're moving into a traditional theater and it's going to be like a full union Off Broadway production. So there's, it's like very, I kind of already outlined the the people and players that are going to be involved in that process. And we're we're working on putting that team together. But there's a lot of people involved in putting a stage production together, particularly in New York. Yeah. So I I don't even really have to do a whole lot of that part of it anymore. I've kind of handed that off to the team that will, you know, build out the space and make all that part come together so I can really just focus on the writing and then performing.

8:19 Nice. Yeah. So how long is the New York run going to be? Theoretically 12 weeks so at at the longest and then we'll we'll cut it there, but which is a, you know, a pretty typical for an Off Broadway new show to run for like a limited time like that yeah, 8 to 12 weeks would probably be kind of standard but. OK, well now let's dive into it a little bit. I, I don't know how you got there. So like a lot of times when I'll like find somebody that I want to come on the show or something like one of the main places I go is LinkedIn, cuz I like, I think career paths are fascinating. Yeah, yours fit the bill. I mean, from healthcare in like a relatively an intense space of healthcare to the creative arts and where you're at now.

9:06 Take me through it. What, you know, from nurse to nurse practitioner, right. And then to the creative arts, how does that happen, you know? Well, part of it is that I actually had a the trajectory of music earlier on before I chose to go to nursing school. I actually had a scholarship to go to Lawrence and study there. And theoretically I would have done probably violin and vocal performance. So I was a musician growing up. I started playing violin when I was three years old. So I think it was actually a bit of surprise, particularly to my parents and just people that knew me growing up, that I did not pursue music, you know, in college and earlier on. Do you remember what went into that decision? Absolutely. What was it? Well, I, so I have congenital heart disease myself. I was born with transposition of the great arteries. Can't say it, it's a bit of a tongue twister, but so I've always had that aspect of me like I've always wanted to take care of kids with heart disease basically. And so that was, you know, it was kind of time for me to make a decision of what I was going to actually pursue for a career. And while I have always loved music and is so core to who I am as a person, the career path didn't really appeal to me as a 18 year old.

10:16 I didn't, I didn't want to play in an orchestra. I've never been like a big orchestra person. I, you know, I did that growing up, but I'd never really loved that. And I like the prospect of becoming a singer in the way that most people do is it's really difficult. I didn't want to just like play gigs in a bar with nobody paying attention or, you know, trying to break into the music scene is nearly impossible. I mean, it's really hard now too. It's just really, really challenging. And as a younger person, I just knew that that was going to be really difficult. So that didn't really appeal to me. I didn't want to be a music teacher. I didn't really even want to study music in college, So I I wanted to be a pediatric cardiologist is what I'd originally thought I would do.

10:56 So I went to Madison and started kind of diving into that coursework and I took this class. It was like a sociology of healthcare course that kind of outlined the different careers in healthcare. And I knew I wanted to be a mom someday and the idea of becoming a nurse practitioner really appealed to me. So I was like it, you know, it's kind of the best of both worlds that, you know, kind of brought in that medicine aspect of, you know, physician, but it with a little bit better work life balance. So I started going down that path and I did that for many years. I had, you know, 12 year career and in healthcare. So, but it really was inspired by me wanting to help other sick kids basically and kind of give back in that way. OK. So then you go through that, you do all that growth in your career and then how does it come to a head where you make the 180 that you did?

11:45 Yeah, Well, I mean, I so I spent 12 years working in pediatric critical care. I started in the neonatal ICU and then I did when I became a nurse practitioner, I moved into the pediatric ICU. And this is going to sound kind of obvious, but working with really sick and often dying children is really hard. It was incredibly emotionally and physically taxing. I was working a lot of nights because I started my own family. So I had my daughter already and you know, I had a then eventually son coming. So I, I just really got burned out. I mean, it was just hard it and I was commuting towards the end because we'd move back to Oshkosh to start our family.

12:28 So I was driving down to Milwaukee and I would drive home in the mornings after I'd work these like 16 hour call shifts. Sometimes they'd even work 24 hour calls, but usually they were 16 hour night shifts. And I would just like cry the whole drive home because I was just so exhausted and tired of the whole thing is just very taxing. So I, that was a sign that it was time for me to take a break. I was I'd already started working on the Howard. We'd opened kind of around that same time. And, you know, something just had to give. And it was it was time for me to leave. It was really hard for me to leave. I loved my career in healthcare very much. I loved what I was doing. I always loved going to work. I loved my Co workers. But it was time for me to to do something different. And at that time, what it was was the Howard and opening this theater.

13:15 So I didn't, I didn't have any plans to start performing or doing music myself again. But I'd sort of started to foray into it just by having this venue. And I was bringing in a lot of musical artists and we were doing all kinds of stuff, just trying anything really to see what would work in the space. So it kind of organically evolved from some of that. But really what I was doing at the time was just like running this venue. Yeah, let's stay on that for a second because I've thought about that a lot about that kind of like emotional taxing that happens to folks that work in all realms of healthcare. But I mean that specifically, like, especially when you get into it because of like a sole mission like you did, you know, that means you're a feeler. And then, you know, you meet these people constantly on a daily basis where it's like the child's situation is heart wrenching enough, but then all day long you are supporting helping families that have this happening. I I'm 100% sure I couldn't do it. Like that's, I don't know.

14:26 And you put it into words already, but there I think there's too much there to just let slide by because that has to be such an incredible toll on the people that do it. And you made it a a lot of years. Do you know others who left similarly or do you see most people stay? I mean, it's, it is very common to, to leave, particularly nurses. I mean, they will it's, it is a little easier as a nurse to pivot and do something not quite so intense. A lot of my colleagues would leave and work in like a the PACU or like in a outpatient setting, something that was just like not quite so intense. After, you know, many years of getting experience in the ICU, you can kind of do anything really. You've just built such a foundation of knowledge and skills that anything else you could probably pretty much pick up.

15:20 But when you're, I was like a very specialized as a nurse practitioner, Obviously, if you're a physician, you're much more specialized. So, you know, people tend to stay in those, you know, specialties for a long time and it, it's hard. And I think there is, especially post COVID, I think there has been more acknowledgement of the toll that it takes on people to work in healthcare for many, many years. Even just the training is obviously we all know, very challenging for physicians, but also for nurse practitioners and for nurses. Like the path to get there is, is difficult. And then once you're there, it's, it doesn't really get much easier. It changes, you know, you're not in training, but it's, it's just a difficult job. So to do that for years on end. I mean, I think it is growing the acknowledgement that people do need to take care of themselves more and there needs to be more respite for our our caregivers. Yeah, yeah, Cuz I often wonder, like there's probably a certain amount of people that are like, once you choose it and you get there, you're kind of trapped in a way because you spent a ton of money to become trained to do it. And sure, the positions are lucrative, but you spent a lot of money to get there.

