00:01 - Janae Daniels (Host)

Hello, my friends, and welcome back Today. I am very excited and honored to welcome Dr Todd Rose. Todd is a former Harvard professor. He's the author of several groundbreaking books, including the End of Average, dark Horse, collective Illusions and Square Peg. He's the co-founder of Populous, a think tank uncovering what Americans truly believe versus what we assume others believe. What makes Todd's perspective so powerful is that his ideas aren't just theory he's actually lived it. He went from dropping out of high school with a 0.9 GPA to earning his PhD at Harvard and reshaping how we think about education, individuality and success. Now his work challenges us to move away from averages and conformity and towards helping every learner discover their unique path, and today we're going to dive into how families, especially those homeschooling or supporting young adults, can help their children uncover passions, find their fit and design lives that are both fulfilling and impactful. Todd, thank you so, so much for coming on.

01:07 - Dr. Todd Rose (Host)

Thanks for having me.

01:08 - Janae Daniels (Host)

So I heard you first on Mike Rose podcast and I was working out and it popped up in my feed and I started listening. I'm like, oh my gosh, I need to know this guy. And then I immediately ordered or bought on Audible your book Dark Horse and listened to it and just I was cheering in the car as I would drive and hear you talk about all these different people and their experiences taking untraditional paths and I'm like I need to have him on my podcast. So, thank you for coming on today.

01:43 - Dr. Todd Rose (Host)

It really is great to be here.

01:45 - Janae Daniels (Host)

So can you share with the listeners your personal experience, because you didn't take a traditional path exactly?

01:54 - Dr. Todd Rose (Host)

Yeah, really yeah, Not not even close, Right. So, yeah, my journey, as you sort of mentioned, like so I grew up in rural America and you know, like school didn't really work and you know it wasn't that there were like bad people or whatever, it just it just like my individuality, it just it just didn't fit and in the place I was in there was a really prized conformity and that was never going to work for me and it culminated, as you mentioned, and so I I like to say I dropped out, but in reality, like they kicked me out because I couldn't graduate like with a 0.9 GPA, which I actually think you have to work really hard to do that badly, I didn't even get socially promoted Right. And and around the same time, my girlfriend at the time, who was my wife for 29 years, we found out she was pregnant. So I'm out of high school, no degree. Now I'm going to get married, have a child on the way, Fast forward just a couple of years.

03:04

We've got two kids, I'm working my way through a string of minimum wage jobs the kind of jobs you get without a high school diploma, and we're on welfare, and it's just really rock bottom and for me, the journey out of that started with like, okay, I got to do right by my kids, Like this isn't going to work, and I ended up getting a GED and then enrolling at a local university.

03:35

It was a open enrollment commuter school, Weber State University, and it was like my family cobbled together, we had just enough money to pay for one year. It was not very expensive back then, it was like $800 a term, but it was still more than we had and it was like you'll figure out a way or it's back to the jobs I had. And so I was going to school at night, still working, and the only thing I knew was that whatever I'd tried before didn't work. And so, rather than just take the same old advice, like literally the first time I met with a counselor, they said well, you take remedial English and you got to take remedial math. You failed algebra three times in school and you got to take remedial math. You failed algebra three times in school. But even I knew then that those remedial classes were like the. Those weren't the best teachers, right? People weren't lining up to teach remedial classes. And I just felt like you know, my dad gave me good advice. He said you don't have study skills.

04:38

You better pick stuff that you're really passionate about so you can stick with it until you acquire those skills you're really passionate about. So you can stick with it until you acquire those skills. So I did that and, um, you know, slowly, out of desperation, started to. Um, you know, first class I took, I actually did okay and pretty good and I was like, well, maybe that was just an easy class. Um, kept doing that, kept doing that. Um, and you know I was, I was starting to make choices based on what I knew about myself, and what's really funny is it was working. But you know, I was, I was starting to make choices based on what I knew about myself, and what's really funny is it was working. But I thought that there was still something wrong with me. Like everybody else could succeed by doing the sort of one size fits all approach, but I just needed to do something different, and so I didn't think it was good, I thought it was bad, but whatever I, I needed to change my life. Um, it really culminated for me. Um, you know I was sitting, it was like about two years in, things were going pretty well actually, and I was like, wow, okay, maybe, um, maybe, maybe this could be for me, maybe I'm not dumb right, which is kind of what I had thought about myself for a long time.

05:45

And I was sitting in a big auditorium class, a history class, with my buddy Steve, and it was not the kind of class that would be good for me a big lecture hall but I couldn't get out of it. I had to take this class and I was complaining to him about it and he said, oh listen, nothing, this is nothing compared to what I've got myself into in the honors program. And he starts to describe the honors program, which I had no idea what that was. I thought just same classes, more work, I don't know. And he was like no, no, no, no, no, no. He's like there's no big lecture halls, it's only 12 person classes, there are no tests, you just write essays. And so that he said I don't think there are right answers, All we do is debate. And I was like wait, wait, wait, hold on. Like that they didn't see real to me, like how could that possibly be true, that that some education could be like that? So I literally, like the second class ended, I bolted up the hill.

06:45

The honors program had its own floor in the library at the top of the hill. I went right there. I, uh, I went in, I saw the, the, the secretary woman named Marilyn Diamond Um, and I said I want to be in the honors program and she said, great, let's get you in to see the director. And I went in. He was really excited about the program he was building and he said, hey, let's, let's just get you in the system. Just a few questions for you. We were asking, and we get to the. He said, well, how are you doing here at school? And I said great. And he goes. So what about in high school? He's like what was your high school GPA? And I said there's no kidding. I said 0.9. And he he, no kidding. Said what 0.9? Like like I left out the most important part, right? And so then it dawns on me that I said 0.9. And I just knew I was like oh, I wanted to crawl in a hole.

07:39

Like and he goes hey, I'm sorry that you, you know you can't be in the honors program, and he was nice about it. But I was mortified, like I just impulsively rushed in there without thinking about it, so I grabbed all my stuff as fast as possible. I just wanted to get out of there and as I'm leaving, marilyn Diamond's desk is just right outside the door and I'm walking out and she reached out and she grabbed my arm and she said hey, I overheard the conversation. If you want this, don't take no for an answer. And I was like what do you mean? She said just sit on the couch and don't leave until he changes his mind. And it never occurred to me that you could do that right, that you could just say no, I hear you, but no, thank you, I choose to not listen, I'm going to. So I did that.

