Welcome to Resilient Entrepreneurs, the podcast where we speak with business owners and entrepreneurs from around the world and from all walks of life, in hopes that something you hear will leave your business a little richer. We’re your co-hosts, Vicki and Laura from Two Four One Branding, supporting new entrepreneurs as they launch their business and offering you the tools you need to succeed. It's why we invite experienced successful entrepreneurs to share their wisdom with you on this podcast. And if you love hearing their stories, please subscribe on whichever platform you're listening to or watching it on right now, you'll be notified of the next great episode.
Well today, we've invited the remarkable Andrew Olson to the conversation. He's 20 years old, and he's the founder of Fastrack, an educational consulting firm. He'll share with us his journey that led him to starting this business. His target audience is 8th graders through to 12th graders, if you know students in high school, this will be an episode not to miss. Welcome Andrew, to Resilient Entrepreneurs.
Thank you for the introduction. Appreciate it, thank you.
Yes! Welcome, Andrew. And as a mom of a teenager, I'm very interested in this conversation we're gonna have today about education and how you help teens. But before we go there, let's go back into a little bit of your history. What kind of kid were you? Were you a bit of an entrepreneurial kid? Did you have the proverbial “lemonade stand?”
Yeah. So I grew up and I knew that I wanted to do my own thing. From when I was young, I've always thought that I didn't really want to go and work a nine-to-five job and I knew that, I was always doing little schemes when I was younger, I did some drop shipping stuff when I was in high school, I did some video editing, just lots of contracted short-term work that is not traditional nine-to-five job stuff, so I kind of always knew as a kid. And then high school-ish age or around then, right around when I was graduating, I really knew that I needed to pursue some other path beyond just the regular job.
What was it that tipped you off to you not being suited to the nine-to-five?
Yeah, that's a good question. So when I was about 16, 17, I had some e-commerce stores and some of that really took off. So I had to learn a ton of stuff on my own, like how to build something from nothing to something, and I was making pretty good money as a kid and that kind of fuelled my development, starting all my other companies and everything else I've been involved in. Yeah, so that's the main thing that set the chain reaction off there.
So do you think it was maybe a case of you earning more money than you could have possibly dreamt of earning in a nine-to-five, like 18-year-old kids?
Yeah, I don't want to say that I was earning more than I could ever dream of, but I was definitely earning more than I could have had I been working any other regular high school job. And the work associated was definitely way less annoying than if I was working at McDonald's or whatever.
I love how you put that, “way less annoying.” Absolutely! So you're getting more satisfaction from it and enjoying it?
Yep, exactly.
Yeah, I think there's definitely a shift in mindset with your age group these days, they definitely are seeing education very differently. Maybe not thinking the traditional route — that you graduate high school, you get into university, you could do your four years of university, get your bachelor's degree, maybe go on to masters, etcetera, go into a nine-to-five career job — that path has been set out for decades. But I feel like there's a real shift. And I don't know if it's before COVID or if COVID had a big impact on it, but what do you think it is that’s really causing this, this change in mindset of kids that are coming out of high school now and not wanting to do that traditional career path?
Yeah, so I think that a lot of kids are seeing that money can be made other ways, and that a job doesn't have to just be a means to an end, a job can be something that you actually really enjoy, and that you get fulfilment from. So I think that kids now, with how prevalent the internet is, and how they see their peers and other people online, on YouTube, podcasts, etcetera, they see other people making really good money at young ages. I think that they can now start to do their own research on things like if college is actually right for them, and if the traditional path is what they want to do, or if they want to give some other things a shot. I don't think everyone should be an entrepreneur, I don't think everyone shouldn't work a regular corporate job, but I think that there are the people that are questioning it, I think that for them it's really good to have some nice informational stuff out there from other people that have done basically exactly what they're trying to do. Versus before, being an entrepreneur was swept away and there wasn't so much informational content on there. There's a lot of good YouTubers and there's lots of good podcasts and everything now that really talk about, “Okay, so you maybe think you want to do this, and here's some reasons why you actually might want to.” And there's also some that do a really good job of, being an entrepreneur isn’t all that it’s set out to be, maybe you don't want to do that. And you need to just make the assessment of what you actually want in your life.