16:28 So there's a certain amount of lifetime that like you signed on the dotted line. Indeed, yeah. And I, you know, I'm not a physician, so I didn't go through that amount of training, but the amount of training that I went to, to get to my specialty was a lot. I mean, my master's degree program was three years and then I did a second master's degree in public health. That was another three years. So, you know, I have a lot of years put into it and just, you know, on the job training of many, many years. So yeah, you kind of feel like, was that a waste? I don't know. I certainly don't think it was a waste. I but it it was hard to walk away for sure. Yeah, there's probably to kind of leave it on a high note before we move to the next topic. There's probably sometimes that you look back fondly.

17:09 On right there was about. To help a ton and smiles aren't sometimes the case. Oh, for sure, yeah. I, I have lots of good memories about my time there. But it was, it was so core to my identity at the time that leaving was really difficult because I really defined myself as, you know, as this healthcare worker. And so still to this day, and it's been 6 years since I left. It's getting better now, but it was hard for me to distance myself from that and kind of I had to redefine myself for myself too. And, and obviously I did such a 180 with my career. It was, that was a challenging process. And now six years later, I, you know, it's, I feel like that has actually occurred, but it took a long time. Yeah.

17:54 Do you think there's ever a path back, or is it in your rearview mirror completely? I keep up my certification and my license every year and I every time I do it because it takes, you know, probably takes me a good 10 hours or whatever to go through all the paperwork and ongoing stuff that I have to do. It's not. So it's not a big deal, but every time I'm doing it, I'm just like, why am I doing this? Like, am I ever going to go back? I doubt it, but I can't let it go. Like I just have to. So, you know, maybe someday I'll, I will, but not, not yet. Yeah, I think that identity thing is pretty common. I think that keeps people in a lot of positions that they're unhappy in because, you know, for better or for worse, in Western culture, like we're tied to what we do to make money.

18:38 And that becomes so many people's identities. And if you're not inherently like OK with being ambiguous or like changing, that can be a really difficult feeling, I think for a lot of people, especially when you you leave something completely that, one, you've been invested in and two, you did for a reason at one point in your life. And we all evolve and change into different humans. But like, we still keep that stuff there. There's still those little pieces of me when I made that decision 15 years ago that are still in there, even if it's not serving you the best that it could be today. Yeah. And I didn't leave because I didn't love it. I loved my job. I loved my coworkers. I loved my patients and my the families I worked with. Like I it was really, really hard to leave. It was just, I just couldn't do it anymore. Like physically I just couldn't do it anymore. Yeah, the a lot of things happen in life like that where the downsides start out weighing the upsides and we don't often realize it when we do.

19:35 But when you do, you have to, you have to do something. Yeah. So then Howard's the next step. Tell me about that. Jumping into that. I mean, that seems like a daunting enough task as it was. I I looked into a little bit about what you did with the place and everything. How does that come about? How has it gone Well? That I had no clue what I was doing and still don't. But it kind of started with us. My sister and I did that together. And we are both pretty involved in our community and have a philanthropic, you know, angle that we have tried to, you know, support our in our in various different ways. And so we were kind of like looking for like a bit of a philanthropic project. And it's not a nonprofit, but we're like, let's say of this old cool building and like turn it in some to something good for the community and.

20:26 You know, so we opened in 2018 and just getting it up and running was hugely challenging. Learned a lot because I went from a very different position of kind of being in this big organization and I was sort of kind of middle of the structure. You know, I, I had people that reported to me sort of as a nurse practitioner, but I certainly had lots of people that I was, you know, I was very comfortably in the middle and then you're like a business owner all of a sudden and I didn't have that experience. I'd never hired people, fired people just had to manage people in that, that way, especially starting a new thing that we, I mean, we really didn't know what we were doing at all. And so we pulled in some good people to help us do that. But I, I learned a ton and, and then COVID hit and basically shut down our business like everybody else. You know, we're essentially at events venue. So that was challenging and pulling out of that just I didn't, I didn't ever really go back to it the same way that I did when I was getting it up and running. And now we just have a team that manages it and and does all the day-to-day.

21:28 And I'm not super involved there anymore. But I learned a lot in the process of opening it and running it for the first couple years. Yeah. And I mean, what does that learning look like? Because it's so different being an entrepreneur and opening a few businesses like that. Learning is way different than what I would call like a more traditional educational path to healthcare where it's like, OK, this is in the book, this is what I need to know. Business is a lot different where it's kind of you need to be a problem solver and think on your toes. Not saying nurses don't have to be, but like the learning is so much different. What was that, a shock? Yeah, I mean, yeah, there is no playbook for it.

22:08 You just have to figure it out. And I actually think that that is something that I've learned about myself through that process. And I'm, and that's kind of led me now to doing this musical theatre thing is I'm good at just like figuring it out. And that is such a skill that we don't really teach very well. And it's, but it's becoming more and more important for you to have for people to be able to just like figure things out and not need a lot of management. You know, like nobody was going to tell me. I didn't have anybody to tell me what to do. Like nobody was going to save me or, or tell me like you're doing it wrong. You got to do this. Like you just, you just have to figure it out. So that was that was a good lesson to learn. Just like on a large scale, I guess, you know, for that you can apply to anything. But just getting being scrappy, you know, just really and doing a lot of the work yourself too.

22:57 I mean it. I've had my hands in it. One of my favorite stories is the first weekend that we had weddings, we were just doing everything ourselves. We didn't have a big staff. And so we, we had like a couple weddings in a row. And so on Saturday morning, I came in to kind of like flip the place and all, like two or three of the toilets were clogged and we realized we didn't have any plungers. So I'm going to Piggly Wiggly at, you know, 8:00 in the morning, just like loading up on plungers, you know, just stuff like that. You don't even think about it and because, yeah, you just had to go do it, it's not a big deal. But like you're just like, oh, shoot, I didn't even think about that. Like we don't have any plungers here, you know, stuff like that. So I've done all kinds of things in that building and business just to like make it work and figure it out and. Did you clear the clogs and the wedding went off without a? Hitch Oh, yeah.

23:44 It was all fine. But, you know, we just had to, Yeah. Like, oh, shoot, I guess we'll go make a run to Piggly Wiggly. Get some plunger. So just stuff like that, you know, it's not, it's not glamorous and that's OK. And I liked doing that. And I had a, we had a new baby. So I, he was like 3 days old and I had to open this business. So I just strapped him to my chest and a little baby carrier. And I remember I was like carrying chairs up and down the steps with like a baby. It was crazy. Yeah, motivational dude, we. Brought him to work with me and just did all the things so with my team and yeah, we made it, made it happen so.

24:27 Did the baby sleep good in the carrier? He. Was great. Thankfully he was a really chill baby, so he was really great. I just brought him to work with me, yeah. Yeah. Pass him around a little bit. Yeah, when you back needed a break or something? Yeah, it. Was it was a lot of women working on it. So we were all like very happy to take the baby for a little bit. And so it was really helpful. Every kind of pitched in, yeah. I mean, there's worse things to do in the world than holding a cute little. Baby. Yeah. No, no, for sure. Yeah, it was kind of fun. You touched on one thing. I was going to be my next question though. What parts about that did you come across that you were like, I really like this, like problem solving came out of that. But like, what parts of business ownership were you able to pluck in like contrast to healthcare that you were like, OK, this, I like, this I like. Well, I love hosting.