08:27

And he was also a professor. So he comes out a few minutes later to go teach a class and he's like what are you doing? I said I want to be in the honors program and he said yeah, you can't, so I stayed there. He comes back a couple hours later it felt like eternity and he goes into his office A few minutes later he sticks his head. I said, hey, come here. So I went back in. He said listen, why do you want to be in the honors program? Because on paper it doesn't make any sense. And he's like I don't get it past. May not be a good, may not be a good indicator, but I learned a lot about myself and I, what I thought it took for me to be successful, and I felt like the honors program really fit that bill. And, to his credit, he said okay, look, I can't just let you in, but I can I do have the ability to give you like provisional status. And so he said I'll let you take one class and if you do well, I'll let you take another and we'll go from there. So I did that and I picked and it turned out to be just, I mean, perfect fit for me and, you know, flash forward. I ended up graduating from Weber State with a 3.97 GPA in psychology and pre-med honor student of the year and accepted Harvard for my doctorate. Pre-med honor student of the year and accepted Harvard for my doctorate.

09:49

And here's what I take from that story, a couple of things that would inform everything I do professionally now. First is look, there is an unbelievable importance of fit to success, and we're all taught that there's some generic like there's a general IQ and some people are just smarter than us. It's just nonsense. It's all about understanding your own individuality and then finding environments that are really good fits to that, and I can tell you, having been on both sides of that, when it didn't fit, it just is awful, and there's no way a kid is going to go through that and fail and fail and fail and not internalize that. This is just about them, right? I'm just dumb. It never occurred to me that the system might be the problem, or at least part of the problem, so that fit being profoundly important, and when you get that fit, it's remarkable. So you still got to work, but it's remarkable how easy it is, relatively speaking. The other thing, though, is it really taught me and this has been the story of my life that you know, I worked really hard, really hard, and I'm proud of the effort I've put into both getting out of the hole I dug myself into and where I am today. But you know, the Marilyn Diamond story taught me something important about the role of other people in our lives, and here's what's really funny about that. Like she literally changed my life. I don't even want to think about what my life would be like had she not just reached out and grabbed my arm and gave me that piece of advice. Here's what's funny A few years back, weber State asked me to come back, gave me an award, you know, and the stuff, and I thought you know it turns out, when I was there, marilyn Diamond was retiring and she was in the audience.

11:39

I thought what a great opportunity to share with everybody some version of the story I just told you and the dean who's kind of emceeing the thing, after I said it he said wow, what an incredible story about the way Weber State community supports students. He said, marilyn, why don't you come up here and say a few words? So she comes up and she's, you know, she gives me a hug and then she, she, she's a lot shorter than I am she adjusts the mic down and she says well, thank you for those kind words. But I don't remember that and I thought at first she thought I was making it up Like it didn't happen. But that wasn't the case.

12:21

It turns out everybody had a Marilyn diamond story, like she. Just that was the way she showed up and what's so incredible about it is and I think it's a lesson for all of us Like we all got to put the work in, but we need each other and we can support each other. And what's remarkable is, for me, what she did changed my life. For her it was so inconsequential she didn't even remember it. And I think when we think about how we show up for other people, we often think it takes like a big heavy lift. I mean, sometimes it does. But I think you'll be surprised how easy it is to be the Marilyn Diamond in someone else's life. The small things we do at the right time can have all make all the difference in the world.

13:06 - Janae Daniels (Host)

Oh, I love that Well, and I think it. I love how you bring up that that, like, the community around us matters and that I and I love that that there's such a simple thing that she did that just a little bit of encouragement changed your whole trajectory of your life. That is. It's a that's remarkable. Thank you for sharing. Um. So I was first introduced Um so when I started listening to dark horse. You, you talk about micro motives and and the premise of of dark horse is, for those that are that are listening, is that there's unconventional ways um to to find out what our passions are and to move into those, to those roles. Um, you talk a lot about standardization, um versus, like the dark horse mindset, the standardized mindset versus the dark horse mindset. Can you describe the standardized mindset and then and talk a little?

14:05

bit about the dark horse mindset.

14:07 - Dr. Todd Rose (Host)

And, if you don't mind, can I step back and give a little context? Yes, of all the books I've written, that was the least expected, so it came about. You know, I had written before the end of average, which you mentioned, which was talking about the scientific work that I was a part of and I was seeing at Harvard, this revolution in science where we were. We used to think you could use aggregate data to and we still do it, like you'll just. Whenever you see a study published, it's like we found that this is true and it's always based on averages of people in the study and we no one ever thought averages were perfect, but we thought it covered most people and what we were finding over and over again was this just wasn't true and in a lot of cases, the average results literally apply to nobody, and I felt like I felt like this is something that people should know, and so I had written the End of Average and it luckily became like a bestseller internationally and in the States, and it was just surprising and with that, my dean at the time was like hey, we're trying to raise money in a capital campaign and we're really excited to feature you. He's like what's the next project that you want to do. And he's like I've got a little extra money. I just want, like, what do you want to do?

15:27

And so, when I would, on an end of average, I had profiled some companies that I thought had done a great job dealing with individuality rather than just standardization Places like Costco, zoho, a few other places, and along the way I had met employees there that were doing remarkable things. But it had these really unconventional paths to getting there, and in the back of my mind I thought, okay, I know why this works really well in terms of the fit that right now, but I have no idea how you got here. How did you, how did you deviate from the sort of one size fits all path and not have that be, just follow your bliss off a cliff? And um, and so I was always curious about it and I thought, oh, I'm sure somebody's thought about it, I'm sure somebody's studied this. I couldn't find anything. And so I told my dad I said, okay, you know what? Cause no one was ever gonna give me money to do that, like it was not something. And I said, okay, I want to, I want to study these people.

16:24

So I started this with my colleague, a dark horse project, and it was the first time I'm I'm a pretty big quantitative person in terms of researcher, first time I'd ever done qualitative research, cause I really didn't have any good hypothesis. I was like I don't know, um. And so turns out, after interviewing hundreds and hundreds of people across all walks of life who had been wildly successful by society standards but had these unconventional paths, it turns out you can learn a lot by just listening to people. Yeah, who would have thought right? And what was so interesting is I went in thinking they were going to tell me about, like, how they mastered things, the secrets of that. And right off the bat they wanted to talk about how they figured out what they cared about, how they discovered their passions, their motives, how they turn that into. And they started using words like fulfillment. And I was like, oh, what am I supposed to do with that? That was a squishy thing, like that's not hard science, it doesn't feel like like, tell me how you mastered this topic, right? Um? But you know, they keep saying it.