I think you make a really good point there about there being so much information out there. Because I think that is the really big shift that's happened over the last — I don't know how many years, but at least the last decade, where there is so much more that people can have access to, that they can either learn from or make decisions using, like you’re saying, following the people on YouTube and all these different options and careers and people that are sharing their expertise.
So how do you help students when they are trying to figure out their path? Because you have a unique pathway for them. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Yeah, so to preface that, I'll give a quick few sentences about what I actually did because me telling people how I help other people without them even knowing what I did doesn't really make sense.
So basically, I graduated college in two years by leveraging dual credit classes while I was in high school, and then also took some classes when I was in college too, to speed things up. So the reason I did that is because I knew that the value equation on college just wasn't great. As far as time and money, going to a four-year college, spending four years of your life and upwards of $100,000 just didn't make sense to me, because maybe sometimes, even if you're lucky, you come out of college and get a job for $70,000 — that's on the high end. And now you're 100,000 debt and that 70,000 goes to fuel most of your lifestyle that's expected, because you got that very prestigious job. So that just didn't make sense to me, and I knew that couldn't be the way that it worked out. So I started researching alternative ways to get done with school faster, while still getting that four-year advanced degree. And this is basically what I came up with. I didn't know, this wasn't a thing back when I was doing it, it just was me failing enough times and doing enough research, and finally figuring it out. “Okay, here's what I had to do,” and I just stumbled through it, and it wasn't easy to do.
So basically, that's part of the reason why I started this company, I had a lot of connections through the tech industry, it’s where I started, doing some tech work. A lot of other founders of companies and a lot of entrepreneurs told me this is a great idea, and something I should really pursue to actually sell to people, because it can be super helpful. And that was the point at which I started actually putting the business together, and the primary goal of this business is just to make this as easy for parents and students as possible. Because I know that when I did it, it was super difficult, there wasn't really any information out there and there was virtually no one who could help, because it hadn't really been done. And if it had been done, no one talked about it. And a lot of the same stuff is still true, I don't want to say that I'm the only person that's done it or the only person in the industry, but I'm one of the, maybe five that are talking about it. So maybe there's hundreds of people or thousands of people that have done it. I haven't really seen anybody else talking about it. But if there is, there's no more than three because I haven't been able to find anybody. So to actually answer your question there, it’s a long answer, but to actually answer your question, we basically provide information on how this actually works, how using dual credit classes to speed up your graduation actually makes it cheaper and saves you time. And then the other part of our service is, we actually make the schedule for you.
So if you're in high school, let’s say you're in 9th grade and you don't know what you want to do yet, but maybe you’re interested in computers a little bit, we basically set up your high school schedule to have you get a year and a half to two years done of college while you're in high school at that reduced rate, so that when you're ready to go to college, you have all your general education and all your elective credits done, and then when you're in college, you can focus on specifically doing those credits that actually apply to you. Let's say you go for Computer Science, then in high school you're doing primarily just computer science classes, which also is beneficial because it keeps fresh in your brain. So as soon as you go to get a job, right out of college, it's not english classes, history classes, and science classes in your brain, it's all computer science stuff - it’s what you've been doing for the last year and a half, two years. So it's really fresh and that's where your skills are going to be best, which is the best time when you want to be looking for new jobs basically.
So Andrew, let me get this right. You are helping people who are in high school to graduate college in two years, which obviously is going to save them money and also it's going to save them two years, and they're studying their college units whilst they're still in high school.
That's correct, yep.
Brilliant, and that's what you did, that was the path you followed through your research.
Yeah. I mentioned the term “dual credit,” I didn’t exactly explain what that actually is. So the dual credit aspect of it is that those classes count for both high school and college. So there's classes that you can take that count to fulfil your high school course requirements, and then also give you college credits as well. So pretty easy examples, we need an English class in high school to graduate and you also need an English 101 class in college, you can take English 101 through a local community college as a dual credit and it’ll count for your high school requirement and your college credits as well.
And does this work in any school that person is enrolled in?
Yeah, that's a good question, so school-to-school is a bit different. However, there are online programmes, if your school doesn't directly offer dual credit stuff, there's a lot of online stuff that you can get enrolled in. And yeah, it's basically just a conversation to be had with your school. And then obviously we help you, at Fastrack we help you navigate that as well, getting your school to allow you to take these classes. If they don't already and if they do already, we work with them to put the most efficient schedule together, like what they've already seen work.