25:12 I love it. Which to me is like a different form of caregiving. Like I like hosting dinner parties or just anything. So any opportunity that I had to host an event there and bring people in and let them have like a fun night out, that's where I really found a lot of happiness. And that's where the show evolved from is basically me doing that as like a producer. I guess I don't know what I'd really call myself in that role because I was just putting all the pieces together, hiring the talent. I wasn't the talent, but just making an event happen really. And then the show kind of evolved from that, but that was not my intention when I started out at all.

25:52 That's super fascinating, the show Blood love that evolved. Interesting jump. So would you say so? Self diagnosis is a skill. I think a lot of times we don't get a full picture of ourselves and take time to like comprehend what we truly enjoy and stuff like that. Would you say that's a strength of yours 'cause that's well? I like to take care of people and taking care of people in the hospital isn't that different in a lot of ways than taking care of a guest. You know, obviously it's different, but there's a lot of similarity there. It's just, it's, it is all caregiving and I still think of it that way. And the show isn't really quite that anymore, but now it's morphed into something else.

26:36 But certainly at the Howard, that's how I thought about it, like taking care of our guests and wanting them to have a really great experience, especially they're paying money to come to our venue and have a, you know, hopefully a good experience. But to me, they weren't really actually that dissimilar. Yeah, yeah, they're not really. I think what's a little bit outside the norm is like the the path there and like diagnosing that for yourself, be like, yeah, OK, this is a good thing. I don't know. That's such a valuable thing to be able to do. Like know what you truly get satisfaction out of and then be able to implement in different parts of life. Because oftentimes there's not a whole lot of different things where satisfaction comes from in life.

27:22 When you really break it down to the foundational pieces of like where happiness comes from or joy and what truly makes you satisfied. And then once you know that, then you can do whatever you want because there's a million different ways that you can spread that dust around. So OK, now we're to the show that I'm significantly less familiar with. Like how does that? How do you decide to write something like that or create that? Well, again, it kind of it did. I'm just gonna. Yeah, it evolved quite organically. We were doing all these shows at the Howard and we had done some like dinner theatre and we were kind of trying to make dinner theatre cool again.

28:08 She didn't like quite succeed in doing that. But through that process, we just had tried a bunch of things and kind of found what worked in the space and what people responded to, like what people enjoyed coming to. And I love Halloween, and my sister and I wanted to basically throw like a really elaborate Halloween party. And we partnered with some other people, some other creatives, and basically I kind of called it like a party with a plot line. We had this like very intentional Halloween party that was, it was like like we called it the Gathering of the vampires. And it was a black tie vampire ball with like original fashion show. And there was some original music. And there was like kind of a central character. And there was like sort of a loose plot to this party. Not like a murder mystery, but kind of like that concept like that.

29:00 There was sort of just like these little Nuggets of things being placed throughout the evening, driving everybody towards like a final point of the night. And it was really, really successful. People loved it. And I was like, this is cool. We're on to something. But I want to like build it into more of a show. Like instead of just kind of this, it was more of a party then. And I was like, I want to make it more of a show, like an immersive show. And so we just started doing that. I did. I had to find the other thing that evolved from that. It was I was like, I want to work on the music. Like I think I can do this. I hadn't really done anything myself in the music world or performed or anything in many, many years, but just kind of gave me the bug that like I, I think I could, I could actually work on the music here.

29:47 So I, I had to find a different team of, of people to work on it with me. So I approached acquaintance in town that's a singer-songwriter has become a very dear friend of mine, Aaron Baim. And she was, I was like, you know, I want to do this show. I don't really have any concept for it yet other than I want it to like, build this thing and like, could you help me work on some music? And she's like, yes, but like, I'm not a music producer. So we're going to need to find somebody to help us kind of on that end of it. And she lived in LA for many years and knew a lot of producers. And so we went out to LA and met with a couple of them and just really immediately hit it off with my now, you know, creative partner Drew and his kind of other part writing partner Adam.

30:29 And the four of us just, like, started writing music. So it's just like kind of organically started evolving. I, I don't know. And then now, five years later, we have a whole musical. Yeah. So, so it's it starts with the music and then the rest kind of fits around that. Yeah, it almost started as like a concept album, the first iteration that we did in 2021. It was more of a we had like a loose plot and that was starting to come together, but it was just kind of mainly music at that point. OK. And and I know nothing about musicals. Is that pretty common in that space? Like does it start with the music frequently or does it? There's definitely a path where people start with a concept album. I would say that is not UN uncommon. What's probably more common is a book musical where you start with a piece of IP, usually a literal book, a novel or something, some source material, and then they write music to or movie, you know, like Dirty Dancing the musical or, you know, that's happened a million times. So usually there's some significant source material that then people are writing music to and shaping it into a musical. Like we had.

31:37 We have zero. We just made it all up. Our source material is just like vampires, you know, there was nothing. There was nothing. Kind of. Yeah. And now we're actually pulling it out of Halloween 'cause it's not even really Halloween. I mean, of course vampires work at Halloween time, but it's not, it's not a Halloween show by any means. So. Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, everybody loves a good vampire thing like there's so it's. I always say they're like literally eternal. I mean, there's always a popular vampire thing. It just kind of ebbs and flows what it is at the moment. But like right now, that movie Sinner has recently came out. Haven't seen it yet 'cause it's still in the theaters and I don't go to the theatre very often, but it's been super popular. And so that's kind of been a new and it's like has a musical element to it. So everybody's like really into that at the moment.

32:18 So there's just always something that people are into that are everybody. The vampires are like cool and sexy and everybody kind of wants to be 1. So you know, who doesn't want to live forever, theoretically. So yeah, it's just people like it. I was going to ask that to to you where your interest in vampires comes from, but we kind of got there via. Halloween it's really mainly Halloween, but like I like a very I like a really curated party. And so I've always loved Halloween, but like hate going to bad Halloween parties where everybody like has like mismatched costumes, you know, like some people would be really well dressed and then they'll be people that just like really didn't put a lot of thought or effort into that, you know, So I wanted to have like a more curated costume party basically.

33:01 So everybody came as and vampires is easy. It's basically just like wear black and like put your own spin on it. Super easy. Yeah, and people really ran with it and we for the first couple years like made people wear black if they to come to the show and it just like it's a vibe so well. That probably still happens, right? I would, I would think. People get really into it, yeah, and it's cool. Yeah, that's what you want. That's what you want as a creative. You want people to be immersed in what you do and connected to what you do. I don't know anything about musicals. I've been playing music for a long time. And I mean all the way down to someone tapping their foot. When you play, it's it's what you're looking for. You want someone, you know, speaking about what goes back to that satisfaction.

33:42 I think one of the cool parts about music in general is just that it allows you to connect and kind of bridges gaps in connection, even if it doesn't include you like it. It might be external, but that's one of the best things. So, yeah, you see somebody coming to the party and they're dressed up for the vibe. You know, that's a good thing. So what's the you said that with the next run, it's going to be significantly different without, you know, giving away all the secrets. What what's the evolution of it, Ben? Because I would, I would assume that was for you personally, that was probably the harder of the two parts, right? Because growing up a musician, the music probably comes, but then what does the other side creatively look like creating the rest of the show?