17:31

And so then we shifted the interview protocol and said, okay, they kept saying that, like they, they focused on personal fulfillment. And the success followed, the excellence followed. I said, okay, maybe, or maybe that's like retrospectively, like you know, like we all update the stories of our lives to kind of fit where we ended up. So we started digging into like okay, well, how did you do that? And what was really shocking to me is that a handful of things emerged that they just knew, like intuitively, that allowed this sort of following their own path to not be a disaster but to be an incredibly reliable path to excellence. And you know, what struck me is like across the board they were successful, but just how happy they were, like how much joy they had in life.

18:23

And you know, look, we all know people who are wildly successful by society standards and absolutely miserable, and I don't want to be that. So I was like okay, and you know, what's funny is is I always thought dark horses would be a bit like me, right, you kind of screwed up for a while and then you didn't you're not a screw up anymore and it turned out that was only about half of them. The other half were people who had actually followed the standardized path, the one size fits all path, done remarkably well in life. And then they wake up one day and they're like I am not happy. And they make these pivots into things that are just like how did you go from A to B? That just doesn't make any sense. And then they crush it there too.

19:04

And I was like you know, I would have said up until then when people would ask me like okay, you've succeeded in unconventional ways, should people follow your example? And I was like I don't know, man, like it seemed kind of pretty idiosyncratic, like maybe or maybe I just got lucky, I don't know. But after studying all these dark horses, I felt very confident no, this is very, very reliable as a way to actually achieve at high levels, be happy. And so I felt like, okay, this is worth writing about, because it's not just these dark horses, they're the canary in the coal, mine right. They're the people that are telling us this thing doesn't really work, that this rat race, we're all in right, that just the whole. And so I felt like, okay, this is worth telling.

19:55

And it kind of did boil down to like, when we think about the way our society is structured now and it's gone back about a hundred years since we've industrialized our society and standardized everything, the standardization covenant is sort of like hey look, the goal is, we'll give everyone the same experience. Your job is to be to do the same things as everyone else, but be better at it. Right. Take the same classes, get better grades, take the same tests, score higher on that bell curve. Right, Pursue the same. Like there's this narrow sort of ladder that's like. This is what success is, and anything short of that. You're going to feel a little bit like a failure. And the flip side of this is it just turns out not only is that not even true, it doesn't even work for most people. We end up just playing this game and we're not very happy.

20:44

And I think we're reaching a point right now in society, especially with the coming AI and what's going to happen to white-collar jobs not just the blue-collar jobs from the industrial revolution is that you know what that path, that standardization path, doesn't really work anymore, even if it did before. It's not a reliable path to much of anything. And these days your best bet, or your kid's best bet, to be truly prepared for modern society is not to go along with the one size fits all thing and and be sort of mediocre at everything. It is to figure out who you are. Figure out what you are truly passionate about, build the skills to turn that passion into a contribution that adds value to other people's lives. Like it's. It's not rocket science, but we're just not used to it, right we're. We're so used to this other thing, and so I felt like dark horse would be my contribution to say, hey, there is a better way.

21:38

And it's not just my personal story. I tried to stay away from that. You know, don't just trust me. Look at all these people and I will say, just real quick, it's hard to let go of what you think society expects, and it feels scary, it feels like you're going into the unknown and you could. What if I ruin my life? What if I ruin my kid's life by teaching this? What if I? You know, I think the same way when you think about do you leave the standardized education system. Well, what if I'm the weird oddball? And what if, like? So what was so funny is I was on the media tour for Dark Horse and it had become a bestseller too, and so I'm traveling a lot and I get a text. I think it was in Los Angeles.

22:35

And I get a text from my youngest son, who was in college at the time, and he said when you get home, we need to talk. And I was like uh-oh. I was like uh-oh, was like, oh, who's pregnant? Right, that's kind of what I was saying. But uh, uh. So I get home and he's got a copy of dark horse. It's dog-eared, it's marked up to no end, and he sits down. He said, um, I need to make a change. And he's laying out he had gone through college.

22:55

He was always someone who at first, despite what I do for a living, he was always like the kid that wanted to please the teacher, got good grades, did, and he was about to get his degree in mechanical engineering and he said I'm good at this, but I don't love it, and I'm I. I kept waiting for it to become practical, but it just became more and more abstract and he felt he's like but you paid for college and he's like, I felt like I had to just do it. I'm like that is the last thing I would want, like so. But what was funny is the first thing that went through my mind, just to be fair, was no, no, no, no, no. I meant this for other people.

23:32 - Janae Daniels (Host)

Not for us.

23:36 - Dr. Todd Rose (Host)

Just get your degree. Degree, go, get a job, you'll love it, you'll be fine, you know, like. So you have, like. I could feel that fear, even as the person who wrote the book, um, but we sat down and we used that to make a plan, and what was been so remarkable is to watch him blossom, um, and be able to do stuff right now that he loves. That would not have been the kind of choices he would have made if he would have felt compelled to stick to the script, um, and so you know, I think it's. I'm proud of that book. I think it's even more relevant now, as these standardized systems don't serve us very well anymore and as a society, we are looking around asking really fundamental questions about what comes next and how we live good lives ourselves and together.

24:18 - Janae Daniels (Host)

I love that, but I think it's interesting. As I was reading it I thought of even I went through the public school system, I did hiring for 20 years and then was like I need to homeschool my kids and then ultimately podcast Who'd have thought which?

24:35

I love and I didn't feel fulfilled in hiring and in the homeschooling world. There's all of these different types and philosophies for homeschooling, the strictest being the school at home method, where you've got, you know, you take the standardized tests and you take tests and you follow a curriculum to, and then the next is the classical, which you know has its own philosophy. And then the very bottom of the barrel are the unschoolers that are like children, need to discover their passions, and then we need to help them pursue those passions. And ultimately, after we started homeschooling for about a year, year and a half, we moved to an unschooling model and even though that's what, what we do with my kids, and okay, what, what are, let's figure out the passions and and and shift as we need to.

25:25

Um, I still panic at times as as parents are like but what do you mean? Your teenager has never taken a biology class. They're not really interested in biology. They really like you know this or they like that. But I still panic and go oh my gosh, what if I'm going to fail them? Maybe you should take a biology class, not usually last about 10 minutes and then we go back. But but I think it's very ingrained at us. The standardization has been so ingrained in us that it's it's sometimes hard to remove those shackles from our brains going no, there is and could be a better way.