And then how does it work through the university? Is it that you get those credits in before you get to university or there's a fast tracking through the university process too? Once they graduate high school?
Yeah, so the way it works is when you graduate high school, you would either continue at the college where you've been taking the dual credit classes, or if that's just a community college and you're planning on going to a four-year school, or it's a school you're not planning on going to, those classes would just transfer then to a bigger school. And yeah, the transfer process is pretty simple. Obviously, there's some colleges that don't want to take certain transfer credits, but for the most part, I've never seen many issues at all with people taking classes at one college and transferring them to another.
And so people can get all the nitty gritty details about how this works and how you help them on your website, yeah Andrew, fastrack.school is the address for all those details, https://www.fastrack.school/
It's a really interesting premise that you're bringing to the table — you're solving a real problem that so many school leavers have. And you're showing and sharing with school leavers how they can prepare for their life, even while they're at school. I love that you’re using that and something on your website said, “The sooner you jump in on a system like this, and become aware of what's available to you, then the faster you can track through,” because you can start sooner on the system.
Yeah, so I actually didn't find out about these classes until I was about halfway through my sophomore year. And I got about two years of school (University) done while I was in high school and then finished in a total of two years. If you start younger, you can do more than that, I just didn't know it was a thing back then. And obviously, the more time you save the more classes of these you take in high school, the more money that's going to save. Because the one thing I didn't talk about earlier either, is that these classes cost $40 to $60 per credit versus at a public school you're gonna be looking to pay $700 a credit, and a private school $1000 per credit, so it's ten to fifteen times cheaper to take them this way than it is in an actual college on campus.
So what kind of student does best in a system like this? Is this for the high flyers, those overachievers? Or is this applicable for any student?
That's a really good question. That's the number one thing that worries people. They think, the parents might think, “Okay, my kid doesn’t really care about school, they're probably not going to do this,” or, “They're not smart enough,” or whatever and that doesn't matter.
I like to describe myself as choosingly lazy, I am definitely not a high achiever in that aspect. I just know the things that need to get done and I get good at them but I'm definitely not good at everything. So I personally didn't care about school pretty much at all, but I did care about not going into a bunch of debt, and I did care about starting my entrepreneurial journey fast and running businesses quicker. So it became more of — less of, “I really care about school and I want to do this as well as possible,” to, “I want to start real life and this is a great avenue towards that.” So basically our programme works for pretty much anyone. The people who do best with it are kids that are go-getters and are really after it, because they're just, “Oh yeah, I'll just do this and then I'll be ahead.” And then it also does work really well for any kids that are really struggling. So if the kid’s really struggling, and they can't seem to be doing well at school, and they're just, they don't know what to do with their life, this gives them a really good avenue to be, “Oh, no, I do have hope still, I can do this. And then I'll save a bunch of money, I'll be able to start earning money faster, and everything will be good.” So the broad answer is “everyone.”
But for different reasons, yeah. I love that. I'd love to have a conversation around the concept of fast tracking education. Some people might suggest that education is best absorbed over a longer period, because then the retention might be higher, the true understanding of the material might be deeper. What are your thoughts on this?
Yeah, so I think that's definitely true, I think that learning a lot over time is definitely better than trying to cram into short sequences. However, I don't think that school is necessarily the avenue where you need to be spending a ton of time learning. I think that I'm still a student right now and I'm not in college. I learn something new every day. I still push myself, I'm just not paying for it anymore. I think that college is not necessarily the best way to learn what you're trying to get good at, I think that the best way to learn what you're trying to get good at it's usually just doing it. And that usually doesn’t apply to college, however, a lot of jobs nowadays, you have to have the paper that says you did it. Therefore, if you can get that piece of paper faster and while you're getting that piece of paper, you're also putting in extra effort on your own end to actually get good at your craft and get good at what you're studying, that puts you leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else that's just waiting four years and slowly learning, and then forgetting and not actually implementing. This gives you the opportunity to learn and implement as fast as possible, which I think is the best way to get good at something.