34:28 And what's it going to evolve to now? Well, part of the challenge is just sticking with it. You know, like to to continue on the same project for five plus years now. I mean, that actually is one of the most challenging parts. Like I just had a new draft of the script do and I like call my creative partner earlier this week and I was like, I think I'm losing my mind, like I don't think I can rewrite this thing again. Like I just I it's like met the mental gymnastics of like continuing to work on the same thing over all these evolutions. It it's a very interesting challenge. You don't just like finish it and put it away. It just keeps, you have to keep reworking it and, and it gets better every time. And every time I think I don't have any more vampire songs in me, somehow we write another vampire song. So it's like, that is really like an interesting process. But so this new iteration in New York is going to be the first time that we actually really put it on a traditional stage and that the audience is here and the stage is here. Every time we've done it in the past, it's been in a really immersive way.

35:30 So the, the show kind of moves throughout the whole space and amongst the audience and, but theoretically, if we want to ever bring it to like Broadway or just to, you know, be able to tour with it or something like you do need to be able to put it on a more traditional theatre stage. So that is what we are going to do with this next production and what we still want it to feel. I'd like I love that word that you use connected because to me that has been my new finding of of like joy and fulfilment in this project is when I when I wanted to do a live show, a lot of people would go, why do you like want to do this for film? And I'm not a big movie watcher goer. I've always preferred live performance because there is that human connection.

36:12 And I feel like now more than ever, we need that so desperately. And I want the audience to be be part of it. Then they don't have to perform to feel connected to the music to this production. But how do we still have that connection now that we're going to be like separated physically? And I think we can still achieve that. I certainly have seen a lot of shows where I, I feel connected to it and I have that emotional response, even though it's in a, you know, I'm in the audience and they're on stage. But I want to make sure we don't lose that element because we are a little more separated. So that's, that is the biggest challenge for me going into this next one is like still connecting with the audience. And this theatre that we're going to is Off Broadway. And so it's still pretty small. It's only 160 seats. So there is that like level of intimacy just because it's a small space, but you still have to be able to like theoretically scale that up and still have that connection.

36:58 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, even 160 people commanding attention is a tough thing. Yeah, in our life. But I couldn't agree more. That's actually one of the reasons I started the podcast. That's one of my driving forces of it is I couldn't agree more that we need, we could use being more connected as just humans. Yeah. And there's a lot of things that go unnoticed that connect us because of all the divisive things that are in life that like put up these invisible barriers that are just silly most of the time that it's just like, OK, that's going to, that's going to stop us from talking or that's going to stop me from enjoying your company or something like that. So, yeah, that I couldn't agree more. That's one of the reasons I, you know, I wrestle with this frequently because like, even on social media, like from this episode, we're gonna, I'm gonna make some really cool social media clips that are gonna jump and they're gonna catch attention and they're gonna, people are gonna click like and stuff.

37:58 But like, my ultimate goal is for you to listen to the whole conversation because that's where the value is. Like that's where I think like spending 20 minutes talking to your neighbor that even if it's somebody you don't agree with on everything or something like that, or like all the way to like philanthropic stuff with your community that you said is, is kind of a passion of yours. All of that stuff is so important and it's missing in vast pockets of, of our country. And like, I don't know, I, I don't have, I certainly don't have the silver bullet. The 500 people that listen to this podcast aren't going to run out and start changing the world immediately. But like, it's a, it's a step in the right direction. I don't know.

38:43 And it's it's cool that you think about your your art through that lens too, because art a lot of times is something that has to come out of us. Like when I'm writing a song, it's just I don't plan at 9:00 on a Tuesday. I'm going to write a song. It just happens, you know? Yeah. It's hard to force it. Yeah. But but it's cool to look at it through that lens because then I think, I don't know, you're able to keep the audience in mind, right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's certainly who I have in mind. I mean, I, so I started as a classical violinist and so my first medium and I love to sing. So I was probably singing before I was really talking. But you know, as a classical violinist, like there are no words. So you're connecting with with music that transcends even needing to share a language.

39:31 And I think music is that for so many people. I mean, you don't have to be a musician to feel that way about music. So many people are just consumers of music, but like feel so passionately about it. And so I, you know, I keep telling my team as we're writing this thing and I'm rewriting it for like the billionth time, like kind of losing my mind. What I'm always focused on is just like, if there were no words to this show, am I still telling the story and like conveying that emotion on stage? Like could I be singing this in a different language that nobody speaks and they still can follow what I'm doing? We call it a rock popra, but I love opera. I love ballet 'cause it is so storytelling without. I mean, I know there's words in opera, but they're. In different language usually. And so like you can tell what's you can follow a story and feel connected to it emotionally without having any dialogue or any words really.

40:20 And so that is like what I'm trying to achieve is like that emotional pull just with the music alone. Yeah, quick sidebar. Classical violin. I call it a fiddle. Is that all right? I mean, I do not fiddle, so no, it's not all right. No, I I mean, I have never. Yeah, it's a violin. But sure, I knew that was going. To it's a well, it's a very different style of music and playing that I really just don't do. I mean, a little bit I did when I was younger, but I just don't play that way. Yeah, and that's kind of why I ask. And in jest, I I ask because it's it's, that's what it is, right? It's like somebody who says they play the fiddle, just it looks at it in a completely different way, right? And in a different light.

41:09 Yes, yeah, I play well, now I play an electric violin, so I've taken in like a little bit different direction. So I play it like with pop music in my show. So I don't really play classical repertoire anymore. I do play I play a little bit of classical music in the in the show, just a whiff. But when I play in the show, it's like along with the the music of the musical, so. So when you hear it called a fiddle, does it like make your eye twitch a little bit or I really? Care. It does almost just like feel like a different instrument to me. Yeah, I like just, yeah, but yeah, it's the same instrument. Just used in a different way. Yes, totally. I think I've always been envious of both sides, really to to kind of take it back to seriousness. I love the instrument in general. I've never even picked one up, never tried to play one. Yeah, but the the emotions that you can evoke out of a sound with it are really central to my musical appetite. Yeah, I guess I would say what?

42:07 How'd you start at a young age? What would you read of the? Well, my mom made me. I mean, yeah, I was so young that my mom I so I was a Suzuki violinist and anybody who's in music knows that it's kind of like the Montessori of music. It's a method that's heavily relies on ear training 'cause when you're 3, you can't read music yet. So it just really focuses on on ear training and learning by ear. So I can play. I can play at a level that is much higher than my sight reading abilities still to this day 'cause I was so well ear trained that I can just hear something and play it. That's how I learn. So it has served me well as a musician in general, but it is also a challenge to like have like a little bit of a struggle sometimes reading music.