26:02 - Dr. Todd Rose (Host)

It is and it's, you know, like I wrote that in End of Average, kind of told the story of how our society became standardized and all of us have lived for generations through this and so we just think this is how it is. But it's not. It was a human invention by a couple of guys solving a different problem. And look, it bought us something for sure, right, but we're so far past the benefits and we're all the way into nothing but almost pure downside place you're at right now, which is when you try to do something unconventional even when you privately know this feels right to you. I feel like there's like two big hurdles that everybody faces right. The first is we're social creatures and we don't really like going against our groups.

26:50 - Janae Daniels (Host)

We don't right. That's true, that's true.

26:52 - Dr. Todd Rose (Host)

It's actually from a survival standpoint, you're way better to be with your group, not against it, and so the thought that I might do something and everybody in my neighborhood or at my church or whatever, is like what are you doing Right? Are you sure you're not going to make your kid weird or it's going to ruin them and they're not going to be prepared? And so that takes a lot and that's, I think, historically with like the homeschool movement which I don't think is true anymore there was just a certain kind of right. The stereotype was like there are these religious people who don't like that, whatever it's like, so they're going to go out. But I can tell you we've spent like what we're most famous for now at Populous. I think that we spun out of Harvard into its own thing.

27:33

Is this private opinion research. So we have methodologies Like no one's telling the truth about what they think. Right now Everybody feels like they can't speak up and sometimes they'll outright lie just to be with what they think their group is like. But what we kept finding is that there's this concept called the collective illusion, where we are actually misreading our groups pretty systematically. So there's unbelievable private agreement in America across almost everything that matters. Like it's pretty shocking. The problem is is we don't believe that's true. We think that most, so I'll give you a concrete example, like I'll give you a political one that turned out, but then we'll go to some more important things. Do you remember the whole defund the police movement? So yeah, so during the height of that, uh, public opinion said that registered Democrats, that two thirds of them agreed with that right, that they, they think we should defund police. Our private opinion methods found it was 9%.

28:37 - Janae Daniels (Host)

That's quite a difference.

28:38 - Dr. Todd Rose (Host)

Yes, they believed that this is what most Democrats believe, so they were saying what they thought they had to say. Now, of course, that leads to really bad policies that even those same folks that thought it was a good idea are now reversing in city after city as crime skyrockets. And you know, we actually spent I'm rabidly politically independent like proudly that. So look, I'll work with anyone who wants to make our country better. That's great.

29:06

I got called into the Biden White House to spend multiple sessions with Biden and his team because they were about to give the State of the Union address and they were debating this issue and they'd seen some of our work.

29:16

And they were about to give the State of the Union address and they were debating this issue and they'd seen some of our work and they were like, no, we're pretty sure our people believe in defunding the police. We convinced them that this wasn't true. So we got one line in the State of the Union address a few years back where he said it's not defund the police, it's fund the police and it was like but what's funny is in the. I care a lot about this because it's like if we can't express ourselves, so if we live in a society where I can't even tell you what I think, what are the odds that I'll make choices that I think you disagree with? And there are no bigger collective illusions, which is just to define it. It's basically a phenomenon where most people in a group go along with something they don't privately agree with because they mistakenly think that their group actually agrees with it.

30:02

Even though nobody agrees with it, even though almost no one really does, and it's really funny. That phenomenon has been around for a while, but it is like now on steroids because of social media. And here's how it works. Collective illusions happen because your brain has two really weird quirks. One, as we've talked about people prefer to be with their group, not against their group. But here's the quirk the way your brain decides what your group believes. What is group consensus is such a shortcut that is almost funny. Your brain assumes the loudest voices repeated the most are the majority.

30:42

I can see that so loud voices, right, and so that's true in general. But now you put it into a social media context. So, for example, on what was Twitter, 80% of all content is generated by only 10% of the users. So you think you're hearing from a lot of people. You're hearing from a really small percentage, and it turns out that 10% not remotely representative of the American public. They are fringe on almost every social issue. So you can see the problem. If I'm on social media all the time and I, like only 10 of the public believes something, but I think it's 80 then unless I'm willing to go against my group, I'm going to end up self-silencing, just say nothing or I might lie to belong. And this is what we're seeing today.

31:31

Our data shows that almost two-thirds of amer Americans right now are self-silencing, and so it creates false polarization, distrust, resentment, and so this is the stuff we care a lot about. The reason I say all that is the biggest collective illusions we've ever found. Right now are all about education, and we can dig into this. So so we first found. So, for example, we were the first to predict publicly the collapse of college as the goal of K-12. We were seeing it in the data, because private opinion changes before public opinion does. You know people, if I can get you to tell me the truth, you'll tell me what you really think. You won't say it out loud until you feel like it's safe to say it out loud. And so we first saw the collapse of college as the goal. People were like this doesn't make any sense. I just want my kid to thrive and I want lots of opportunities. And people were like that's not true. This is like the bedrock of the American dream. Well, here we are right. Second, and I think most important and probably relevant to our conversation today, is we have the largest private opinion study ever on K-12 and what the American public wants it to be, and not just like one-off questions. We do these massive trade-offs because, think about it, like school can't be everything right. It's limited time, limited money. What do you want to prioritize? And here's what's remarkable and the research is all free to download on our website, so you can see it we studied this, these trade offs, privately before the pandemic started, through the pandemic and afterwards, so like a five year sort of thinking about this.

33:09

What is remarkable is in private, across every single demographic, people are absolutely fed up with the standardized system. They don't want it. They want more individualization. They believe their kids have unique gifts and that the purpose of education should be to help discover that, cultivate it and help them become productive, contributing members of society. Right, but when you ask them, what do you think most people would say? You get a completely different picture. They think most people are okay with the system as it is and so into that collective illusion. If you're a parent right now, you're like I really don't like what's going on, but I think everybody else around me is okay with it Plenty of people will not make a different choice just because they don't want to go against the group. So I think it's first of all important to realize this is a collective illusion and, by the way, you can just see the mass exodus from our current government-run, government-regulated public education system is proof already right In every state where they've offered ESAs and stuff like that.

34:17

I think I just read in the New York Times just had a thing saying oh, we have a crisis. Basically, like people, when given a choice, are leaving. Well, yeah, that should tell you something, right? And so what you see is what was remarkable too is we studied homeschool parents and parents in the system, and then the general public, and what was remarkable to me is the people who had already put their kids in homeschool. Their concerns about what they didn't like about the system, their priorities for their kids were literally the exact same as the parents whose kids were still in the system. It's just they had made the decision right.

