Tommy, good to see you.

Yeah, it's good to see you too.

So let's start with how'd you end up at Test Prep Gurus in the first place?

Yeah, absolutely. So when I was like 17 years old I didn't really know anything about the whole college admissions process. Yeah. And my parents, they helped me find a counselor. Her name was Jen. She was very nice and she told me about you guys. She, cuz I didn't know anything about the ACT or how to prepare for any kind of standardized test, so she was like, you have to go to Test Prep Gurus, they've helped so many people. And I was like, yeah, absolutely. And I remember before I even came to Test Prep Gurus I took like a practice test and I did really really bad and I didn't know what I was doing. And I came here and it was one of the best experiences I had from an educational standpoint on helping me learn what's in front of me, how to conquer any challenge, especially with the standardized test.

And I remember coming here and Jeff was my, he was my tutor, and I would work with him multiple times a week and I would do the homework and there would be times where I didn't know what I was doing and sometimes I would doubt myself. I would be like, what is it that I can do better? I can't do any better, sometimes I can't push through. And Jeff would look at me and say that's like a self-fulfilling prophecy, you need to have a better outcome, a better mindset in order to conquer the things you think you can't do. And we worked on it every single week and I got close to a perfect score on the reading section because of that. I never forgot about that self-fulfilling prophecy. It was the first time I ever heard of it. Now I use it a lot with who I am, but that was very impactful.

Yeah. When, how old are you now?

I'm 23.

23, okay. So this was 6 years ago, a long, all this happened. And Jen, who was Jen? She was the college, what was her last name?

Griffith.

Jen Griffith, that's who I was thinking it was. Just wanted to make sure. Great. And then you also had Andrew as an instructor, Andre?

Yes, absolutely.

Okay. So that first score was I believe a 17.

That's correct.

On the ACT. And where did you end up at the end? I know, but do you remember?

Yeah, 27.

Okay. Yeah, so it's a 10 point increase.

And I remember coming back here talking about that because that doesn't really happen too much, so I was kind of crazy when it did happen, and this is a testament for that for sure.

Right, which is roughly equivalent to 400 point, a 400 point increase on the SAT.

Yes.

But this was on the ACT. Now there's a moment in, we did an exit interview back then, six years ago, and you said early on in the process you felt like setting your book on fire because you were so frustrated early on. What do you think about that now? Can you elaborate on that? Tell us what was going through your head at that time.

I think now being in law school there's been many times where I wanted to set my books on fire because it's been frustrating, but I think that was a very challenging moment in my life because everyone gets through this roadblock where they don't know what to do, they don't know how to conquer it. And just coming here and talking to Jeff and seeing you every now and then, I got the motivation and I learned it the hard way, because the hard way honestly is the best way and that's sort of how what I've always felt. And Jeff would always be like, you can do it, there's absolutely no reason you can't answer these questions. Kept telling me why can't you answer it, why can't you answer it, and I didn't have an answer because he was right, like there was no reason for me not to answer it. So there were many times before I would come in and I would tell him I didn't do so well on this reading section or the English section where he would be like, there's no reason for you not to answer these questions, right? And that made me go back home want to set a book on fire, but I kept working at it every single day, and it's because he kept telling me that, about to have a positive mindset, to have the right self-fulfilling prophecy, that I was able to score 10 points higher than when I first took the exam.

Right, right. And you probably could have kept going even higher there.

Honestly, I only took it one time. I'm sure it could have gone higher, right. It was just that 27.

What is that noise? Okay, still wanted to screw up all the audio. And that, because that 27 was what you needed to get into the schools you were looking at, right, just to put the context. And then I have a follow-up question. Where did you end up going to school?

Yeah, so I got into a reach school which was pretty cool out of it because I had a pretty cool story. So Santa Clara University was where I went for undergrad and that was a wild ride as was. So that was a great time, but I did get in there, and when I got in there, that, you know, that's where I did want to go, so I ended up going there pretty fast after I got in afterwards because I, and I honestly, I because I had such a good story, I talked about this a little bit in my personal essay, a tiny little bit about sort of overcoming struggles, and whether it was about Test Prep Gurus or not it was just sort of overcoming any sort of struggles and that self-fulfilling prophecy, and that's even carried into me being a BW student now. So yes.

Because you were just accepted to USC law schools.

That's correct, yeah.

Fantastic. Well, congrats.

Thank you.

There was something you said earlier, the hard way is usually the best way, right? What do you mean by that?

So when I went to Santa Clara I, as any 18-year-old, struggled, you know, trying to learn in a new environment. Yeah. And I did good, I did good, but I wanted to do better. I always wanted to reach, shoot for the moon, and USC was always a place I wanted to go to ever since I was in high school and I was going through this whole process. So I remember even the universe would kind of tell me like, this is where you should go, like this is always cuz I wanted to be here in Southern California. So when I had an internship in college I would have to drive through USC every single day to go to my job, so it was like, okay, now I really need to go here. I felt like the universe would tell me. So I went back to Santa Clara after I graduated for law school and that's a great institution, they were so good to me and I wouldn't be where I am today if it wasn't for Santa Clara, but I had to learn the hard way because being in a competitive environment for your first year in law school I would tell myself, okay, I need to have a good self-fulfilling prophecy, I need to be the best that I can be. So I would study every single day till I woke up till I went to bed. It didn't matter weekends, I am, there was literally not a single day, maybe like one or two, where I just didn't do anything, but outside of those days holidays didn't matter, spring break, all my friends were hanging out having fun. I learned the hard way and grinded my way to the top. I was ranked number seven out of 238 and that led me to go to USC eventually now. But I kept remembering what Jeff would always tell me, it was the self-fulfilling prophecy, why can't you do this, there's no reason you can't do it, and I would just tell myself that every day, there's no reason I can't do this, there's no reason why I can't just keep grinding and have a positive mindset to get to where I am today.

