Kevin Swanson: And how do you maximize the mentorship experience? How do you become the very best apprentice? How do you be the guy that...
Daniel Craig: Don't ask me.
Kevin Swanson: ...that absorbs that...
Daniel Craig: Ask him.
Kevin Swanson: Well, you mentored with me.
Chad Roach: I did.
Kevin Swanson: For?
Chad Roach: Seven years.
Kevin Swanson: And it was effective, I think.
Chad Roach: It was, it was. My dad gave me everything he could and then said, "Hey, work with Kevin. Get what you can."
Kevin Swanson: And so many young people, they have a hard time understanding the mentorship, they don't know how to be the right apprentice. They don't maximize the experience. You can walk into a Subway and get an $8-an-hour job. You can walk into a Subway get the $8-an-hour job and turn it into a great mentorship that winds up providing you all that training and management in business and service and all these things that will benefit you to the point of contributing $500,000 to your income base over the next 40 years of your career. You can turn that Subway experience into a mentorship. But how do you do it? That's what this course is all about.
Chad Roach: A good apprentice is going to turn every situation in life into something of a mentorship by asking good questions and, Danny, you really were the one that spearheaded a lot of the production of this. So, I'd like you to take us through what does this look like from a content perspective. But boy, one of the things I remember is this is just really fostering an attitude and a perspective that really seeks to draw the wisdom of those around you and this is the format for doing that.
Daniel Craig: The basic foundational verse for this curriculum is, "Walk with wise men and you will be wise." And, the rest of the verse doesn't say, and it really doesn't matter who else you hang out with. The rest of the verse says, "But a companion of fools will suffer harm." So, there's a contrast here. It's not just coast along and you'll be okay, it's coast along with fools and you'll suffer harm. And for most young people, coasting along, period, means you're probably doing it with other people who are coasting along and that's just foolish altogether, so you're gonna suffer harm that way, but this course is designed to teach you what it means to walk with wise men.
And I just wanted to tell you one other experience that really, I think, formed the urge to create this curriculum and that was, when I was 20, we decided that it was time for me to get a little bit more training in the area of music. And we looked at different college options and we ended up sending me to Eastern Washington University where I studied for a year. And it's not that I didn't learn stuff, but I can remember the feeling of going through four-quarters, or rather, three-quarters of a conducting class, in a classroom with a professor who had great things to teach me, but I was sitting there surrounded by 20 kids who could care less about what was being taught and the whole process really lacked an important ingredient, which was the one-on-one and then the application. So, I think I would have learned far more in a month, or two months, or three months of private lessons with this conductor than I did in a full year of college courses. And the reason we didn't go that route, I mean we had considered doing a little bit more of a mentorship-based approach to music education, but we just didn't know how to piece it together, and we realized, "Wow, I think there's a lot of other families out there who... "
Chad Roach: Yeah, they just don't know how to do that.
Daniel Craig: "... are asking the question, how do I get a mentor? How do I network? How do I find someone who can help me? How do I establish a relationship? How do I make the relationship work for him and for me? And how do I bring value?" So, this curriculum was designed to be the A-Z, very practical, step-by-step approach to getting kids a vision for life and then launching them into that vision through mentorships and real life application. The sections cover, first of all, the foundations of mentorship. You talk about, is character preeminent or not? You talk about relationships and life integration. The next section considers calling and vocation. What does God want out of my life? Next one is Eric Weir talking about planning and goal-setting. These particular sessions, I've heard a lot of feedback. Just the whole idea of how to set a goal and how to set a good goal, of mechanics of mentorship, getting started in mentorship, how to network, how to find a mentor, how to be persistent, how to make a good first impression, asking questions. The seven steps to your first meeting, how to be a good mentee, like we were just talking about. How to accept criticism, finding the perfect opportunity. These are the very, very kinds of practical life skills that young men and young women all need to learn, regardless of what they do in life.
Chad Roach: How long does it take to go through the Kickstart course? How long should a young person plan on...
Daniel Craig: Yeah, so there's 30 segments, actually 29, and each segment is accompanied by about a 20- to 30-minute video training session, with men who have just phenomenal experience in education and in business and in different aspects of life. Kevin Swanson, Gary Powers, Woody Robertson, Steve Riddell, he's the Chief Sales Officer at Sprint. Dave Tucker, Eric Weir, Jeff Botkin, very godly but successful men, men who have applied these principles to their lives. And so there's 29 different training sessions, each training session is accompanied with a workbook section, as well, where kids go through, do some fill in the blanks to make sure they're paying attention, and then at the end of each chapter, first of all, there's self-evaluation questions. This is to really help young people think through the content and apply it to them, internalize it mentally. And then the next section is life application assignments. We don't want kids just going through this and feeling all warm and fuzzy. We want them taking action on each of the different concepts that are covered.
Daniel Craig: Then the book concludes with what we call My Kickstart and My Kickstart is really a personal launch planner. It takes all of the concepts covered throughout the curriculum and breaks it down into very bite-sized, understandable, achievable step-by-step pathway to help students say, "Okay, here's my goal, here's what I need to know to accomplish that goal. Who are the men in my life that God has already placed in my community who can help me know and learn what I don't know? And then what are the opportunities wherein I can take that wisdom, apply it to real life and develop the character, knowledge, and skill that I need to be the kind of young man or young woman God wants me to be to fulfill the calling He has in my life?"