34:53

So it's not like homeschool parents are some weird breed, that's just different. It's like no, they have the courage to make that decision. And I see our job now is to lower the cost of courage for people to make a choice that they believe is in the best interest of their child. And so I think the two problems is one, the collective illusion, right. So the more that you realize actually are in the majority in your view is really important. So we create social proof for that like help people see it. The second thing is is the? It's like a connect the dots problem. It's like, even if I do want something different, quite often they don't really know if it's an alternative school, they don't quite know what to look for. But with homeschool it's like what? What would I do?

35:35 - Janae Daniels (Host)

Like how do I do it Like, how do I do it Right?

35:39 - Dr. Todd Rose (Host)

And so this is where you come in right, like it's sort of like how do I do it and so, and that fear rightly. No one wants to harm their kid, no one wants to diminish their possibilities in life, and so that can lead us to a place of just paralysis where we will put up with stuff that's mediocre at best and harmful at worst. But it doesn't have to be that way. And I'll say this I am the biggest advocate for public education, but I think we've confused public education with public schools. I agree, right.

36:11

Public education is a commitment that every child in this country deserves a high quality education that prepares them to live a good life and be a good member of society. That does not mean that they have to go to government run, government regulated schools for that to happen. And when you look at something like end of average, which shows this like human individuality is the rule, not the exception, it's not terribly surprising that what will be a high quality education for me would not necessarily be the same for you. So we've got unique kids, unique families, unique communities, and so to me, what we're seeing here with the homeschool movement and the alternative school movement stuff is not something seeking to destroy public education, but to actually reinvent it and reinvigorate that commitment.

37:00 - Janae Daniels (Host)

And I would agree because I see people want a shift and they want something different, and I hear it from my public school friends, I hear it from the homeschool friends. Even the ones who are like that want to move more into like an unschooling model, but they're scared because of what they've seen on social media, you know. But I think that collective illusion is very like, it's very real. Especially I was chuckling, as you're talking about the loudest voices are often the ones that are heard. I noticed on homeschooling social media platforms.

37:31

When people post stuff, it's always the single men with cats who have the strongest opinions. I know because I look up their profiles. I'm like, oh no, children, 10 cats. Okay, you live in your mom's basement, but it's always the same guys over and over and over again on all of on all the platforms making the comments. And then people go. I mean, I did it. At the beginning I was like, oh my gosh, I really am going to screw up my kids because you know this guy and all these people say so and it's all the same people.

38:03 - Dr. Todd Rose (Host)

It's all the same people. And what's even worse is we do a lot of work on this on the way that, um, collective illusions are generated because they're a form of manipulation, right, um, and propaganda, and what happened is we're not the first to find this, but we're part of trying to solve the problem is the sheer amount of bots on these platforms. So about a third of all your interactions on social media, you'll think, are with human beings. They're with bots and with AI bots, they're getting very sophisticated, so it turns out. So it turns out. It is very easy for me to generate what you believe is consensus, just using a few authentic voices and bots to amplify it.

38:48

We actually got pulled into this work around rising anti-Semitism in America which was shocking to me, to be honest in America, which was shocking to me, to be honest. And it turns out that we've uncovered bot armies from Iran, russia, china, literally intentionally manufacturing this perception that this is what young, pretty young people, this is what Gen Z believes. It's not true, but then people are like I guess this is what we believe. We don't like Jews, and now we're pouring out. It's just like insane that this is going on, and so if we can do it. With something as big as that, it's very easy to manipulate your perception of, hey look, we're all okay with this and you're sort of like you're going to ruin public education, you're trying to destroy da-da-da-da-da and you're like no, I'm just trying to make sure my kid has a decent shot at a good life. And you know, what's been remarkable to me is you know, we saw this coming and we've been working with a lot of partners saying, like, you've got this private shift across demographics. If we don't do something to provide solutions to break the illusions, provide solutions for people to actually make better choices, it's not going to be that public schools survive, it's that there will be an absolute collapse in the trust and commitment to public education. Like people are not going to put up with this for much longer. And so if you just care about public education, this is what we have to do.

40:13

And I'll tell you, like I'm on the board of an organization called Vela, which has been so remarkable See, all it does is it's about out of system, like whether it's homeschool, micro schools, whatever, just where the problem was. Like some people don't have even enough money to just start it like a small amount, right. So it provides rapid grants to people who want to start a homeschool or a micro school. It provides a community and support. It has been unbelievable, like thousands upon thousands of people, and it's not like it's like a nurse in Wichita or this. It's like moms and dads who are just like wait, really I could do this. And you provide them, you know, a little bit of seed capital when they need it. A lot of support community and as you know, and little bit of seed capital when they need it. A lot of support community and as you know. And then all of a sudden it's like wow, my kid's thriving.

41:06 - Janae Daniels (Host)

You know what I mean.

41:07 - Dr. Todd Rose (Host)

It's like yeah, yeah, and, and look I, I, I would say, like most people who end up homeschooling, it's like, it's not, like that was your first choice.

41:16 - Janae Daniels (Host)

Right, my kids went to public school.

41:18 - Dr. Todd Rose (Host)

Yes. So I went to public schools my entire, like you know, until they kicked me out. But it's like, listen, that system is no longer serving the American public. It serves itself. It does not. It is so out of touch with what people want it to be that it's. We're just frustrated and fed up.

41:42

And I'm telling you, if the system literally delivered what we wanted, I'll bet you most people would be like fine, fine, but it's so unacceptable for the powers that be to preserve their livelihoods or their ideology to sacrifice our children on that altar, right To basically say like, okay, this isn't better for your kid, but suck it up, keep sending them. And I can tell you personally, like you know, one of the things that frustrates about education like in medicine, we don't just study the effect, we study side effects too. It's not enough If something does something good, if it causes all kinds of side effects that are bad, well, you don't, you don't, that drug doesn't ever get to the market, right? Right, we never study side effects in education, right? And I think that you know we, we get obsessed about getting better scores on standardized tests, whatever, fine, but at what cost?

42:43
And I believe we destroy kids, their curiosity, their sense of self, their self-worth, and and we discard that as if that's an okay cost to preserving the system and it's just unacceptable. Like having lived through that and having known what it feels like to internalize a view of yourself as worthless and dumb and to realize that that wasn't true. Like I just it breaks my heart to think that there are children today who have that same experience and may not be as lucky as I am and so I have. I have no patience for people who think well too bad, you got to leave your kid there. No, we don't, and we know way too much to be doing so little right now.