Yeah, and it is a powerful thing when somebody really believes in you, right? Even if it's a little tough in the delivery, like why can't you do this. But to kind of break down any sort of feelings of learned helplessness and going, no, you have the capacity to do this, we just got to make the choice and lock in and take the specific steps to reach those goals. So one of the things we found in, that's very research-based, we've always believed in it at Test Prep Gurus but now we have a ton of research to support it on a scale, a lot of it coming from the authors of Make It Stick, struggle is actually key to long-term retention of concepts. If something comes easily you're actually less likely to remember it long term, whereas those really difficult concepts that you have to struggle with to internalize them, you're more likely to hold on to those 6 months, a year later, could be 10 years later as it turns out. But struggle is key to effective learning and that's a counterintuitive finding for most people. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Yeah, absolutely. So I think that's a very well thought out concept and it's true. I remember there was an episode of Shark Tank where Barbara, one of the Sharks, said to a specific person who was trying to, you know, promote their company, and they, she said, you need to feel like the sky is going to come crashing down on you if you do not succeed, the sky will come crashing down. You have to struggle. And Kevin O. would always say that, I struggled, I had to fail and get up so many times before I could ever succeed and retained the things that I learned from struggle. And I felt that on a personal level because there were many times where I struggled, and I struggled in law school my first year all the time where I didn't understand property law, and that ended up being my best class in law school because I struggled in that class, I had to learn the hard way, because that is one of, if not the hardest classes people learn in law school, and I didn't know what was going on. I had to spend so much time and struggle and feel like lighting my book on fire and just wanting to go to bed and not deal with this, but that's a very accurate statement. Struggle is absolutely key to retaining, you know, learning objectives that you'll hold on for the rest of your life.

Yeah, I had a similar experience with when I did an MBA in corporate accounting, which was one of, corporate accounting and corporate finance were generally the two toughest classes, but accounting was really tough because there were actual accountants in the class who are also earning an MBA and I probably had to study 10 times as much as those guys did, but I, and it did not come easily to me at all. I mean accounting, I don't know if you've ever messed with it, but the debits and credits system is insanely, it really works, but it is not what you would imagine it to be when you think about accounting. And I still remember that stuff like it was yesterday when I look now at our corporate finances, and when our accountant sends us financial documents it's like it's easy to read them, but I don't think I would have nearly as much fluency in that subject matter without the immense struggle that was required at that time just to stay above water, next to people who did it for a living. What were some of the other ideas that you took from going through this test prep program, and how did they bleed over into school, whether that was in high school or during the college years?

Yeah, absolutely. I think really just practice. That I think practice doesn't make perfect but practice improves and practice gets close to perfect, and I feel like that I just, I really had to think like every day like if I just continue practicing whatever it is every single day, to have a set mindset, to have a set goal, that would eventually lead me there. And I remember coming in here and Jeff told me that success isn't about how smart you are, it's about how hard you work, and that's true. I completely believe that. I think it's how hard you work, similar to your story where you had to put on 10 more hours than everyone else, right? It's, I don't believe in the fact that you're born smarter than other people, it's really just how hard you've worked to that certain goal, and anyone can reach any goal that they want to reach if they work for it, if they put in the hour, if they are devoted, if they are obsessed with reaching that goal, then I think anybody can succeed. And that's something that I've really applied myself and college and law school.

Lovely, lovely. Well, and those stories we tell ourselves have a huge impact on how we perceive the events that happen to us, right? If there's a problem you can't solve and the story is you're telling yourself I'm just not that good at this, then that story holds power because you're not going to think there's a possibility to improve and to eventually learn the material. If you're telling yourself the story I can do this, I just haven't done it yet, this is a feedback mechanism that I don't fully understand these concepts, it's not necessarily a final judgment that I can't learn these concepts. If you start telling yourself that story, I can do it, it's these test reward hard work, I need to put in the right amount of time, you will eventually fulfill that story, you'll see that story through to the end, which is I'm going to overcome this one way or another. And I just love that story and that you're bringing that stuff to later stages in your life. How has that applied? Yeah, how was that applied in college?

Yeah, I think in college it was the same way. I, there were times in college where I struggled more in law than law school, I, because there were times where I didn't get the grades that I wanted to and I had to sit back and think to myself, well, I need to, you know, really put in more time, I really, you know, because it what's not a final judgment, as you say, to what your ultimate go, your ultimate image is, but it's sort of, it just reminds you that you need to work harder and that you need to continue to pursue it and to attack it every single day. And I think in college throughout my four years that I learned that lesson, as I said, the hard way, especially with the whole pandemic going on, that was a tough time, and I was able to overcome it and just think to myself I need to improve, these test results that I have now aren't a final judgment of what is that I will end up after my four years, but it just means I need to continue to work harder and find the light at the end of the tunnel, because I do see the light, it's just continuing to follow it and make it through, especially during the pandemic when it was really tough to do that in a sense.

Yeah, how do you study now? Let's break that down a little.

How do I study now? That, you know, that's a really good question. I think for me I use everything my professor tells me to. I, for now I just outline what it is that I'm going to do, so I have a calendar, and this was actually a big thing that I learned during Test Prep Gurus, that you need to be organized with your life and write, you know, estimate times that you were going to go and practice studying for your ACT prep. I've carried that into law school now where I have, okay, I'm going to read this class at this time and watch the video again from class because some of my lectures are recorded and I want to make sure I really understand the material. So I'll read for the class, I'll watch the supplemental videos that my professor has posted as well explaining the subject, and then I'll go to class just to make sure that I'm understanding everything, and then when sometime before the exam comes, maybe like a month before, I'll sort of rewrite all those concepts that I learned during class and memorize it by looking at a piece of paper, trying to rewrite it in a sense from the top of my head. And that's really what has led me to success, just rewatching videos, reading the book, outlining whatever it is and just memorizing in that sense, and that really helps in staying organized.