Yeah, well, I know that's so true. I did four years at university and the majority of the skills I learnt I've learnt by doing, not studying. Right, there's definitely other things that university does give you in terms of camaraderie and a lot of other important things, networking and so on. But I think there's a real shift, I think this is a really interesting conversation because I really do believe there's a big shift in education. And I think AI is going to play a big part of that in the future, I think AI is going to have to shape the face of education. And I think education is going to take a while to catch up to it. And I think people just get that there's now nothing they can't Google, ChatGPT, find on YouTube to learn, that they want to learn now. So I think people do want different paths. So this is a very interesting idea. And I think a lot of people are gonna want to take paths like this. And I think it's gonna hurt universities a little bit. I mean, do you think there's gonna be some pushback on this?
I'd like to say that I am not suicidal, nothing's going wrong in my life, there's no gas leak in my house. Big College, when they come for me, it is — everyone will know it's them coming after me, it's not me. However, no, I'm really glad you brought up the other aspect of this which is the camaraderie aspect, and there is definitely a value in going to a college and being around a lot of like-minded individuals who are your age and everything like that, which is why I'm not 100%, “College is bad, college is a scam”, and whatever. I don't think that's true. I think that college is good in small doses. I think that college is great for you to go and have a fun time for a year and a half, two years, while also getting your degree that says that you can do something. I don't think that spending four years in college, partying and whatever, and putting yourself in debt is a good move at all. So I think our system has basically put together a really good balance. Yeah, you should still go to school, you should be social, you should learn the camaraderie aspect. You'll connect with some friends for life, some of them, while also making sure that you’re career focused and actually setting your life up correctly. So you're not just wasting a bunch of money in school and burning your life away.
So tell us, how are you setting your life up, Andrew? As far as you mentioned, there's a number of businesses that you're interested in or already have started. Let's chat a bit about that.
Yeah, so obviously, I have Fastrack, it's our coaching business where we basically one-on-one work with people to help them do exactly what I did. I also own a tech company that does contracting for building anything from websites, project management, app development, some AI stuff, some smart contract stuff — that kind of thing. And then I also serve a role at a hot sauce company. I'm a part owner and work on the operations side of a hot sauce company. So those are the main few things. There's a few other side hustles in there and some other off the cuff contracting work that I do, just random stuff people need help with. But those are the three main things that I do.
So you said “a hot sauce company” — literally hot sauce, or is that a tech term I'm not yet familiar with?
No. Yeah, like actual hot sauce that you eat. Which is funny because I'm not even a huge hot sauce fan but I liked it so much that I was, “Okay, I can do this for a while.”
That's fantastic! Very entrepreneurial of you. Let's chat a bit about the tech company. So it sounds like you have a wide range of services. Do you have a team as well?
I do, yeah. There's a core operating team of about six working on the hot sauce company and ten to fifteen others involved. There’s a few buddies who work with me on Fastrack and tech stuff, I have basically a team of 10-ish that I hire on an as-needed basis, subcontractors.
And how long has that one, that particular business been up and running?
So I started my tech business when I was in college. So it's been about two years now or so. Two and a half years.
And so from that experience, what would you consider to be the key ingredient to success so far?
I think communication is extremely important. I think that where we have a leg up over our competitors is that everyone has direct access to me, and we’re very clear about what's going to be done and how much it's going to cost and we've never missed a delivery date and never really had a hiccup because I make sure we stay on top of it ahead of time. I think that a lot of people neglect, especially nowadays a lot of people neglect the importance of trust and actually not lying and making sure you stay true to your word and I have a lot of value in that.
Sounds like you have a lot on your plate, how do you juggle all that? I won't say balance because I don't believe in balance. But I feel like you're juggling. That's a lot of balls in the air.
Yeah, I agree. I don't think balance is real. I think that if you want something enough, you don't need to be worried about balance. I have really ambitious goals, I have a lot I want to achieve. And I also want to have a family when I'm older, so maybe get all this stuff out of my system when I'm young, is when I tell people, “I need to achieve all the goals by the time I'm 30 so that past that I don’t need to worry about anything else.” I think that's the biggest thing. I also exercise a lot, I like to do a lot of walking, so I like to stay in good shape and that goes hand-in-hand with keeping your mind sharp and being able to be on top of things. And I also have a great group of people around me, I've got a lot of people to fall back on. And if things go wrong, I know that people have my back and I think that that plays a major factor too.
So I'm hearing three principles of success in what you just said. One is communication. One is, perhaps it’s self-care, or health.
Self-care and improvement, yeah.
And then the third is the community that you choose to have around you. Do you have a morning routine? Just totally tapping into the self care or the health focus.