43:29 - Janae Daniels (Host)

Well, and I think you bring up an interesting point about the side effects, because I look at my own, now 23 year old son, who went through the public school system and he is brilliant, but he believed and we were talking about this a couple of years ago. He was like mom. I believe that I was stupid because I have ADHD, because I had to go on medication, because I had a hard time turning in my assignments, because I felt like the assignments were boring. There must be something wrong with me.

43:55

I have a friend whose daughter graduated, but I remember all through school. I'm like you may want to consider homeschooling. She's like no, we have to public school, cause that's the best education you know, just regurgitating. Everything that she believed was was what the norm had told her. But yet her daughter was on anxiety medication, would cry every day for hours and hours. Some days she couldn't go to school the next day because she'd have such horrific stomach aches.

44:20

They were worried about her mental health, but they continued to sacrifice her on the altar of the public school system. That oh, no, no, no. This is the way education is supposed to be, so it's fine. It's fine, she'll be fine. Everybody else does it, so she'll be fine. Ultimately she ended up being okay and she has gone a little bit more of more of not a traditional path since high school. But I think how many more kids have to be sacrificed on the altar without taking into consideration all of those side effects? And I even get frustrated with the parents that talk about bullying like it's a great thing. Well, they're going to learn to be resilient by being bullied Really, really. I put my plants in a greenhouse so that they can withstand the weather and the horrific storms.

45:13 - Dr. Todd Rose (Host)

I feel like it's Stockholm syndrome, right, when we don't feel like we have any other options. We justify the behavior of our captors, right, we start to identify with it and it's like as someone who was bullied as a little kid, like, are you kidding me? And they're like well, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I'm like that's not true. Car tracks don't make you stronger.

45:31

Like this is just not true, right Like. And the thought that a child wakes up. I mean, I remember waking up as a little kid. You know you're about to go to school and be bullied, physically hurt, mentally tormented, and you just wake up and the dread, the dread, and you just go through it and it's just, and it's just like at the end of the day. This is what I think about it Like.

45:55

From the science of individuality that I've been a part of, we know, as a matter of fact, that your uniqueness matters. It matters in your ability to diagnose and treat your cancer. If God forbid, you get it all the way to the way we build environments to get the most out of your potential. And so, okay, if it's not that like, sometimes the one-size-fits-all system works pretty well for some people. If that, if, if that's true for you, don't, don't buck the system just to bucket. That's dumb, right Like. But have the courage of your conviction that the goal is to create a really great fit for your child to be able to discover their unique gifts, be able to develop them and turn them into contribution. That is the game. That's the game. And guess what If they don't learn? Like I said, if they don't learn about a particular subject at in third grade, like the standardized curriculum said. Here's the thing. I'm also on my friend Sal Khan. I'm I'm on his board for his, his Khan lab school. I mean, our technologies are allowing us to in terms of the information that is available to anyone now at any time. So if it turns out that you need to learn that subject, you can learn that. As long as you've been equipped to be a lifelong learner, you can learn that. When you need to learn it Right, you can. So it's not again. It's not buck the system for its own sake. So it's not again. It's not buck the system for its own sake. It's that even if all you want to do is prepare your kid for the world that's coming, this is how you do it.

47:34

And, like I do think that the homeschool movement plays two really important roles. One, it's showing us a different what good look like, that's different than what we imagine. So it creates a social proof for people. That lowers that cost of courage. But second, I think it's going to force a lot of the more standard systems to start being responsive. If they want to survive, because they're just not going to survive. They will go away, as they should Any system that does not deliver the outcomes that the public wants.

48:03

In a democracy like we live in, a free society, right, our systems are meant to serve us, but for the last hundred years we've been convinced that we exist to serve these systems, and the American public are fed up, like in our private opinion data. What I can tell you is the common theme is it's the end of compliance culture. We are done being told what to do by the gang that can't shoot straight and like. What I love about the work that you're doing is, again, we don't just want to react. We don't just want to rail against the system and then just willy-nilly flail Like it needs to be made constructive, right, because we're seeing a lot of that end-of-compliance culture is kind of it's manifesting in kind of destructive ways. If you're upset with the public education system, well, now you know the listeners podcast and stuff. You have alternatives, right, and they are constructive alternatives, and they are constructive alternatives that hundreds of thousands, millions of other parents are making the same kind of choices.

49:06 - Janae Daniels (Host)

Here's. Here's a question for you, for parents, whether they're in the system, out of the system, how can they best help their children lean into their individuality and their their natural passions, their natural gifts, yeah.

49:25 - Dr. Todd Rose (Host)

And I want to be really careful. You know, sometimes when people think about individuality, it's almost like whatever they want, whatever whim, you know they're like no, no, we're not spoiling them. Kids need to do things right. Like like it's, but it's like the ability, I think, the most important thing. So we are unique in our composition. So like one size fits all designs don't work right, you need flexibility, right, um? But I think the most important thing this is I I wrote about in dark horse. If I had to pick one thing and you could only learn one thing about your own uniqueness, it is when we talk about the space of passion. In Dark Horse, we got into the hood about that and realized it's more underneath.

50:09

Passion is this idea of motivation, and in particular, we call them micro motives. Because what's so funny is so, if I say, like I love football, for example, so I'm passionate about that, like more than I should be, probably in the amount of time I spend thinking, for example, so I'm passionate about that, like, like more than I should be, probably the amount of time I spent watching it. But, um, cool, passion is you're, you're tapping your motivations by some external thing, that's great. So I'm passionate about football, but if that's where I leave it, there's some point at which I can't play that game, which that point is now. I cannot play football. I would hurt myself in all kinds of ways. And so people reach these points of crisis where they're like but then what do I do? Right, and most people hit that right Some midlife crisis, whatever. If you understand what's underneath that, these micromotives. So there are lots of reasons why people could all converge on liking football. Is it that you like the team, sport, nature or the competition being outside, whatever? So, getting under that, and people are incredibly unique about what motivates them. You'll see in Dark Horse the shocking number of motives that people have that I'm like no way, there's no way that that's motivating to you, because it's not motivating to me, right, right, and so so the way you do it, which is quite like simple, as, like you know, when we sit and talk to kids, they come home from school or whatever after their day, and it's like like, oh, we ask them, like, ask them what are you passionate about right now? And then the follow-up question is why, and the why will be hard at first. They're not used to thinking about these things. Up question is why and the why will be hard at first. They're not used to thinking about these things.