Now there's something key I think you mentioned in there. You said you try to rewrite it from the top of your head, right? Let's unpack that.

So generally in law school to study there's, it's called an outline, so you have to outline the entire course and just memorize a bunch of rules. So what I would do is I would color code each section that pertain to a class, so whatever section I color code I will focus on memorizing one weekend, and then the next weekend after that I'll do a different section and continue to do that until such time the exam comes where I'll sit there like five, six, seven days before or even weeks before depending on how hard the class is and just try to rewrite that entire section I color coded, and if I can do that then I'll know I'll be okay for the exam because I have all those rules memorized. And that's actually extremely helpful for me.

Yes, yes. Now you're hitting on a key point here and it's why I'm drilling down into this one. We have figured out that with the students that we work with for test prep and suddenly their grades dramatically improve in school without any tutoring in those classes, this obviously caught our attention when multiple students mention this, and we're trying to figure out why and how that happens because that sounds like a really wonderful thing for a lot of students. And what we figured out the key was is self testing, that through the SAT or the ACT you learn this process, it's like okay, here's an exam and you get feedback from the exam. The 17 you initially earn on the ACT is not a final judgment that you're just not capable of doing any better, it's feedback. This is showing us all the areas where you can and hopefully will improve if you do the, and students end up just through the osmosis of working with our teachers learning that process and going, okay, I have to figure out what I don't know in order to figure out what to study, and then I need to test again, right? Because you're going to take, you got that 17, you took another practice test and we saw, I believe with you, we saw a minor improvement initially, ticked up to an 18 or a 19, but you locked in at that point when you went, oh, this is actually working, and now we have new feedback on, okay, we got this thing solved but we still have all of these items that we need to work on, and then you start dialing those pieces in and then take another test to get more feedback, and up and up this little staircase starts to build with the scores and the knowledge that you've now retained regarding these concepts. And that's what kids end up carrying over to school is my belief, but I'd say it's stronger than a belief, we've now identified that really is the trick, is these kids learn how to self test. And I think you hit it on the head there when you said you didn't stop at rereading and rewatching the lectures, you tested yourself, you said can I go back and produce all of this without cheating at all, and if I can't, well now you know what to go back and review, and if you can, what do you get to do then?

Exactly. If you can do that then you succeed, then you know you've already learned what it is and you can stop, right?

We had a student recently who mentioned, said she, her study time for in her history classes in high school had gone from three days to three hours, and she felt guilty she wasn't studying more, said but I'm earning better grades now, because she started to learn the self-testing process. She knew when she could stop and still do well in the classes, and as a side benefit it really improved is the long-term retention when you do that self-studying. So if we want to go beyond grades, because I don't even care if you get straight A in law school, what I want to see is that you become a great lawyer, and if you employ self-testing combined with hard work and drive and telling yourself the right story, well then it goes well beyond, you're going to become a great lawyer because you'll retain this information that you're going to need for your career.

Exactly, and it's not even just for your career but it's for your S. I feel like you're doing yourself a favor, you're telling yourself I can achieve something that I've never achieved before, I can do the impossible, and I think that really helps with self-confidence and just self-image in general, succeeding whatever it is that's in front of you. And I think yes, it's, I really do hope one day I'll be a good lawyer, but it's more of a self-confidence thing too and a self-image, to a testament that I know anything in life that comes in front of me I can overcome it, and as long as I keep telling myself the right thing and I work hard enough for it and I prepare enough for it, then I'll be okay.

I can't tell you how happy it makes me when a former student says it better than I could have. That phenomenal. Okay, I got another idea to throw at you, which is that in school, this is one of the core ideas of the book I'm working on, in school the structure is always this static form of testing, which is that you're going to be taught something, then you study what you were taught, and then at the end you get evaluated by the test. And that's why when I ask elementary schoolers and middle schoolers what they think about testing, they hate it, it's the worst, it sucks. Their responses are very similar because there's this final judgment at the end. And yet no one tests like that out in real life. Coders, scientists, marketers, I mean you name the industry, nobody tests like that. I was talking to an author the other day and he was telling me about how he likes to write a chapter and then show it to a few people and get feedback from them, and we agreed, well that's a test for that chapter. And in no case would you hear back from those people and said I couldn't really understand these concepts, I'm going to give you a C+ on this chapter, and you go, well I guess it's a C+, that's it. Testing, instead of a static line, should be a feedback loop, which is that we're going to try to learn something or create something, then we move to testing, we get the feedback, and we adjust based on the feedback, and it goes round and round for ever greater proficiency. So this is the big idea, but like that author does, he gets that feedback, he makes the chapter better, then he runs another test and gives it to someone new, oh I understood it very fluently, it made a lot of sense, it's changed the way I think about things, I'm going to give you an A minus on that because there were a few things that you needed tweaking, and then he tweaks it further, the writing gets better, the concepts are explained more clearly until he reaches whatever level he would need to determine he's done, which I guess would be that A+ level. But even when talking about this it almost makes the idea of grades kind of silly, because they exist to just rank kids against one another. If we were focused on learning we would use testing in this feedback loop and we would try to create more students like you. When you start to see the world as a testing feedback loop anything's possible, right? Because there are no final evaluations or final judgments, it's just feedback, and then setting your goals and saying well is this something I want to get better at or not, do I have talent in this area, and if the talent meets the desire then the sky is the limit on where you can run with that stuff. Am I on the right track with all these ideas?

