Hey there,

Before I took over my kids' education, I served 11 years as a Naval Aviator. I learned what was possible with strong camaraderie, high expectations, and world-class culture.

So when I finally took it over, I knew I had to start with our relationship. I had to build the culture first. Because what I wanted wasn't just good. I wanted amazing.

I also knew what the alternative looked like. Twenty years from now, my kids would either tell stories about what we built together — or they wouldn't. They'd either come home because they want to — or they'd be counting the days until they got to leave.

I had to try.

Before I took it over, my son's teachers told me he was "never going to be a reader." He went from a toddler who loved reading to a 3rd grader who couldn't identify the verb in a sentence of A Wrinkle in Time.

In school, they told me he "needed to learn to do things he didn't want to do" if he was going to succeed. That was the day I decided he was never going back.

Six months later, my boy was reading The Odyssey. A year later he read it again…in Ancient Greek. Three years in, he's 3D printing Greek mythological weapons, correcting podcasts because he knows the stories better than they do, and making fun of me in Greek while his sister does it in Latin.

He's alive, funny, a big smartass.

My daughter was 7 when I pulled her out of the most elite private school in our town. She was two years ahead of her grade and bored out of her mind.

My kids went from not believing they had any control over what they learned to building an airplane with me—fuselage, tail, and one wing done in our first year—and demanding we build a Formula 1 car next.

I won't pretend I had this all planned out. The first time I tried teaching my son philosophy, it bombed. I'd prepared using guides, set the stage, asked the questions. He wouldn't listen.

He said, "I don't like thinking. This is too hard." We got in a huge fight. He didn't speak to me for three days. Not even a hello or "pass the ketchup." Stone cold silence.

I was angry. At him, for refusing to try philosophy. At myself, for not living up to my vision. With every moment of silence, I grew angrier about my failure.

Three days later he whispered to me: "I want to learn, but what you're teaching sucks."

That was when we really got started.

I want my kids to expect the unreasonable. And I want to become the kind of person who inspires that. I kept looking for the people around me who I could look up to. People who would sharpen me, push me higher. I couldn't find them.

So when Justin and I started talking about Real Work, I knew we were onto something. For families like yours. And honestly? For me too.

I'll go first by teaching your kids how to fly.

Hello,

I want a world for my son that doesn't exist. At least not yet.

I want him to have world-class opportunities, mentors, and partners. A life that will pull him upward and give him the tools to take on audacious challenges and his most aspirational ideas of what's possible. But I also want all of these things for myself and my wife, Marika. Since you've found your way to Real Work, I bet you want something similar for yourself and your family.

George Bernard Shaw once said that "the reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

Like many people, I'd like to consider myself this type of "unreasonable man." I'd wear that label like a new suit that makes me stand up a little taller. But I also see where Shaw gets it wrong. The life that I want for myself and my family is not unreasonable at all. It's only unreasonable to think that I can create it alone.

This is why we're building Real Work.

I've worked with kids of all ages for the last 15 years. I now have a young son and (eventually) more kids to come. Marika and I see the real work of parenting as setting our kids' perception of "normal." Beyond any of the details of their formal education, they will look to us — our hobbies and projects, our friends and collaborators, our mentors and mentees, and our daily patterns and major life decisions — to discern what a normal life is. What they will see will be anything but normal.

When I first met Latham, I saw another unreasonable dad. His commitment to himself and his kids’ futures inspires me and demonstrates what’s possible beyond the default options. Our families might want different paths, but we share a vision of parenthood. We both see our development as a human and as a father as inseparable from our commitment to our kids’ futures.

With Real Work, we want to bring together the most badass parents and families that we can find. Parents who push each other. Parents who collaborate to create the most unreasonable opportunities for each other and our kids.

Most of all, we want real community. Long-term relationships, lives that feel intertwined, and trust so deep that it feels like we're raising our kids together. The true digital village.

I'm so happy you've found your way here. If this sounds like what you want for you and your family, I'm so excited to meet!