51:43

I also would use it, model it for your kids. Explain like, okay, you're doing a podcast. Now you know what I mean. You went from this career to doing something else, to doing a podcast. Why? What is it about the podcast that just lights you up, right, and start to teach them that. And as they start to get access to their own micromotives, those things are portable. So if football is a manifestation of my micromotives and I'm passionate about it, well, at some point, if I can't do that or my passion wears off, I can pick something else that on the surface might not look at all the same. Right, but because they're still accessing my motives, they will. I can maintain passion, I can engineer it and maintain it. So I think this is something we never talked about. It's so rare to actually help them discover that, and I think you know cause. You can be good at something that we talked about earlier and still be miserable, right, but like, the Holy grail of all of life in my mind is to find something that you love, that you're good at and that you can create value for other people with, because that means you can get paid to do it Right, that means it can be a career and if you can do that, man, life gets so much better. And it was really remarkable in talking to all these people you know how easy I fell into the standardization thing, like.

53:06

I'll give you one example that didn't make it into the book. I was talking to a guy who was a high school, really great high school baseball coach like, really well regarded, really good at his job. He had spent, I think it was, 12 years in the minor leagues trying to make it to the major leagues before. Didn't get, only got to AAA, didn't make it there. And now he's a high school coach.

53:30

And I asked him what had to be the dumbest question during the interview. I said well, do you regret that? Right, because you didn't get to the major leagues? And he looked at me and he said well, why would I regret that? He's like, for 12 years I got to travel around the country with playing the game I love, made amazing friendships and, yeah, I got. I didn't get all the way, but why do I have to get all the way to be successful, he's like, and now I get to share this passion I have with this game to whole new generations of kids, to help them fall in love with it. And I was like I am such an idiot. Like, why would I like? Because you didn't make it to the top one 10th of 1%. Um then, therefore, it must not have been good and I think we just have that in our minds Right. Um and so much about life is the journey. It's really not the destination, it's it's how we get there and we spend so much time preparing our kids.

54:24

What are you going to be when you grow up? That's a dumb question, like, even if you tried to guess right now, by the time you get there, the environment will have changed so much. I mean, think about it. It wasn't that long ago that we were telling everyone learn to code. Learn to code was the listen. I remember some politicians going to Kentucky and were shutting coal factories up. Learn to code. Well now, learn to code would be the dumbest thing you could possibly tell someone, because AI will do 99% of that. That is a recipe for. But think how many kids got shoehorned into that kind of career because people they trusted were, like do this and you'll be fine. There's no guarantee of that the best guarantee, especially in a society like ours and an economy like ours if you are talented at something, we will find a way to make use of it, and when you're passionate about something, you'll work harder than everybody else. It's just not that hard. We've lost the muscle of this and we have to get it back.

55:19 - Janae Daniels (Host)

I love that. I love that I think about it because I've thought about the micro motives since reading your book about a million times and I was thinking, oh yeah, it makes sense that I would go into podcasting because the part of hiring that I liked was the actual interviewing and talking to people and hearing their story.

55:32 - Dr. Todd Rose (Host)

Yeah.

55:34 - Janae Daniels (Host)

Except for I didn't like having to make the decision of whether or not they should stay or go be, part of this company, whatever company I was hiring for.

55:43

But I, even as I look at my own kids, I have this 13 year old son, and, and, and watching like, what is it? What are the things that he's most drawn to? He loves to bake bread and make money. He makes he makes 50 bucks a day usually, uh, from just selling his bread door to door, wow, and. But then he was into animation and he was.

56:06

You know, he's done all of these different, different things. You know he's learned to play the piano and I realized he loves he specifically loves to work with his hands and I'm like, oh, okay, you know he likes to work with his hands, but he also needs something that causes him to challenge, like a puzzle. And so, as we've been talking about that, and you know he and he's been like, okay, so for high school, you know, let's talk about, as you're about to go into high school next year and I say that with parentheses because we are unschoolers, so so he's actually not going into high school, but, um, but I've been able to I thought, oh, I need to look for my kids. Micro motives like those, those, the the smaller, would that, I mean? Would that be correct? Would that be a?

56:54 - Dr. Todd Rose (Host)

hundred percent correct. It's so weird, huh Cause you think motives must be these grand things, these massive universal things, and it's just not true. And like, no amount of forcing him into something abstract, where he doesn't get to work with his hands, is ever going to be a substitute. And you know, in the book I talked about, this is not just do whatever you want, right, we still live in a society and we have responsibilities, and so it kind of shows how, like, how do we get in touch with that? But then part of it in the book is teaching them how do dark horses make decisions. And that was kind of cool too, like they would. They would look for things in choices that would optimize on fulfillment.

57:32

And then the follow-up question was can I live with the worst case scenario? Wow, if you can, then do it Like, because even if you fail, it's fine If you. If you can't, if you got two kids and you're on welfare and you got to pay some bills, then maybe you can't go to the optimal one, maybe the next best one. But just learning how to make those decisions and one of the things that your son like, the fact that he's already entrepreneurial, right, and I actually think if you told me right now, I'd say every kid should learn to be an entrepreneur, even if they don't go into business for themselves, even just socially. Because if you understand that skill, then you always have a choice, because you can create your own choice. Oh, I love that I love that.

58:14 - Janae Daniels (Host)

So a question that I've gotten from a lot, a lot of parents of young single adults is is how, as parents, how do we help our young single adults navigate, um, navigate the next thing for themselves, like figure out their micro motives because I feel like I've, as I've got kids in that age bracket um, more and more of these kids are kind of floundering. They're floundering in college, they're floundering, you know, just kind of wandering around. So how, as parents, can we help them figure?

58:51 - Dr. Todd Rose (Host)

things out. Yeah, it's a huge crisis right now, and you know a lot of people who had followed the sort of traditional path. A lot of the things that were promised are just not possible, right. So if you keep doing it, you're just going to end up with huge, you know, student loan debt. You probably can't buy a house if you wanted to right now. Like, there's just so. They're just like almost paralyzed into it's sort of like what's the point? What's the point? If I put the effort in, it's probably not going to matter anyway. And so there's a couple of things.