Yeah, yeah, I think you're on the right track because I feel like something I've really noticed with school is that there's a pattern, I feel like, and I feel like once you recognize the certain pattern then you can get the A, the, you know, the A+, and that's not really learning. Identifying a pattern is not learning, and even though that's sort of the challenge with school is just finding the pattern, and once you find the pattern you'll figure it out. Finding a pattern is not easy for anybody, it's very complex, it's hard thing to really pick up on. There's patterns around us in our life and it's hard to pick up on a lot of that, and I don't think we should be ranking somebody just based on of whether they pick up on a certain pattern or not. It's everybody has their own individualized way of learning and getting better and it should be more catered to the specific person, not here's your C+, that's your final judgment of how you perform in school. So you're absolutely on the right track on that.

Yeah, let's go a little deeper into that one. So you said recognizing those patterns is not really learning, right? What's the difference?

Because recognizing a pattern is just something you can continue to repeat over and over and over and over just to produce a certain result, but you can't use a pattern for every single situation that comes at you in your life. That's not how the world works. You have to be creative, you have to be a problem solver in those certain instances. The certain pattern you learn in school only gets you to a final treasure of that specific result, it doesn't teach you how to attack any situation in the world, and you can't just learn a specific pattern and then something will come up and it, the pattern doesn't work towards that specific situation and you never learned anything in the first place. So that's sort of my belief on that.

Right. If you're trying to figure out the pattern, the cheat codes to do well in school, all you're left with at the end are the cheat codes, and they probably won't apply to real world situations, especially if we working on interesting complex problems. And so instead of focusing on the cheat codes to get the grades we want to focus on the deep learning so that we can go solve interesting problems. And I find this paradox fascinating because I think standardized tests, SAT and ACT, are a huge part of the problem in that they really focus on can you figure out the cheat codes to get a score, just like the grades, and they're not necessarily teaching skills that you get to go apply out in whether it's college, graduate school, or this long long period of decades and decades where you're out in real life. But the paradox is that these standardized tests are, I have seen no better way instill all these ideas that we're talking about, because standardized tests have this repeatable aspect to them, because standardized, Tommy can come in, he can take a test, get a score, and then there's another version of the test, you don't get the same questions, so it's not like you can just memorize the answers, but it's the same level difficulty because all this statistical analysis has been applied to these things to normalize them so that these tests are of equal difficulty even with completely different questions. And to have 10, 20, 30 copies of that same test of the same difficulty is really important to teach these ideas, because one thing I find with teenagers is that the, and though you're not a teenager anymore, when you were, the best way to reach you and communicate with you at that time was through objective feedback, not me just saying subjectively look, you're working harder, you're doing better now, you went from a B+ to an A in that class, but you kind of know well there's some cheat codes to it, there's, I've been really nice to the teacher and showing up to the study session so she knows I'm working hard, she's going to be a little easier on the grading. Everybody knows there's a subjective piece of that, and these standardized tests cut through all of that and show you that hey, if you take the test and do nothing for four weeks and take it again you're going to score the same, but if you start taking steps to improve and put in that hard work suddenly the score goes up, and then it's not me telling it to you, it's not a teacher telling it to you, it's you coming to your own conclusions for yourself, oh, I see changes possible and I am in control of my destiny, and that can be extrapolated to all these other areas of life.

Yeah, absolutely. That's sort of what happened with me when I was 17 years old, and whether at the end of the day whether I could have taken the test again or not, the steps to get to the 27 have applied past high school and into college and law school now, and I never forget those things. So I think it's definitely bigger picture and that's, you're completely spot on that.

Okay, so you've had some experience in law school. I heard this the other day, the A students learn how to teach, eventually learn how to teach the B students how to work for the C students. And I have run this by several lawyers and they all say some version of I haven't seen anything to prove that that's not true, in that most of the A students end up working in law schools and then the B students end up working for the C students out in the real world. Agree?

I think just being in law school I haven't seen too much of that as a personal, I, not like I haven't gone out in the real world and like exactly seen it, but I think there's some of that. I would agree. There are definitely people who go to law school and they excel in the academic world because that's kind of what they're meant to do, that's kind of their niche, and when they see that they could excel in law school, it being somebody who knows what that feels like, that I could understand the drive to want to go back and teach because it's something you enjoyed doing in the first place, and maybe one day I want to go back and do it if I'm being honest with you. It is interesting and it depends really where you go to school if you want to become a teacher. When you go to X school versus Y school the grading system differs based on the law schools. Some schools don't even have grades, it's just whether you pass or you get honors or super honors, that's sort of what it is, or some schools it's just a number that you're given. So whether that applies to every single law school I'm not sure, but from my experiences being in law school and liking the certain subjects that I did exceed in, I could see why somebody would want to go become a professor and then go back and teach other people, because that's something they enjoyed and that's something that they really felt connected with. And because sometimes when you go out into the real world, law school, the things you learn in law school aren't exactly applied to what it is when you become a lawyer, but the things you learn in law school can always be taught to somebody else in law school, so they probably enjoy doing that and sort of the flow of that nature, and I get that. So I think there's some accuracy to that statement.

That's a good positive outlook on that statement. I believe the attorney who I originally read it from, it more in a negative way in the disconnect between law school and then how law really works when you get into the courtroom and start working with real clients, and he said it's a whole different set of skills and he wished there was more teaching in law school of what has to be applied out in when you're practicing the law. And I always thought that was interesting that it's called the practice of law, it's not the science of law, right? Because it is a practice, it is something that is always shifting and changing and you've got to be nimble and respond to things that come your way, whatever they might be, and having, like you said, just pattern recognition for things before isn't going to get the job done. You've got to have some critical thinking skills that will allow you to deal with new specific situations all the time, right?