So yeah, I've gone back and forth on that a lot. A lot of times, you'll see the guys there, they'll start screaming at you and tell you, “You got to be up at four in the morning every morning, and you have to eat oats in the morning and your protein shake and if you don't go to the gym by seven, you're a loser,” and you'll hear all that stuff. And then you've got the guys who are billionaires who sleep in ‘till ten in the morning, they do a few calls and they enjoy their life with their family and their kids and whatever. I don't necessarily believe in arbitrary morning routines for a reason. I think that for some people that might really help them. I think if you're someone that is kind of having a tough time and you're really struggling to get off the ground with something, I think implementing a really good daily routine is a great idea. But I think if you think you're cruising and things are going well, adding some arbitrary rules that you have to get up at a certain time and that you have to do a certain thing every day, I don't think that that's the best way to go about life. We're here to enjoy our lives, and if waking up at five in the morning every day makes you not enjoy your life, well it's probably not really worth it in the grand scheme of things.
I hear you on that, thank you for saying that! Absolutely with you on it. I'm not a morning person. Yeah, I totally agree. But you also mentioned goals. So I'm curious, what are your big goals? You got any big audacious ones to share?
Yeah, I'd like to hit 100 million net worth by 30, that's the primary focus. And I'd like to, throughout that never lose shape, never lose the six pack, never feel like I can't do certain things because of my health. Those are the two main things, maintain my health and make a bunch of money.
Nice, what are you going to do with your 100 million, if I may ask?
I'm going to make sure my family is good. I'm gonna make sure my family's family is good. I'm going to make sure that I have a nice good lifestyle, and make sure everyone around me is taken care of. I'm sure some of that will fund the next venture too because I don't think I'll ever really stop doing anything.
But I was just gonna ask, is there retirement in there? Or is this, you know, some entrepreneurs think, “Okay, I want to make 100 million and then I'm gonna relax and go travel the world”? Or are you looking at 100 million to make the next 100 million?
So I think that you can get really caught up with the “grass is always greener” mindset. And that, “Okay, I need to hit this goal so that in ten years I can hit this next goal,” and all that stuff. I think that at some point you need to be content with what you have, and even right now I'm content with what I have however, I'm not going to stop. I think that it will be the same way in ten years when I hit that goal, I think that it will be “Okay, I did what I said I was going to do. What's next?” I don't think there'll ever be an off button for me. But I definitely am gonna put a lot of focus on making sure I'm not just setting arbitrary goals for no reason. At some point, we're only here for 100-ish years if you're lucky. Do what you want to do. It's not all about money.
Yeah, that’s a really good approach, Andrew. How have you been funding your businesses so far? Are you bootstrapping? Have you had investors?
So I think that I got lucky. I made good money when I was young, doing some e-commerce stuff. And basically, that funded the tech company that I launched. And since there it was just, I used that initial money to start up and do some advertising. I landed some good contracts early on and the snowball effect just happened. I don't like to sit on a ton of cash, I like to throw money at things while I'm still young and can afford to do so. And yeah, I like to say I got lucky when I was young, and made some good choices instead of partying or whatever when I was in high school and college, I decided to make some good choices, spend some money and stack up some cash, which then allowed me to get the ball rolling.
Has it been easy all the way through? Or have you had a few pitfalls and things you've needed to, challenges you've needed to overcome?
Definitely not. No, definitely not easy at all. I don't want to complain but this year specifically has been just tons and tons of just random crap coming up. It's just, geez, worst luck ever. We've had some health stuff, had some weird business things, got scammed on, you know, just random things gone wrong. So nothing's ever perfect. That’s another big thing, you can see someone's life from the outside and think “Oh, geez, their life’s great. I wish I could trade places with them, and everything's going good for them.” But you don't know about the 100 things that went wrong yesterday. And so I think that I've been super lucky. Definitely been blessed. Things have been good for me. But yeah, definitely not “no problems.” There have definitely been things that I've been, “Oh, wow. Okay, I learnt a lesson from that one.”
How do you get over those? How do you get through them? And what’s your advice for others to do it?
Yeah, that's good. Yeah, keep going. You can choose to have a problem and then complain and cry about it. Or you can choose to have a problem and take a step back and learn from it. And in only one of those outcomes is where you’re gonna keep going forward. One of them is just going to set you back even more. And the other one is you're going to learn something and you're gonna learn not to make that same mistake ever again.