42:51 Perfect segue into something else I wanted to talk about today. So we'll get there in a second, but I'm wrestling with this. I think most parents wrestle with this of how to encourage and adapt to your children's interests. Well, not having, in my case, my sons say in 20 years. Well, it's something my dad made me do, you know, luckily I've, my interests are really diverse and varied. So he's got a bunch of different things that he can pick from to see an example of, but one of them is playing guitar a lot. And that's one of the things that he's been drawn to. I bought him, it's called this lug guitar. It just has the, the bottom three strings of a guitar and he, it's the best thing in the world. He puts it on wrong all the time. Sometimes he strums with his right hand, sometimes he strums with his left hand and he's got like he'll have the, the strap just around his neck like a necklace and it'll be just going.

43:49 And it's awesome. And I'm trying to figure out how to nurture that and bring it to life without being, you know, like learn this chord or like, you know, this is how you're supposed to do it. Like, of course he's not playing chords right now, but it's, I think it's awesome that he's 3 and he'll stand there and he'll act like he's playing and he can sing a whole song right now and there's just so much joy in him. So the segue comes in a second, but what was your first? What was your experience with that like? Did you, would you do you look back upon it fondly? And it sounds like as you aged a little bit and came of age, that it was something that maybe you fell out of love with a little bit. How does that whole process look for you growing up, starting at such a young age and then like learning it and having it be core to you?

44:45 Well thinking well this isn't what I want to do. Yeah, well, I mean, music is so core to who I am as a person that even though at three, I don't think I was making the conscious decision to start playing, but I was just too young. But it's like, I don't remember a point in my life that I didn't play the violin. Like I don't remember any ever, not being a musician, you know? And, and it came frankly, very actually to me, like I just have it, it is true just like anything, like some, I just have some natural talent as a musician. And so, and then I became highly trained by practicing and playing for many, many years. But I think so now I have a six year old, 9 year old and they both play violin.

45:28 And so I don't have an answer to that question cause trying to do it now with my own children, it's hard. And my daughter's doing well. She's my older, she's 9. But it's clear that my son has a little bit more of a natural aptitude for it. And so it it's hard. They both enjoy doing it, but it is a little difficult to push them on that path without pushing them too hard because you don't want them to be turned off from doing it. Yeah. It's like a very delicate balance. But for me, I loved it. It wasn't that I didn't love music anymore. I just didn't like, want to do it as a career. And I just, like, needed to do the same thing. I was like, kind of almost burned out in music. I'd done so much music growing up that that's all I had done because I also played piano and I was a singer.

46:09 So I was, I just like was so immersed in music 24/7 basically. And I didn't want to, you know, do that as a career at least at that point that I, I just had to do something else. You know, it's time for a change. The only regret I have in my life, and I will say is that I didn't at least keep playing violin like more formally, not that I had to do it as a career, but like that I didn't keep taking lessons or just it's harder to do that as an adult if you're not like studying music. Like I didn't want to study at Conservatory, but I wish I would just like found a teacher and kept playing because I basically didn't play for 20 years. And then I had to pick it up again for the show a couple years ago. And then it's been a whole journey of like, trying to start playing the violin again and like realizing I'll never play at the level that I played, you know, back then, but at least feeling confident about performing on stage again that I that's taken some time. You don't think you can get back to it? No, I know I can't.

47:03 Why is that? I don't have the time and I just, I'm older now and it's just it, yeah. Isn't it so much harder to learn stuff when you're older? I find that. Yeah, it definitely is. So I have, I mean, I've got a great foundation. I can play, I play in the show, but I just I was playing at a quite a high level, you know, when I was 18 and I just yeah, I won't get back there. It's OK. I'm I'm not made peace with it. It's OK. I don't need to play at that level anymore. I'm not doing anything that requires me to play at that level. But it is kind of like if I would have just like kept playing more casually over the. Even once a month or something. Yeah, I just didn't. I like basically put my violin in it, violin away and like didn't play it for like 20 years.

47:43 Just kind of crazy. It is kind of crazy, yeah. Very rarely when I take it out of its case. And then basically I was like, wow, this is really out of tune and I need to get, you know, it's just, I barely would play it. But now I play regularly. I mean, I have a teacher again and I play, you know, maybe not every day. I I kind of go through sports with it. But yeah, I play regularly now. Yeah, so learning is the other thing I wanted to talk about. I might. I don't even know how to say it, but is it Acton Academy? Yep. K there's that's another nice little offshoot of this career path that you're on. Tell me about. It yeah. So as obviously I've got two kids and when we were moving back to the area, we are looking at the educational landscape and just wasn't feeling super inspired by any of the options here for our own kids.

48:29 And I obviously took a very traditional educational path myself. I, I did very well in the traditional system, but I just wasn't loving any of the options for my own kids and I just like wanted something else. I think we all recognize that education has a lot of challenges these days and that the way that we've been teaching kids for so many years, it's just not like adapting to the changing world, at least not quickly enough. So I did a little digging literally just on Google and to just find other educational models, different schools because there's so many interesting things going on in the world of education around the country, around the world, but there's a lot of things happening.

49:10 And I found this school that was founded in Austin, TX. I think they're about 15 ish years in now at least. And basically learned more about their school and applied to become one of their affiliate schools and got accepted, went down to Austin, met the founders, spent a couple days at their school in in Austin. And yeah, just like started going on that journey of, of opening a school and I recruited my best friend to help open it with me. And now she actually like she does 95% of the work now she's the director of the school and does all the day-to-day. But yeah, we're we are finishing up our fifth year. So we already are five years in. But So what is it?

49:51 What, how what? How is the instruction delivered different in a differentiated way? So one of the core differences with Acton is we don't, we don't even call our teachers teachers, We call them guides. And their number one goal is to not actually directly answer questions and they don't really give a whole lot of direct instruction. So it's all very self-paced independent learning. It's a lot of people are familiar with Montessori and we actually do use Montessori materials with the younger kids, like kind of before they're like really like the 4-5 year olds particularly we use a lot. But then with older kids, it kind of continues on that philosophy of like self-paced learning and but we bring in technology, the kids use some iPad, you know, curriculum, like a lot of schools do not like a lot of it is, but you can do a lot of individualized learning about it that way because a lot of it is just like self-paced. Then if you can just move through the lessons that way. So but anyway, so the guides don't really teach in a traditional sense.

50:49 They just are very good at asking the right questions and helping kids to figure out the answers on their own, which is it's like the, it's a Socratic method really. And that's difficult. It's really difficult to not just give somebody the answer. So as a parent, your natural instinct is to just solve problems for your kids. But ultimately what I believe we, what we believe is that we'll, what will serve them better is teaching them early on how to figure it out themselves, You know, and we're doing that at a really young age and to an age appropriate level, right? I mean, we're still there, there's still obviously adults and rude to to provide that structure and you know, if they really need, if things really go off the rails, you know, there are adults there obviously, but we give them a lot of latitude and a lot of agency in their own learning and their own like running of the we call them studios instead of classrooms, but of their own studios. It's kind of like their own little like democracy host and they have their own rules.