And I think that's, it's, you bring up a really good point because I was thinking about this the other day. When you look at somebody who becomes a doctor, after they graduate medical school they go into residency because they have to learn to be a doctor, that's honestly the best example I can give. But when you become a lawyer after you pass the bar you can go and set up your own law firm, and that could be really challenging if you haven't worked with other lawyers before, because as you say, it's called the practice of law, it's not the study of law. Law school teaches you how to be analytical, but there's a certain perspective to once you get out of law school you have to learn what it is to act like a lawyer, certain professionalism, how to go to court, and it can be very challenging if you just go out of law school and set up your own law firm and try to help people without that experience. And I almost wish there was sort of like, you know, maybe a year or two period where once you graduate law school sort of like a residency program with medical school that you can just be an apprentice, learn how to practice law, and I think that would help a lot of people and I think that would be better for the legal system in America, in my opinion. So because it's they're a doctor, same as a doctor, you can't just be a doctor out of medical school if you don't understand how it is to, you know, help people, and I think that's the same thing with lawyers, it's just helping them in a different way with whatever needs they are, because they can't, it's very difficult for someone to go to court and represent themselves if they don't have a lawyer to do it, and it's hard to ask somebody who's straight out of law school. I'm sure there's people who can do it but it's challenging if you don't get that sort of apprenticeship. So I think I agree with that statement.

Yeah, see how able, how well positioned you are to deal with crazy ideas and then apply it to a new zone, right? Other principles that you learned from your test prep experience that have revealed themselves out in your life since then?

Yeah, I think just never giving up whatever it is. Whether I, I play chess, so I never give up in that, right? I think just sort of practicing every single day, seeing the outcome, what ranking I want to be in chess. It's just trying to improve 1% every day, and that was something that I learned here, and that's very important especially when it comes to the gym or whatever it is. It's you're not going to see results in over a week or two just by starting something new, it's always did you improve 1% this week, then you improved. And I think that's very important, just just 1%, that's all, it can be half a percent, just something. Did you improve somewhat after this week? It doesn't have to be a lot but just a little bit, and eventually that'll add up after months, because life goes faster when you get older. I've noticed that ever since I left high school, went to college, it's been going by really fast, and I realized a week is like nothing, a week is like a day, a month is like a week. If you just improved 1% that'll add up extremely fast and you'll get better at whatever it is in front of you, whether that's going to the gym or like playing chess. That's something that I've taken away from coming away from here, and Jeff would be like did you improve 1% this week? It's 1%, it's all we need to do, like that's it, just 1%, half a percent, just a little bit, that's all you need.

So okay, so we have a lot of kids currently doing SAT, ACT prep programs and they want to improve by 1% at least a week or a half a percent, just as long as they're moving forward. I agree with all that. What specific advice would you give to them on how to prepare for a standardized test? How should they be doing their homework? How should they be behaving in the sessions and outside of the sessions in order to achieve that improvement?

Yeah, I think having a goal, just having like a dream school that you want to go to, and whether you get accepted or not is, it's not up to you at the end of the day, you can only put yourself into the position to do that. But if you have that hunger, go visit the school, go look at it, really indulge yourself in that sort of community for a little bit and realize that something that you want to do, and then you realize to yourself that I want to eventually be there, I think all those other things of preparing, that'll take its own course, because once you realize that's what you want to do, that's where you want to go, nothing is going to stop you. You're going to go home and you're going to study because at that point of time your life kind of depends on it, and whether you get accepted or not you can't really control that, but at least you can go somewhere just as good and sort of reach that outcome. So I think really just having a goal of where you want to be at the end of the day can be any school, any school is good in the world. Yeah, but I, other students have different goals, and whatever goal they set their mind to I think they should just think about that every day, they should wake up and be like I want to go there, this is my shot, this is my chance, then they'll eventually make time for something that they care about, and that's, that was me, I made time for things that I care about, and they'll make that as a high priority in their life so they'll go home, they'll study, they'll come to the sessions prepared, they'll go home and do more work and review that, and they'll be more receptive because they have that certain goal in mind, whether that's just taking a campus visit or watching on YouTube of how fun the students are having. That I think that is probably the best way to improve just 1% or half a percent, because that'll drive you to do well because you have to make it a priority in order to improve.

And the goal is critical to making it a priority because otherwise it's just extra work, right?

Exactly, want do that. Yes, no no no no, of course, but just sort of if you make it a priority you will eventually prioritize this in front of you, and I think that's sort of what really helped me improve that 1% or half a percent every week.

Right. When I've seen that with, oh, a lot of strong students in their trigonometry class, why do I have to learn this, and it's a really tough question other than the stick of like well you'll get a bad grade and it'll hold you back, and that's not very convincing to anybody. And they, not that trigonometry is not important, for people who use trigonometry and put people on the moon it's extremely important, but most people that are taking trigonometry, high school students across America, are have no interest in actually going into any sort of line of work where they will apply that and use that other than in this one class. Even there though, when that doesn't line up, I think your point holds really true where if you attach whatever the drudgery and the hard work is you have to do to a long-term goal, you say okay I want to study video game design at NYU cuz that's my dream, suddenly trigonometry doesn't feel like such a drag. And we can debate all day whether NYU should evaluate their video game design students based on how, what their grade was in a trigonometry course, they probably shouldn't, but if that's what they do we can't change the entire world, we just got to look at okay, where do I want to go, it's to NYU or an equivalent school to study that video game design, and these are the metrics that they're going to make that decision based on, let's put ourselves in a position where we're strong on those metrics. And whether it's trigonometry or the SAT or trying to become a better chess player, something that you actually really enjoy, all those same principles apply, and that long-term goal is the key to the motivation which makes the hard work doable, right?