Where do you get this great wisdom from, Andew? Have you always grown up in this environment? Is it self-studied?
Yeah, I'm constantly learning and I'm always constantly improving. I'm always doing a lot of research. I'm always reading a lot of books and I'm never not willing to accept that I might be wrong about something. I think that's a big piece of advice to people, - you're never too big to listen to someone else's advice.
Yeah, that's awesome. I was gonna ask the same question, Vicki just jumped on that too, I was going to ask for your advice. She stole it from me. Well done, well done. That's amazing. So what's your secret to success? What do you think is your special sauce? What's that thing that maybe somebody who's young and listening to this, that they should be striving for?
I think that it's one of those things where when you zoom out a little bit, and you think of your life and what you actually want to do, and do you want to blend in, or if you do want to stick out, and that doesn't have to be being famous or having much money or whatever, but if you just want to be really good at something, is that what you want? Or do you just want to blend in? And by no means, is everyone someone that should even want to stick out. Some people just want to blend in and they want to coast in life and that's great. They may be happier than I am, I have no idea. I've always just known that was not my path. I've always wanted to do big things and achieve a lot. So I guess just wanting it more than anyone else is what it comes down to.
Yeah, and having that grit and resilience along the way too is going to serve you well. So the pitfalls you have had the last year and I'm sure some before then, they only serve to help you get better as you go. It's “fail fast, fail forward, keep going” is really the key we hear from so many great entrepreneurs who have been through similar journeys. So what is your definition of resilience? How does one become resilient, do you think?
That's good, that's a great question. Okay, I'm gonna answer like I answered before with the morning routine thing. I think it looks a lot different for everyone, I think that you need to understand, you’re put on this earth with one body and one soul and one brain, so you can either try to change what you have or you can learn how to effectively work the machine. You can grind your gears for a long time trying to be someone else and trying to do something that you're simply just not meant to be doing and not enjoying, or you can really learn what you're good at and you can learn how to actually navigate things with what you've been given. So I think being resilient is just, I don't think it's hard work, running against a wall for no reason. I think it's the learning how to overcome c ertain things based on what you have going on. If you're really good at one thing and you're terrible at five other things, maybe you should just do the thing that you're really good at. And then in the background be improving those other things. I don't think you should be grinding your gears, spinning the tires on a bike, while the bike’s lifted, go nowhere, trying to do those five other things that you're not good at. So I think being resilient is just to make sure you keep that in mind and also not giving up, you're going to probably fail more than you succeed. I know that I've failed. For every
one thing that I've done right, I've messed up 100 times. For every one good business, there's been five others that have lost money. So if you're looking at losses and fails as more of a learning experience than an actual loss, you'll never lose again.
I feel like I'm on stage with a motivational speaker, Andrew.
Yeah! Your mindset is so geared towards a positive outcome, which is obviously, the way we achieve our dreams and goals. And I just want to honour you or acknowledge you for having that mindset, because some people take their whole life to get this stuff right. And you're sitting in front of us at 20 years old, and you're clearly embodying those principles.
Thank you, yeah. I don't know. I think I've always been like this. I think that if I had to give a quick one second answer of how, it’s just, what's the alternative? If you're not positive, what's the alternative? And how's it gonna help you?
Was there, was there ever a time when you thought you might quit?
So there's never been a time when I thought that I would necessarily quit doing my own thing, because I think there's a ton of freedom that comes with being an entrepreneur, and picking your own schedule and having the freedom to do what you want when you want. There have been times where I've questioned if this is what I actually want to do with my life, I've gotten job offers for really good sums of money that have made me question, “Maybe I don't care so much about doing it all on my own”. But I think a lot of that changed and I touched a little bit on this earlier. I think a lot of that changed when I had a really good team around me. When I had a really good team that I knew that even if I failed 100 times in a row and just couldn't seem to get it together, they’d pick me back up and we'd be okay. I think that changed a lot, that this is a forever thing. And I would rather get stomped out 100 times, than have to go to some job all the time that I don’t like doing. So since then it's been, “Yeah, this is going to be a forever thing and we’ll always be okay.” We’ll figure it out.
And how did you get that team around you? Did you select them? Were they just attracted to what you were doing? Is it family? Is it friends, strangers?