51:45 They've got their own like reward systems, they've got their own. They just kind of have created their own the. Students, you're saying yes. And this is older kids now the, the real younger kids, we kind of are gearing them up to be able to, to be ready for that. But like the 9:10 11-12 year olds, like they're doing this really well on their own. They have like, here's an example. My daughter kind of got into AI guess like fight, you know, 9 year old girl fight with a friend of hers over the weekend, like not at school. And so on Monday, they did a conflict resolution and like worked this out, had like like a diplomatic conflict and like they're 9. Self-guided.

52:25 Yes, 'cause they know the process, they've been taught this process, but now they can, you can basically just put them in a room together and say, hey, do you guys want to do this conflict resolution? And they can do it. They run their own town halls. They get to vote on like things that they want to do in the studio and like how they want to run the studio and they hold each other accountable for adhering to those rules that they have created as a group. And again, the, the adults are there to like facilitate this, but they're not driving it. So I know it sounds unusual, it is, but it is really awesome to see it in action. And I've now been down to Austin a couple times and been able to see some of the like this very long term studio that now has kids that have been, you know, through high school and into college. And the young people that are, you know, 18 year olds, like these kids are going to take over the world because they're so it's not even just self driven. They're just like so capable of doing things on their own without needing to be told what to do. And we need a world full of people that can be able to be, to do things without being told what to do. You know, robots can do a lot of those things that are going to be, you know, so you know, we, we just need people that can figure things out and not need to be so actively managed, if that makes sense.

53:45 Absolutely. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, that's something I do with my own child all the time. Like I'd, I'd very infrequently give him the answer to anything. Like I, I, I tell my wife this and all the time, like I, you know, I don't, I don't want to raise someone that blindly submits to authority like I want. I want to create a problem solver that like can navigate. I think it's interesting. So then how does that go? Because there has to be this delicate balance, right? Of like, where are the guardrails? Where are the guardrails of like might not work looking at it through my lens, but like just take a generic student's lens and say someone doesn't like math at all.

54:30 A lot of people don't like math. Where are the guardrails to say like, OK, explore this and learn this, but but still evoke or create that sense of self-guided? Well, it's, it's hard, you know, and that's that's something that we don't really get fully thrown into until we're adults, that we kind of have to be accountable for our own work. Like nobody's nobody's really holding you accountable after you're out of like high school, I guess, you know, So there in some ways we have like a tracking system that's much more detailed than like a public school or just like a traditional school setting, because everything is mastery based. So all these platforms, everything that we're doing is like you basically build a portfolio of everything at like every single skill that they're learning and they have to complete it.

55:22 So, so we're tracking all of that. So kids, So what happened to my daughter? I'll just anecdote to give an example of this. She had been doing really well and was like 2 grades ahead, just kind of chugged along. And then we went to her and we don't really pay that close attention because she's doing great. And like that's kind of also part of the philosophy is like it's actually supposed to be pretty hands off from the parents. Like because the kid, it's really learner driven. It's not parent driven. It's not, you know, adult driven. It's supposed to be learner driven. So we just try to be super hands off, especially because our kid was doing fine, doing great. And then we went to her, her like, what do you call it? Blanking on the word right now. But her like student teacher. Yeah, it's we don't call it that, but I'm just blanking on it right now. Anyways, her conference at the end of the year and she's like just totally fallen off the the trajectory. And we were like, whoa, what happened? Like you were like ahead and now you're behind. You didn't finish your work.

56:12 And we were like, OK, like what happened here? And so we just had to like, kind of figure out what was going on. And it was actually just that she needed more manageable goals to like, set for herself. She's like a little bit different goal setting system. And so it's a messy process is my point. And it, it's not perfect, but that's kind of the design is that we want to bake in some failure like that. So you learn that lesson like, oh, whoa, I didn't do any of my work. And I have to like go into my conference and like tell my parents and like finish the 2nd grade, you know, like, I don't want to do that again. So what am I going to do? And we all work together. And that's why there are adults, of course, involved to help, you know, be like, OK, what happened? Let's figure out what's going on and like help you get back on track.

56:56 And she didn't, she's great Now she's ahead again. You know, it's so it wasn't the end of the world, but it was like really valuable for her to learn that early on. And hopefully it probably will happen again. Honestly, it probably will. She'll probably have some other. And but we kind of like want them to because when you learn that skill and then learn how to overcome it much earlier on, you're going to be so much more set up for life when inevitably challenges happen. Like we want it to be messy. We want it to be hard. And we want kids to have an opportunity to to fail safely and in a way that isn't going to ruin their life by any stretch of the imagination. Not even close. But we want them to have that experience to learn how to overcome it.

57:39 And it's just not a big deal, you know? Yeah, it's really cool concept. I, I didn't do a ton of work prior, like looking into it, but it's something that fascinates me. Like obviously with everything I do in my life, like education is a core, the tenet of what I do and I think it's fascinating. I think you're spot on about creating problem solvers and creating an environment where it's not this punitive environment and a subject matter, a perceived subject matter expert saying this is what you need to do. Check, check, check, check, check. Because like when I think about what I hear from all the way from employers to just like general conversation, even with other educators, they actually, it's a, it's a pretty common topic with other educators about like the student just wants to check the next box.

58:36 And like, my immediate thought is, of course they do. That's what we've had them do since they've been doing. We've had them. OK, here's. Your we told them that that's what success is. Right. And it's not at all. Not at. All it's not at all because I mean there's a million different things that you could give to that. I mean, I was very successful academically in my formative years, but I didn't learn any of the life things that were to make decisions appropriately. Like sure, I, I could get a 30 or whatever on an ACT score, but I, I, what do I get today? Like sitting in this chair right now, what do I get today, 10? I don't know like like I can't do calculus anymore or anything like that.

59:21 You also don't need to. Don't need to exactly. Was it worth it spending all that time learning calculus for what you wanted to do in life? I end up being a marketer. Arguably not, you know. Yeah, yeah, probably not. And it's where it's a fascinating question to me because there is no silver bullet answer. Like of course there's value in a diverse blend of sometimes a gentle nudge in a direction of something that you don't think you have an interest in. Of course there's a value in that. At the same time, there isn't a lot of value in OK, these are the check marks here.

1:00:02 If you do this, you move on to the next step. And I've got a colleague who often talks about how the education system has aligned somewhat with the gaming community and how the gaming community rewards you for getting that next level of coins or something like that. And you look at that on a grand scale and you create. An entire Society of folks that are looking for the next checkbox. And then what happens after that? It's like when you set goals in life, it's similar to that. Like you set this next grandiose goal that you have and you're like, oh, I just need to do this one. Especially when you're young.

1:00:43 I just need to do this one and life is going to be so good. And then you reach your goal and you're like the same person the next day when you wake up and you're like, well shit, that's not it either. Yeah. It's the same thing. So I don't know. I think it's, I like the thought of pushing the boundaries and thinking about how something can be looked at differently. You said six years in you are as you're 5th year we're wrapping. Up our. 5th year. OK, So five years in now, where are you at compared to when you started it as far as like your awareness of the situation, you're I guess perceived, you know, successes and failures, Where, where are you at with like five years in? What are you seeing and what's next? Well, when we started, we really only had like four or five year olds like so the literally the kids have just gotten older. So that probably has just been the biggest change is that with the aging up of our students, they're able to be much more independent and like we're able to do a lot more things with them because they can be much more responsible for, you know, just managing themselves.