Absolutely, and it's a really good point you bring up because in my math class specifically when I was in honors trigonometry, it's really really funny how this is applying, students would go to my teacher after class in high school and say why am I learning this, and her answer was always the same and it was a good answer because there's going to be things in life that you don't want to do, that you don't like want to learn, but you have to do it anyways because that is what's going to make you a better person at the end of the day, and that's what's going to help you learn new skills and apply yourself in different ways that you didn't really want to, because everyone has to do things they don't want to do. And if you can sit down and attack a trigonometry course like your life depends on it, then you can sit down and attack anything like your life depends on it.

So I think that's very well said. There is a book up here, see if I can find it, right there in the middle, Creativity, we don't have to pull it down, but close to the plant there, Creativity by Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. And he did a number of interviews with high performing individuals across, I don't know, 25 different types of professions in that book, and they videotaped the interviews, and when I was a research associate at his research center we created some media pieces based on these interviews. And there was one that always stuck out to me, it was this, she was a famous sculptor, and she said yeah, everyone imagines that I must have the greatest job all the time where I just sit around and think up amazing things to make and then just bring them into reality, and she said you know 99% of my work is like being a carpenter, it is grinding away. She said there are those wonderful moments where you have an insight and a vision, but the other 99% is grinding away and coming up with a version of it that's not quite right and throwing it away and starting over again and then grinding away at that one, and eventually it's wonderful when you bring something into existence and it has an impact on people. But she said my experience as an artist, which most people imagine to just be all fun and games, she says is mostly a grind, it's just worth it to me to do all of the grinding to have that moment at the end where something is created that actually impacts other people, and that's what drives her to keep going. And I think that's what you're getting at there. I think a great example if we were bringing it back to standardized testing is homework with students. So so many students are trained to do the exert the minimal amount of effort in order to maximize the grade, and so in school you want to do as little as possible to get an A on that homework assignment because you're not, the process is not oriented towards how do we maximize your learning, Tommy, in which case it totally flips, you'd want to get as much out of that homework as you can, which is what you're doing now in law school because you want to go become the best lawyer that you can be. And with the SAT what students will do is okay, we assigned you two math sections of homework this week, and they will do the sections, check the answers, come back to the tutor, these are the ones I missed, can you show me how to do them. And it's a really hard concept to instill in students is that when you've checked the answers you're 50% done with homework and it's the second half that's the important part, which is that you go back through all the problems you missed, attempt them again with only the knowledge that you missed the problem and you didn't do it right the first time, and if you can't do it then check the explanation for the problem, close that book, try it again for a third time and see if you can get there. Then when you show up to the teacher and there's one, man I still don't get this after three attempts at the problem, only then should somebody help walk you through it. But that's a whole different level of prioritization and putting energy into the process and completely changing the priorities where you're saying the priority is learning this stuff, not trying to get away with doing as little as possible. And I think you really hit the nail on the head when you, when I asked what would your advice be to these students and you said well go visit some schools so you have a long-term goal, because why would you want to attempt the same math problem three times for fun? That's, there's one in a million students that finds that an interesting exercise to go through. But if it is there so that one day I can go to UC law school, or it's going to help you get into that entrepreneurship program at, believe it's at USC and I've heard it's fantastic, suddenly it just changes the entire process, you're like oh no, I, if I have to attempt it a fourth time and a fifth time I want to do that because I'm doing it to get into this entrepreneurship program or whatever your goal is.

And I'm getting off on a ramp, but you just made me also think of student, his name was Britton, a long time ago, and Britton gave me full permission to share his stories many moons ago, and he really struggled with prepping for the SAT because he just couldn't get traction. And when he was there in front of, this is what I was doing it independently on my own, so we're talking nearly 20 years ago, and I remember talking to him and he would get fired up in the moment like yeah you're right, let's go, let's, I'm going to do this, but then in the intervening week between sessions other stuff would come up and he really, it wasn't a priority because he didn't have a long-term goal as try as we might to find one, and so things didn't really get done. And that was during the end of his sophomore year into the beginning of his junior year. Man, he came back in the summer before his senior year and he said I figured it out, I want to go to USC. Total coincidence but that's what made me think of it. Said I want to go to USC. I said well great, what locked it in for you? Said I love watching their football team play. And he was probably 115 pounds soaking wet. I just love watching him on TV and the idea of being there in the stadium every week during the football season, I got to go to school there. And I thought this might not be the best way to choose what college you want to go to and set your life path, but that's not my decision to make, and who am I to judge what the right path for this kid is, he's got a long-term goal, let's help him achieve it. And it really did not matter that attending football games was his driving force. All this to say that the actual specific goal doesn't matter, it just matters that you have one that becomes a priority, that's important to you. Key, worked. I didn't need to tell him anymore to do his homework, he would do what was assigned and then do some extra because he wanted to achieve that goal of going to those football games. And it was, he had a miracle score improvement, I believe it was 280 points on the SAT, not quite as big as yours but a very big one, very big, and did get into USC and went there and got to go to the football games. And he found new goals once he was there, right? It wasn't the end of the road for him. He and we stayed in touch and he found new goals and went on his way. But figured that out, that key process of what are my long-term goals separate from my parents, separate from the teachers, separate from my friends, where do I want to go and then how do I get there?

Yeah, you know it's really funny because, Nick, I'm going to be honest with you, I had the same goals, I wanted to go to USC to go to the football games too.

So wow.