59:21

One you know it sounds super self-promoting and I apologize, but I do think that Dark Horse provides like a like. There's a mindset that you need to internalize about how you're going to think about your go forward. That's important, and there's other books and stuff like that that can do that. But then the thing is is like working with them to think about, like, if you think about the bigger picture, it feels overwhelming, like. And so breaking it down into okay, I think I understand a little bit about myself. I have a hunch X, y and Z and then break it down to the smallest experiment possible, right, that you can try something and it's not. We'll go get this big job, commit to it for five years, necessarily Like, and everybody's circumstances will be different. Some people don't have that, have less luxury to be able to. You know you gotta do stuff, you gotta put food on the table, but within that it's like. It's not gonna be revealed overnight, it's part of the process.

01:00:23

I think the most important thing you can do for that older child of yours is that quite often, when you get under the hood, they've lost a sense that they matter, that sense of self-efficacy that if I put the work in it's not going to matter. It's not. So I can stay home in the basement, I can play online games where I get rewarded for my effort, I can do all these things and that becomes habitual and it becomes deeply rewarding. It's just not fulfilling. And so, helping them recover that sense that their actions really do matter, they really do like, and it's just just one foot in front of the other. And so, like, getting that mindset figuring out okay, well, what's the experiment, and it's not all or nothing.

01:00:59

I mean this is my son like when he was trying to decide. It was like okay, what's the portfolio? Then what are your? How are you going to like experiment here? He thought I think I might like game design, which he's phenomenal at.

01:01:11

Okay, what's the smallest unit that you can try to make sure that that's something that you, you really do care about? Turns out he likes it recreationally, but really do care about it. Turns out he likes it recreationally, but but it just there were too too much that goes into the business of trying to make that a a livelihood. That just wasn't okay for him. But he didn't know that. But it's like okay, how do we, how do we carve out the smallest, uh, kind of de-risk it, right, um. And then we looked at like okay, and I, in this case, I said come live with me, um, but let's also show me how you're going to be responsible, because there's a lot of things I'll do if someone else is paying for it. But what happens when I have to have skin in the game, right. And so it's like this is not a free pass to just do whatever you want and someone else will pay all your bills, right.

01:01:55

So he scaled down what he needed, right, he, and he was incredibly responsible about it to create the freedom to be able to experiment a little bit and it took, I'd say, a good nine months where even I was like, hmm, maybe this isn't working. And then all of a sudden, it just clicks, the pieces start coming together and now he's like literally leading a startup in cryogenics where he was able, he was able to tap his engineering degree, but they didn't have enough capital. He got to build the entire lab, like responsible for the equipment and setting it all up, and he's an engineer. So for for his boss, he's a twofer, right, like I need an engineer and I get a. I get a lab tech, the person that's going to build the lab in the same human being, right. And it's like he just laughs because he works like so much now. And he's like he's dead tired coming home and I'm like, well, are you still happy? He's like, yep, I'm learning so much. And he's like I don't know if I'm going to do this forever, but I'm learning so much. And it's just, it's hard because you know, I'll give you a quick comparable, which is weird.

01:03:08

When I was in grad school, I was pretty disorganized and I would write stuff on my hand to remember things and I just like I don't and I realized this isn't going to work. I have to figure it out. So I found David Allen's Getting Things Done as an organizational system, a mindset of how you organize your life. But then here's the reality you got to have some time to put it into action and you're going to be wildly inefficient for a little while until you figure out a system that works for you. And now I genuinely believe I'm one of the most organized people I know, and it's contributed my ability to do lots of things that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise.

01:03:44

Same thing with these young kids.

01:03:46

They don't have the mindset or the muscle about what it means to live life this way. So, to the extent that we can, they need to be responsible. They don't get to just do whatever they want free. They got to have a plan. But as they build the mindset around like in my view I think a dark horse mindset is the right one, but you know there are other things. Give them that space to experiment and try right, not flounder, but as long as they are being responsible and as long as they are experimenting, they will get there. But helping them understand it won't be an overnight thing and that's okay, and what they'll quickly figure out is the process of discovery is so rewarding it is, it is the stuff of life, and and so that that's that would be my advice, um and I, I fully appreciate that, like people are in different circumstances, we can't all do that for our kids, but the reality is, no matter how constrained life is, you always have some choices Right and within that constraint you can find fulfillment and you can find that path.

01:04:47 - Janae Daniels (Host)

I love that, todd. Last words of advice to homeschooling parents who, or public schooling parents who are thinking about moving into the homeschooling world. What would you say?

01:05:03 - Dr. Todd Rose (Host)

I would say that, again, you're the parent. This is your child or your children, and we all have a responsibility to do what we believe is right for our kids to set them up for success in life as a human being. And if you're thinking about it, then you've already actually made the decision and that. Be honest with yourself about what's stopping you. And if it is that social pressure that you think you're going to be the odd one, well, go go to our website at populistorg.

01:05:36

Look at the data. It's crystal clear that you are actually in the majority and we're sitting under this collective illusion. So making that choice is not only going to not get the backlash from the people that matter most. You start to contribute social proof to other people. Your actions lower the cost of courage for other parents to actually make that choice. If your choice is, if you're worried more about I don't know what to do, no one will ever be fully prepared for it. As you know, right, it is a process, but there have been all these people like yourself who have paved the way, so you will be entering into something that feels unfamiliar at first, but is an incredible community of people like-mindedminded who don't mind sharing, don't mind supporting and I promise you, if you believe this is the right decision, like you will figure it out and your kid's going to be not just okay, they're going to be great.

01:06:34 - Janae Daniels (Host)

I love that. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for taking the time with us today and sharing your wisdom. I'm going to have links to all of his books and his website in the show notes. So if you want to find those, look in the show notes, because we'll have links to all of those. And what was the name of the organization that you're part of that helps families get grants to start?

01:06:56 - Dr. Todd Rose (Host)

It's called Vela. It's called Vela V-E-L-A and it is just. It is just boomed. I'm so proud to be on their board and you know it's. What's funny is that the seed money on grant stuff has become the least valuable thing. It's a community. Now there's a conference. I was at their most. It's called VelaCon. It was in DC. It was like listen to all these moms and other people who made a different choice and are now just building these things that I'm like I got chills just talking about right now. It is remarkable. It is just so. Find the communities right. You want to be part of something. It makes it so much easier and so much more rewarding.

01:07:38 - Janae Daniels (Host)

Oh, I love that and I will put that in the show notes as well for parents that are interested in looking into that. Actually, I'm going to look it up as soon as we get off here. Thank you so much. Mamas and papas, grandmas and grandpas, you are doing so much better than you think you are. You got this and we'll talk next week. Thank you so much.