1:01:59 So that's kind of been the biggest thing I would say just generally. And that's been really cool to watch. And my daughter is one of them. She's one of the older students at the school. There's a few other older kids, but like she's kind of on that. She was one of the first kids in that first year. So it's been fun to just see them become more and more independent with it and just like what they're able to do, you know, it's like I'm just always really impressed when I go. So we there it's also kind of project based. So every six weeks they have they have like a project that they're focusing on. And then at the end of that six weeks they do an exhibition. So like a lot of schools focus just on like sports and maybe music, but there's not like a lot of other places for kids to like showcase what they're working on or just like what their talents are, because not everybody is talented in music or sports. Like there's so much more to life. Most of us are not going to work in music and sports. And so we let you know, every, you know, quest is like a totally different thing that they're focusing on. Like they just did entomology.

1:02:51 So they, you know, did a whole thing about bugs. We, we have gardens and chickens. So we often are doing things with outdoors and farming and stuff like that. Like 1 quest, they all learned how to play chess and they had a chess tournament. Like we do all kinds of different things. You know, they, it's like all over the next one they're doing right now. We once a year we do like an entrepreneurial quest. So they have to do like a little this time the younger kids are doing lemonade stand and they're going to have a whole, you know, profit thing for that. And so it's, it's really neat to see how those have gotten better and better. And just like how more impressive they are, they they also present it. So like just they're all public speaking all the time and they're nine and they're like doing a really excellent job. You know, a lot of people are afraid to public speak as adults, but like, we're teaching that skills to these kids and some of them are more comfortable with others, but we're really trying to encourage kids to take that challenge on young. So they just like kind of get used to that. And it's like not a big deal.

1:03:40 It's just like part of what they do. So yeah, that's been interesting. The other thing that I have learned, and we we knew this going in and Laura Sandifer, the brilliant founder of the original Acton, she will say this too. It's like, I don't believe that there's an educational model that works for everybody. That's part of the problem with the system. It's kind of there really only is one option. And like we don't all there's way more than one option for like career choices. Like we all know that our natural abilities are not all defined by test scores. And that's, but that's like what we've chosen to like decide is, is success for kids, leaving out a whole lot of other kids, often focusing on some of the wrong things subject matter wise. We don't need to be memorizing things anymore. Like we should just never do that again. We all have Google in our pockets these days, like skip doing that.

1:04:28 We need to all have a foundation of literacy. We need to all have a foundation of math. But like, otherwise, we need to let kids start to develop their own personal skills. And like, I feel that's been a really interesting thing to see happen with these kids. But my point is that like, it doesn't work for everybody, I will say, and more importantly, it doesn't work for every family because not every family can accept the messiness and the challenge of this process. And that's OK. We're not for everybody. We can't, we like, we can't be. But I don't think that there is any school that is for everybody and will work for every child. So I think you got to find what works best for your kids like we all do.

1:05:08 And we are just happy to have a different option. And I, it's working great for my kids. I think it can work for a lot. It works great for a lot of kids that the traditional system doesn't work for a myriad of reasons, but like it, it just doesn't work for everyone. And we had to be OK with that being uncomfortable at times that we have to say like this isn't working and we've had to exit families or families have left because it's not working for them for whatever reason. And that that's hard. But that has been a very valuable lesson. Absolutely. Yeah. Two things. One, they're called quests. Yeah. That's awesome. And it's basically like they're projects, but yeah, we call them a quest. Yeah. So a lot of this is based on the hero's journey. So we we really talk about the hero's journey. So you're on your, your quest for finding your purpose in life, you know, find a calling, change the world.

1:05:54 That's what we always talk about. And that can be anything, you know, So we we talk about, you know that a lot. So we call it a quest. That I absolutely love that. That is really cool. Secondly, I see some pockets of K12 embracing this concept, which is cool because I completely agree. There's not A1 size fits all. This is how you're going to learn person, you know this is how you person are going to learn. I should say it's a that's a pipe dream. Like humans are so inherently different. When I think of the I mean the differences. It's what the contrast between my wife and I is a prime example of this.

1:06:39 We're two polar opposites. People learning wise how we digest things and rationalize and learn and grow couldn't be different. Both went through the same school system with different layers of success in different in different ways. And I hope that a path gets laid, continues to get laid, because like I said, I do see some K12 making some steps in this realm where our passionate educators can have a little bit more autonomy and free reins do it. Because I think a lot of times we see things get hamstrung by, oh, this needs to happen in this way, blah, blah, blah. And I think there's a lot of value in a quest, you know, to, for lack of a better term at the moment in quests are on my mind because I think that's awesome.

1:07:37 But there, there's a lot of value in that. There's a lot of value in choosing, you know, as a parent, at least until they age out. You know your child better than anybody and you know, you're in the place to say, Oh yeah, this will probably work. And I know that of course life isn't perfect like that. There's a lot of families that aren't in the position to make that decision. All of that stuff, totally. But at the same time, they the option is cool to see blossoming because when I refer back to like when when I was young and going through the K12 system, option rarely happened. Like even in I hear students like having the so now students that I get at the, you know, graduate above high school level, they talk about like, you know, electives they were given and stuff.

1:08:36 I didn't get an elective when I was in high school. I got told my schedule and then I marched to class and I went there. And then sure, I could pick if I wanted to do calculus or trigonometry, but I needed X amount of math credits, you know? Yeah. So I don't know. I think it's awesome. I think, I think I don't know any way we can look at learning holistically and differently is really good. And it's cool that it was seemingly motivated just from like you want from your own children to have an environment where they would succeed in and given they don't know anything different, but you would like they have they enjoy what they're doing. They. Love it, the kids. That is almost universal. I mean, I guess maybe I can think of one or two kids who haven't loved it.

1:09:18 But the kids at our school love school. They love being at school. They, like I told you, they get to kind of like vote on their own rewards and stuff. So often they'll vote for like forever. They wanted to have a sleepover at the school. They don't want to leave. And so we did do that once we camped out in the backyard. That was, I don't think we'll do that again. The parents, the kids loved it. The parents were like, Oh my gosh, I'm sleeping in this tent in the whatever. But the kids love school. They love being there. They, and that's the most important thing. If you can get your kid to love learning and love being in their learning environment, like that's the biggest struggle and like want to go to school every day and these kids love school. So how does it work with like I don't, I'm not familiar enough to know, but like how does it work with like the standard standardized schedule?

1:10:07 Like do they still have to take all those tests and stuff? So we do the Iowa basics every year. We just did them like 2 weeks ago. So we do that. But that's like, I mean there. So there are some things that we do that are, I guess traditional or or whatever, like to adhere to if, if a kid does transfer out or whatever, like we can send them records. We, you know, we take attendance, you know, just some of the foundations of education, I guess. But other than we do the Iowa basics once a year, but that's like about the only like real standardized thing that we do. OK, so then what about how does it work when they age to the point where they like start applying to colleges and stuff? How does that affect it? So we can translate their.