And I, yeah, so I think that's funny, but that is a real feeling. I know that feeling and it's true, because when I first went to law school and I was totally happy with staying at Santa Clara for all seven years, I went there for undergrad, that place changed my life in all the best ways and I am very proud to be a Bronco still and we'll continue to go back to those reunions, but I did always want to go to USC for a degree, and I wanted it to be in law school because my family has a bunch of lawyers, and a going to law school is already hard enough as it is and getting into one is already crazily hard. I told myself literally every single day that when I was at law school I want to go to USC and I want to go to football games and I want to graduate from USC Law School, because I think that would be the greatest thing ever, because I would drive by it every single day when I went to go work at my job and I thought about it when I was a senior in high school. So that was something that it, that's a very good feeling and that really is what drives you to go above and beyond, because there were many nights where I slept 3 hours, and I probably, you know, probably should have slept more, but I, there were many nights I slept 3 hours and I just kept practicing way above and beyond, way more than I ever probably should have, but that's what helped me get here and be where I was in my law school class, because I had that long-term goal. So that is, and you have to have a passion for it, it can't just be like oh I'm waking up, hm, that'd be a cool goal to have, cuz then you're never going to really want to achieve it unless you actually have a passion to achieve that goal. So I think passion for a long-term goal is the key to success.

Right, I want to go to Stanford because it's a really high ranked school. How's that going to get you out of bed in the morning? And you know what, it might for somebody, but most people it will not. And because again, I don't want to judge anybody's goals, and I think the biggest mistake that many parents and teachers make when they hear something like I want to go to USC because I want to go to the football games, they go what kind of life plan is that, and it's the exact wrong approach to take because you're actually, you're deflating their balloon in that moment that they actually have a, and as far as I know no one has gone to USC and then made their life goal to watch as many football games as possible forever. The goals will take care of themselves, it's all about setting one and then just learning how to find the drive and take steps to get to reach goals. That's, it doesn't matter what the goal is, there's no jud, doesn't need to be any judgment on it.

Yeah, absolutely, and it's true because sometimes I feel like being a kid, I remember when I was 17, is like way different than how I ever thought now at 23, but there were certain things that got me out of the bed in the morning, and if I probably told that to other people they would think would be stupid and that would have totally deflated my balloons. So I think there's a lot of people who have a certain reason for going to a certain dream school. There was a Disney movie about some girl who her dad came to her when she was 5 years old and said she was like a princess, and she wanted to go to Princeton because she thought that she was a princess and she thought all the princes went there, and when she got older at like 16, 17 she worked super hard in school and was like number one in her high school and went there. I know it's like a total cliche Disney school, but I'm serious, like that's really what drives people is their goal, and whether it may be super silly or not, like that's something that gets somebody out of the bed in the morning and that's something that really helps you succeed in life. Because when you get older you mature and you realize okay, I'm going to have a real life goal, I want to own my own house one day in XYZ location, that, and now people probably going to say okay that's not a stupid goal like when you're 17, and no one's probably going to deflate that balloon because that's a realistic goal to have, and it shouldn't take you until you're 23, 24, 25 years old to really realize that the dumb things that you learned as a kid weren't really dumb because that was something that drove you to get out of bed every day in the morning.

That's right, and your goals change throughout your life. It's fine to have the goal oh I want to own a house in XYZ location, but guarantee once you do own that house and a few years have passed you're going to need a new goal to stay motivated and active. I mean I never could have guessed any prior point in my life that I would have had the goal to start a podcast. It was not on my radar even when people started telling me they thought I should go do that. At first I dismissed it because I thought oh that's not, I don't know, it's just something I never thought about. But the more I heard it from other people I started to think well I do really just enjoy hearing people's stories. I mean I find this to be fun even when it looks like work from the outside, setting up the studio, getting the cameras going, making sure the sound works for the millionth time, correcting all the little things, oh man that camera won't be in focus, I got to replace that lens, all this grind work. But I did find the first time I tried it when I sat down with somebody and it was like, man, Tommy, who are you, what's your story, where did you come from, where do you want to go, I could do this all day every day, and all the work stuff that it takes to have this little moment feels 100% worth it. It doesn't even feel like work because kind of like the sculptor I know what end goal is down here down the line. On a short-term basis I had to come down here, set things up, I was running a little today, as you know, but set everything up before you got here because I know this moment is going to be special. And then the best thing for me is that when I hear back from other people, especially people I don't even know, they talk about how it has a meaningful impact for them, that's an amazing thing. And we have these amazing tools now that didn't even exist when I was a kid where YouTube can go out and is connected to 1 billion different humans, and granted 99% of them probably aren't interested in what we're talking about right now, but 1% of a billion is 10 million people, and it will go find those people and bring that message to them and then a community is formed, and to me it's all just magic. And it all comes back to setting a goal, and I guess my point in all this was that those goals are fluid throughout your life, so no need to judge want to go to USC for football games, no need to judge somebody who's crazy in their 40s like I'm going to start a podcast on YouTube that is mostly just young kids and there are hundred different people trying to do the same. Figure out what you want, get on the path, take the steps to get there and good things will happen. I mean I had a marketing guy that told me, he said hey, if you can get to 1,000 subscribers by the end of the first year you're killing it, and then we try to get to 10,000 by the end of the second year. And so those were the goals, that's all I was trying to hit. We're 6 months in, we're at 52,000. Well that's fantastic, and now we're just going to set new goals and try to reach those. And so now it's like okay, can we get to 100,000 in the next six months, and beyond that then we really start going how do we impact more and more people. This is how I'm using these principles that we teach to Test Prep Gurus.

Yeah, it's awesome, and I really appreciate you inviting me here, it's an absolute honor. And I, you know, I never forgot about my time here. I would even tell Jen cuz she helped me apply to USC, I'll tell her you know Test Prep Gurus they're really good, you know, and you guys, you know, you guys meant a lot to me. And when I got to interview here when I was 17 years old I never forgot that either, and I showed my parents, still, I still go back to look at that video sometimes and be like wow that was a long time ago, and a lot of companies, and I'm really glad that you, you know, found this as a passion, and you know, I think it's just as long as this can help one person, right, this like, then it's worth it, like it's already worth it, that you're fulfilling your passion at, you know, right now to do this podcast. But if you can sit back at the end of the day and if you have already just helped just one singular person then it's worth coming here to do that, because one person's life is worth so much in this world. So and I think that's, it's awesome that you started this and it's great, and I've looked at some of your podcasts on LinkedIn a little bit, so it's pretty cool.

