Daniel Craig: I think as I look back into my personal experience, when I was thinking about college there was a lot of different questions. Finances were one of them. I think a lot... That's just a very practical question.
Chad Roach: How am I gonna make my money?
Daniel Craig: Yeah, and the other one was, "What is the best method of preparation?" I had a couple of different educational experiences. One of my first jobs was a sales job. And there's nothing that's much more scary than landing a sales job than landing a sales job and not knowing anything about sales, which was my predicament. And so I got this job and I was like, "I don't want to, I do not want to lose this first job, I've gotta make this work, who knows more about sales than I do?" Pretty much everybody, but there was one man who stood out in my mind. That was my brother's father-in-law, Steve Riddell. He's one of the faculty in this curriculum.
I called him up and I said, "Okay, Steve, when do we start?" And he says, "Start what?" I said, "Well, you're going to mentor me." And that was the beginning of probably one of the best learning experiences in my life. We got on the phone. He was in Texas, I was in Washington. And he says, "Okay. Here's the first question you need to ask yourself. You need to ask yourself, 'What do I need to know about this customer and their needs before I could ever recommend my product or service to them?'" And we went through those very foundational types of questions, and he had me put my script together and really work through the flow of the call.
And so the day came when I was ready for my first call. He says, "I want you to record this and then send me the recording and we'll talk about it afterwards." So I got on the call. I had my script. And I don't think I really followed the script, but I tried, and I sent him the recording. And we got back on the phone and he pretty much chewed me up, spit me out and I got back on the phone and we did that back and forth process for about three years. And within the first year I was the youngest person on the sales team but I was the highest converter, not because obviously I was great at sales, but because I had a mentor who knew exactly what I needed to know for my particular opportunity and then could give me real-time accountable feedback on how to then take my experience and really work his knowledge into that experience and that was, man, if there's a learning opportunity that I'd recommend to young people, it's that kind of a structure.
Kevin Swanson: And the world needs this. The modern college scene does not provide that life-integrating experience where you're in the field, you've got somebody taking you by the hand and walking you through the implementation of all these principles and these things you've learned into real life. And you've gotta have somebody walking beside you to do that kind of thing with you. This isn't the first time we've introduced mentorship in the history of the world. It's been around for about 5,900 years until...
Daniel Craig: Wasn't there a guy named Jesus?
Kevin Swanson: Yes, yes, 12 disciples, three years, great strategy.
Daniel Craig: Highly recommended.
Kevin Swanson: Changed the world.
Chad Roach: And a lot of the young people that will come to our ministry with some of these questions, they'll have pretty decent parents that are pretty engaged and doing the best that they can to disciple them, but oftentimes they start to hit those higher education years and there's a little more needed. They need some input from some other people. Maybe they're not gonna be in the exact same vocational field as their parents and they're gonna work on projects where they need the input and the help and the teaching of others. And so, I think part of the vision behind this program was bridging the gap between the discipleship and mentorship that parents can give to children during those younger years and without losing all the core benefits of that relationship-based, character-based mentorship that they received in those maybe K through 12 years, really continuing that on, such that higher education isn't this radical transition into now a very institutionalized form of education, which leaves behind all the benefits that they've enjoyed in their life to that point.
Daniel Craig: And one of the things we're saying is not that this is the ultimate alternative to college, we're saying regardless of whether or not you do college or a trade school or any form of education, you have to get mentors, you have to get mentorship. So this is not a replacement necessarily, this is a must to integrate with any form of education. So just to summarize, one of the things that I like to say to people is, "Hey, you can go spend an average of $80,000 to $140,000 on a college degree and you might need to do that for your particular field, but you can first spend 129 bucks on a training program that guides you through a step-by-step, a proven step-by-step process that works, that works for preparing young men and young women for God's calling on their life. Start there and then maybe spend the 120K.