Ep 45 | Host: Trev Warnke | Guest: Cory Borman

🔥 Why This Episode Matters

Most entrepreneurs talk about hustle, revenue, and scaling. Cory Borman talks about something most guys don't say out loud: knowing exactly what needs to get done and still not being able to make yourself start.

Cory has ADHD. Instead of treating it like a limitation, he built his entire business around it. He used a Kanban system to manage his own executive function struggles, then used that same system to help scale a previous company to $65-70M in ARR before it sold. Now he's applying it to a real gap in education: kids who are falling behind, and schools that catch it too late.

If you've ever felt stuck between knowing what to do and actually doing it, or if you're raising kids and watching them wrestle with the same thing, this conversation gives you a grounded, practical look at how systems, not willpower, actually solve that problem.

🎧 Listen to the Episode

👤 Meet the Hosts

• Trev Warnke - Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Profile

  Trev Warnke is the founder of Brotherhood Beyond Business and a business owner committed to helping entrepreneurial men sharpen themselves through leadership, health, accountability, and brotherhood.

• Cory Borman - Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Profile

  Cory Borman is the founder of Swoon Learning, a Prescott, Arizona-based tutoring and edtech company. After building and selling a previous business, Cory turned his focus to education, applying the same accountability systems that helped him manage his own ADHD to help students stay organized and on track.

• About Swoon Learning - Website | Instagram | Facebook

  Swoon Learning is built around two things: one-on-one academic coaching for students, and Front Office, a school-facing accountability platform. Together they help students build organizational skills while giving schools earlier insight into when a student is starting to struggle.

📌 What You'll Learn in This Episode

• How Cory's ADHD diagnosis shaped the way he builds and runs a business

• Why task initiation and emotional regulation are two of the hardest executive functions to manage

• How a Kanban board became the operating system behind a company that scaled to $65-70M in ARR

• Why most schools only intervene once a student is already falling behind

• The real reason parents and teachers end up blaming each other, and what it misses

• How Swoon Learning built two business lines around one shared mission

• Why using your own product, not just building it, is what makes it trustworthy

• What it means to build a business around purpose instead of just profit

🧩 Episode Summary

Cory Borman didn't set out to build an education company. He set out to understand why he could want to do something and still not be able to start. That question, rooted in his own ADHD, led him through behavioral psychology, a company he helped scale into the tens of millions before it sold, and eventually into Swoon Learning.

The conversation moves from the personal to the practical fast. Cory breaks down how a simple Kanban board became a life management system before it became a business system, and how that same structure now shapes how Swoon Learning helps students stay accountable to their own work.

Trev and Cory also get into a topic a lot of parents and teachers are living through right now: why schools tend to react only after a student has already fallen behind, and why the instinct to blame a teacher, a school, or a kid usually misses what's actually going on underneath.

This one lands squarely in Brotherhood territory. It's about building something with a real purpose, taking ownership of your own struggles instead of hiding them, and using discipline and systems to actually follow through.

🕒 Episode Timestamps

• [00:00] Intro & topic overview

• [01:09] Cory's ADHD diagnosis and path into education

• [11:40] Scaling a $65-70M business on Trello and Kanban boards

• [17:31] How accountability coaching became Swoon Learning

• [29:35] Why schools react too late to struggling students

• [32:14] The blame game: parents, teachers, and accountability

• [1:06:12] Inside Swoon's two verticals: coaching and Front Office

• [1:21:49] Resources, legacy, and what's next for Swoon Learning

💡 Quote Highlight

"Trello saved my life."

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• Listen to the full episode: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout

🚀Full Transcript

Trev Warnke (00:33)

hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Brotherhood Behind Business Podcast. Today we're talking with Corey Borman here of swoon learning, right? Swoon learning. And we're going to talk about his personal life, kind of dig into why he got into this, where he came from to get into the swoon learn learning in the tutoring industry, and then also what the business does, learn really in depth what the business does, and we'll go from there and see what his legacy looks like, what he's trying to do with this business,

where he's going in the future with him and his wife, what they're trying to do in this life. So let's go ahead and dive into Corey's life.

Corey, go ahead and start off. Just kind of give us really the background on who you are and what brought you into like the adventure to get you to swim learning, right?

Cory Borman (01:09)

Well, I'd say it mostly started with the fact that I have ADHD and I'm a neurodivergent person, so I have a different style of learning.

I've always loved education. I've always loved learning. having ADHD allows me to consume a massive amount of information, but it makes it very hard to distill that information. So

Up until about I'd say my early thirties,

I didn't know how to manage the the challenges that ADHD brought to me. So I started a business with a friend of mine down in San Diego.

And it was it's a behavioral he's he's he's a behavioral therapist and he works with the kids who are on the spectrum. Now ADHD isn't actually on the spectrum, it's not considered to be part of the autism spectrum, it's kind of right outside of the spectrum. so it doesn't get a lot of the insurance benefits that

Autism does.