Nice, nice. Well, and it has this bleed over effect into the other passion, which is Test Prep Gurus, which I could not have sustained being working in this line of work for 20 years without concrete goals and a passion for connecting with students and helping them to reach their long-term goals. And so now the goal with Test Prep Gurus is how do we take that and affect hundreds of thousands of students, because are principles that by and large are not ones that we invented, we just picked them from really amazing people that came before us and applied to this lane of how do we raise students scores and teach them skills that will last their whole life rather than just raise a test score. So yeah, that's the new goal for Test Prep Gurus.

It's awesome, I love that, I love that. It's bigger picture, because sometimes when you know some of these prep programs it's just the goal of getting a higher score, but I've always appreciated that it's altruistic for you in a sense that you want to do the right thing and help people, and it helped me, and that's, and I really resonate with that and I respect that, you know, deep.

Well, it is the nice thing about it is that by focusing on long-term goals, all these study techniques we talked about that are more focused on learning than just getting a higher score, they all lead to a much higher score. It's almost like okay, with the path is A to B to get to the higher score and how everybody else is doing test prep, and we're going to take this much longer circuitous route except RB ends up out here. The amount of improvement that is possible when you take this different approach to all of this test prep is incredible, and that's why I wanted to bring you on today, because the proof is in the pudding. You end up with higher scores and you get to take all this stuff that's going to help you later in life. I mean it, as you can see, it just gets me really excited to see students really running with this stuff and taking it in whole new directions. And by the way, that interview, the first interview you did six years ago, I mean it's on various platforms, but I mean it's been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on those different platforms, and the, I'm hear back about different students from different people but none more so than you, of the kids in that video. And it's that part that really resonates them is when you say, you get super emotional and you say I know this sounds crazy but this is my central piece for how I can overcome any obstacle in my life, this does change you as a person. I mean I feel emotion just thinking about it because I remember you saying it during the interview and just going wow, this had such an impact on this kid, he's going to, he gets it, he is going to go places wherever he decides that place is, he's going to go. And all that to just say your words and thoughts have already had a big impact on people and I'm sure this conversation will as well.

Thank you, I really appreciate that, it means a lot hearing that from you. You're, this is a great company and you're a great guy, and I'm glad that it's just helped one person. That's, if it can just one person that it helped then it's completely worth it, more even the better, but as long as it just helps one person then I know it was worth coming back and just saying it, because it really did have an impact on me. It was, I know it sounded crazy but it really did have a centerpiece in my life going forward, so I never forgot it.

Well that's a beautiful thing. Any other thoughts for those young students that are about to embark on this process?

Yeah, I think just enjoy being 17, 16, because you'd only get to be 17 and 16 once in your life, and it's great being 23 and I know I have so much more life to go, but just enjoy the moment, enjoy the moment of studying for the ACT, enjoy the moment of applying to colleges, and you know, don't ever beat yourself up if you can't succeed because it's never a final judgment of who you are as a person at the end of the day. And just keep, just have that long-term goal, that's the biggest thing, and have a passion for it and be emotional about it because that'll change the way you view the world. And know that whatever decisions those colleges make, yeah, if you keep doing the right stuff of course things are going to work out one way or another, of course, and I think that's the biggest thing. Don't let the college admissions process upset you because it's not your fault, it's a completely subjective process, it's not objective at all. There are people who get perfect scores and they get rejected from every Ivy League school, not even wait listed, or there's people that do a lot worse and they still get accepted, and it's just based on what they're looking for and it doesn't make you less of a person at the end of the day because everyone's incredible in their own special way, and the college admissions process does not define you as a person at all at the end of the day.

There was a father who told me they recently visited Stanford, he and his son, and they asked what they were looking for in an applicant, kind of off to the side with the admissions officer, and they said well I mean right now we just lost our, you know, the tuba player in the orchestra who was first chair was phenomenal, do you play the tuba? And well that's what they asked the student, right? And the father's relating the story to me and he said and in that moment we both realized there is a huge lottery effect to all of this. If, his son was not a tuba player, if he happened to be with the credentials he had they were going to be all over him, and he's not a tuba player and they'll probably find one. And so if he was a tuba player but it wasn't quite the right year, that's not going to play in his favor, and there's no way to plan for that cuz the next year it might be they're looking for a particular athlete in a particular sport, or they're looking for oh man we're a little low on chemistry majors, we're going to prioritize the chemistry majors. I mean there's a lot of luck and subjectivity involved in the process, and I think for all students the more we focus on what are the things I can control, what are the long-term lessons I can learn from the process, the better off they're going to be in the long run. And you just got to know it's a little bit of a lottery at the Ivy League schools these days.

Oh yeah, definitely, and it's, you know, it's crazy. I read all sorts of stories on Reddit about expers getting accepted and it's, you know, I think life tends to work itself out at the end of the day. So if you just come in here and you put in the time, you put in the hours, you put in the effort, and you have that long-term goal, wherever you end up it's meant to be, and life, life works itself out in that sense, and you'll be a good person no matter where you go to school because your school does not define you, and it's you, it's who you are and the life lessons you take away from the things that you learn, you know, in your journey, that's what really defines you. And these learning lessons at Test Prep Gurus, the things that I've taken away have changed me as a person, and I know that you continue to change so many more people.

Oh fantastic, thank you for that. All right Tommy, well that was awesome, love talking to you. Anything else you want to add before we shut it down?

I think that was great, yeah. I had a great time, thank you for letting me come on here, it means a lot, so thank you, I really appreciate it.

Yeah, well it's great to see you again.

It's great to see you too.