1:10:48 So everything is mastery based, which is not, it's not unique to ACT and there's a lot of schools that are moving to a mastery method. So there's a way to basically it's kind of great because you have a whole portfolio, everything that they've done instead of getting this like somewhat arbitrary grade in this like, OK, I took calc, I got AB. What does that mean exactly? Like what did they actually where ours is like totally broken down on like every single skill that they have learned and mastered. So we have like a whole portfolio that they can take, but then we can translate that into a traditional transcript. Got it. OK. And we have, I mean we've done we, we can send that those records off, but I think some of those transcripts are evolving too, especially like at the collegiate level people are they're sort of changing their application processes.

1:11:33 You know, for a while some schools weren't like really even taking SITS or I TS like that is that is going to look so different like if even I think 510 years from now. But basically what we are able to provide is like way more information than they need. But if we need to back it out and just like give them like the bare minimum, that's we can do that. Everything is going to look different five years from with AI like. It. Needs to AI is going to completely change everything we do in life like you mentioned earlier, like we have answers in our pocket. Why are we memorizing things absolutely not worth our time and AI is going to take another level of that of so I'm obviously a little bit biased towards marketing that's my area. And I hear one of the kind of themes that I really enjoy around marketing right now is that the the act or the strategy of marketing will remain unchanged even with AI, because you still need to know the things you were talking about earlier.

1:12:30 You need to know who your audience is and why they want to connect with you and all that stuff. But you know, the will somebody need to be able to be a really good at writing copy for social media posts? Yeah, I'll probably do that for you eventually, will it? You know, But you'll still need to humanize it, I think. And. I think there's still something to be said about like putting your voice to it. And AI cannot convey emotion the way that humans do. And even if it's not grammatically perfect or just, you know, as polished, like I think that there is like the rawness and the realness is I think going to still be important and have value, you know?

1:13:12 The the human aspect of it, I hope does you know at funny I for the podcast like 2 months ago. It's amazing the leaps how quickly happens. But like 2 months ago I put in one of the video making ones. I was like make an Instagram video that will go viral about Wisconsin going to Wisconsin and it completely missed the 8 ball. It was this it was this dude dressed in like like a German outfit with with beers and there was a fish fry and like completely missed the block on it. I'm going to Fast forward probably, you know, 12 months and do it again next year and see what the same thing does next year. But I guess to circle that into a thought or a point, the I think we need to somehow keep the human aspect because if we don't, that's when it gets scary. Like that's when you don't know when the lines are blurred between those two things, that gets scary. So within the next five years, it's going to be interesting to see how we come up with like, how is that labeled online? How is that labeled?

1:14:18 Does this say AI generated in big bold letters? And is it guaranteed? I mean, it's kind of the same with like social media and just how filtered and fake everything is on there and like the damage that is being done by being fed stuff that's not really real. And your brain starts to like lose its ability to discern the difference. And I agree, it's really scary. And again, one of the reasons why I think that music and the arts in the way that frankly, I'm doing them are always going to have a place because like, you can't fake that. Like you can't fake people up on stage performing and like connecting with like live people in a live space. But there's so much now that you can do, you know, on the computer that is, it's hard to tell sometimes what's real and what's not.

1:15:04 I was just at an acting conference and they were talking about, you know, everybody now is writing, using AI to write their papers, you know, or using ChatGPT and stuff. And now, like the professors are like using it to grade. And it's just like, Oh my gosh, like, you know, I went through, you know, 2 1/2 rounds of master's degree. You know, it's like I wrote so many papers. I can't even imagine. Like you are so careful not to plagiarize. Like I can't even fathom like just plugging it into ChatGPT and like using it like that. It didn't exist. But I just it seems so I mean wrong or just yeah. It's unnatural. Certainly. It's unnatural. Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's so. Unethical in a lot of ways, but but at the same time, a lot of people are using it.

1:15:47 And I mean, I'm just saying that all the usage is unethical, but there's like so much of it that just feels wrong. Oh no. See, that's such an interesting topic though, because like, rewind 25 years and there were probably people sitting across the table like this saying you can just Google everything and you don't have to go to an encyclopedia. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, You know, it's, it's one of those things that it's like Pandora's box. It's it's open, it's available, it's going to change society and. It's happening. You can't stop it. It's going to be about how we hang on for the ride. So here's a great example of this. When I, I had to, in, in the job interview process, I had to put together how I would hypothetically market a new restaurant relevant to you. How would I market a new restaurant in a community? And throughout this process, I did it, you know, I, I rocked this whole thing.

1:16:44 I gave a presentation about that I worked on for 10 hours about every step I would take to market a new restaurant, went through the interview, got the job and everything. And then one of my colleagues that would would be my colleague in the new role had it was fledgling right when AI was getting started and she had put it into AI like 5 minutes. It spit out the entire thing that I did of a lifetime of work. But being a marketer, like the knowledge was in my head in 5 minutes. It was like, this is the systematic process. It was everything I did. It's crazy. And that was, and that was almost three years ago now. And AI is in a completely different place now.

1:17:25 So it's going to be weird to see and evolve, and specifically with education. That's where I'm thinking of it feeling so wrong and and you're right. I mean, it's going to, it's happening. It's and it's going to be used. So I guess now we just have to figure out how it can be used in a way that is still, it's not just making kids do no work. They have to. The work is gonna change, I guess. So maybe that's where it needs to. We need to figure out the space for that. I don't have an answer for that, but it just it's I. Don't think anybody does the cool thing. The cool thing about it though is that building on the concepts that you were talking about, it takes a curious problem solver to use AI correctly to get to the end goal.

1:18:07 Because I mean a good example, I tried saving a bunch of time with my podcast and I bought this like membership thing to a tool that cuts AI shorts for social media out of it. I still end up redoing them all anyway because it's like it doesn't have the human touch you were talking about. And it might get there, probably will get there, but then what will the next hurdle be that I have to overcome? Because if I didn't diagnose that in the beginning and I just started posting trash, then it doesn't work, you know? So like the curious problem solver has to navigate with it as opposed to using it. You know what I mean?

1:18:48 That's a weird way to put it, but I could talk about that all day. That's why I saved it to the end of the episode, because I knew I knew myself personally. We would get down the rabbit hole of education, but what a cool endeavor to just be comfortable going again, sewing upstream, you know? I love being outside the box and I think that is a challenge we can just like pose to everybody. It's like being getting comfortable with being uncomfortable, not knowing the answer, just figuring things out. And if we can teach that to young people, I think that ultimately is gonna what's gonna help serve them in the future of our very rapidly changing world. Yeah, definitely like leaving being a nurse and buying a business. It's.

1:19:30 Uncomfortable. But if you can get on, if you know, you hear lots of people say that you can get comfortable with the discomfort, that is a really valuable skill. Absolutely. Yeah, that's a great way. That's a great point to end it on. Thanks for coming in. I appreciate chatting with you, hearing some of your story. Good luck with all the different things you have going on. Take care. Thank. You.