Its friends now, and at one point they were strangers. Now they're friends. I can't contribute it to any more than being in the right place at the right time and luck, I guess. People say fate but I don't know, luck and being in the right place at the right time and making sure I set myself up so that I'm in good situations.
I think that's it. You call it luck, I would call it preparation, when you have set yourself up to be ready for an opportunity when it appears, and to be in the right places, and to have the courage to go to certain events, or to introduce yourself to certain people. I imagine just from talking to you, that you are that kind of guy, that you are willing to put yourself in front of big opportunities. You might call it luck, I would call it preparation.
Thank you, appreciate it.
Yeah, well, I'm just waiting for your TED talk, are you planning one? Because I feel like you've got a unique idea and this might be a really good topic to bring up. I mean, it's a bit of a disrupter thing you’re doing here with Fastrack. I think it's exciting.
Listen, if you know the guys send ‘em my number, I'll gladly go and go and talk in front of the red lights.
That's what I'm talking about right there. Your absolute willingness to jump in with both feet and say, “Yep, pick me.” That is, in my opinion, an absolute secret to success.
Now with your book, Fastrack, there's a book? Or it's mostly a website and a programme?
So there is a fifteen-page guide PDF that you’ll also get with buying our programme. However, the main service is a coaching thing with me, so they’d get on calls just like this with me and we walk through their situation, make sure they're a good fit first before we onboard everybody. We make sure they're a good fit and then we talk through their situation with them, what they actually want from school, why they want to do this. And from there, we set up their schedule for them. And then once they're enrolled and they have the schedules, all their high school schedules, and the college clubs and everything, we just do check-ins to make sure everything's going well. We also help with some mindset stuff and just making sure kids are on the right path. And if they have questions, they have business questions, they have personal questions, they have health questions, we're also there to walk through that with them. We don't know everything but I have a lot of advice to give and people are willing to hear it, I gladly tell it to them.
Yeah, that's awesome. I think it's an incredible thing. I think, like I said, you're a bit of a disruptor in this space which I absolutely love. I love that you're young and ambitious. And you're really showing a different path for people to follow and take their own journey, because it isn't so linear anymore.
I think you gave really strong advice when you say, “Find the thing that you're really good at and hone in on that.” Go deep on that. It's not necessarily what your passion is even, it's what you're good at, so figuring out what you're good at, then figuring out what you’re not good at and get the team around you to take care of that, and that is a huge secret to success that we've talked to other entrepreneurs about and you've just really clarified it nicely today. So I really appreciate this conversation and I really appreciate you coming and sharing this exciting new opportunity for students to take on. I mean, my kids are in an international baccalaureate school, it sounds very similar because they're doing, as well, the courses that can be college credits. So it's intense, it takes a lot but it is so worth it when you see the end goal and you see the opportunities that come faster for them and faster for the students that you work with. I think it's really spectacular and I have no doubt you're gonna hit those goals, maybe even sooner than ten years, please come back and tell us all about it. We really appreciate your time, your energy, your enthusiasm, your great ideas, and all your spectacular advice. So thank you so much, Andrew, we really appreciate your time today.
Awesome. Yeah, I appreciate you guys having me. I think you said something important at the end there too. It might be hard to do like the IB programmes and the taking the classes, the one comment on that would just be, it might be a little bit more effort now, but in the long run, if you were to zoom out a little bit and you look at the 10% more time you need to put in now, it saves you 100% more of the freedom in your next two years. And then in your career. That sets the spark for your business that you're trying to start, or your job or your career to really spark and take off. I think that the 10% is definitely worth it, and I actually tell people that a lot of times with our programme, it takes less time. I noticed that a lot of these dual credit classes take less time, they're gonna be a little tougher, as far as making sure you're studying the right things and paying attention. But in actual time they're easier and that's a big reason I did it too - I needed time to spend on my businesses when I was in high school so it was great for me because it was less busy work and more just, get to the point.
I think you've uncovered some secret. This is, it really is - you really let something out in the world and I love it. So thank you so much, really excited and everybody can check out your website, we'll leave a link that people can go to and if they want to book with you, they can find you there. So thank you so much Andrew, and best of luck. We can't wait to see what the future holds for you.
Awesome. Yeah, thank you guys so much. Appreciate it.