But he had been a behavioral therapist for pretty much his whole life. And I saw that a lot of the kids that he worked with struggled to

really manage themselves in in a in a I'd say in a in a in a in their daily lives and in professional life, in their professional life as well, because they really had challenges getting to the professional because of the neurodivergence struggles that they had. So what I wanted to do with him was work with him on building a business that built out an application that did a lot of the intake when they were doing the trials.

on location. and I at that moment I really learned I dove deep into behavioral psychology and I really learned a lot about the challenges that I was having and how they were affecting me and what I needed to do to to to manage them. And that a light bulb really went off at that time. Pri prior to that I'd been in education. I had been in

hospitality. I had also worked in in SAS as well, in in software.

I worked for Pearson for for for five years, Pearson Education for five years prior to this business that I started with my friend. But like I said, the light bulb really went off when I understood what I needed to do in order to manage myself because there's I talk about this a lot. we'll get into my company obviously a little bit later, but I I talk about this fact where there's a

There's a gentleman that I follow. His name's Russell Barkley. He's a I believe he's a he's a he's he's I believe he's a psychologist, but his focus is on ADHD. And I've read a lot of his books. And there's one book that he wrote called Executive Functions that really hit home for me.

And it talks about how ADHD has a propensity to be underdeveloped in certain executive functions. And the two top executive functions that ADHD people are underdeveloped in are emotional regulation and task initiation. And I I've always had a problem with the emotional regulation component of life. And I never really understood why because

Sometimes I would just have

I would have, you know, meltdowns for for no no reason whatsoever. And I and I didn't understand why. And this really happened like up until I mean it still happens, obviously. You know, I still have dysregulation and I have some meltdowns sometimes. But knowing what I know now by opening up that business with with a friend of mine, he did applied behavioral analysis. So it's a it's a method of running trials on on on students to

Or not necessarily students, but I'm kids who have autism. it it's it's operant conditioning, right? It allows them to generalize certain things in their lives so that they can be more functional and more independent. I mean, that was really the whole point of the business, but you use a specific method called applied behavioral analysis. and it's I mean it it could be anywhere from not being able to

flush a toilet or not being able to get up and brush your, you know, comb your hair, brush your hair, or even like put on clothes. Right. It's like real basic functions in life that a lot of these kids were struggling with. Luckily, that wasn't me. But I would still have occasional meltdowns. You know, I would still have occasional dysregulation. And I wouldn't understand and I just didn't understand why, because I really did want and and a lot of it did come down it was centered around

Task initiation, which like I said before, is like the the second most underdeveloped executive function. Where in my mind I would say, wow, I really I really want to do this, but for some reason I can't. And and I just could not figure out why, why it was. a lot of people attribute it to laziness, but it it really isn't, you know, maybe a little bit, but it really does come down to the emotional dysregulation. And so

I I worked with a lot of these kids as as a product person, which is my background. If you're if you don't get in it and you're not, as they say in the software industry, if you're not eating your own dog food, then you're you're not really embodying what's going on. so I I became a a behavioral interventionist at at at this company. so I'm founder.

Mark, you know, CMO, whatever the title was. I mean, there's really no titles in startups, right? that's more of like an external validation. But I was in a I was a behavioral interventionist and I learned an unbelievable amount about how difficult life is for kids with autism. And then, you know, it didn't make it humbled me, right? It didn't make me feel so bad about my dysregulations, you know, in the life that I have. So

I took that knowledge and I know that.

Endemically, pandemically, it's a problem for a lot of people. And it's even a bigger problem for a lot of children. They might not be neurodivergent, but I mean, these ratios have slimmed down to one in five boys are, you know, neurodivergent to some degree. One in 11 girls, I think that was the last statistic that I read, are neurodivergent or, you know, have ADHD or ADD.

so it I mean it used to be you know one in twenty, one in fifty. I mean there's multiple factors for that, right? Like we won't get into that, but I took this knowledge that I learned and I took these processes on how to how to be how to how to

regulate myself more in order for me to be able to initiate tasks and complete work.

I took that knowledge and I incorporated it into a a a process. And that process that really I I like to say that Trello saved my life. I don't know if you know your audience knows. I'm sure they probably know about cash management tools, right? And Kanban tools. Trello was one specific one that I had used previously to building this business with my friend.

And I actually used these I used another tool called Monday to help him build his business where I basically something that I learned at when I was at ANOVA Culinary was setting people up to be successful. I think it's like a Jim Collins concept or something like that. I don't remember exactly where it came from, but it's not just delegating work to people, but it's actually putting in some work and then handing it off.

Right. So like you kind of like build a process and then you hand that process off to somebody. Or, you know, you you don't just tell people to like figure it out. Right. You kind of you're a problem solver. So it's a pro it's it's like a product management type of mentality where you you put yourself into the position, you figure out the problems, and then you help other people figure those problems out as well.

So the Kanban board was something that helped me get more organized. So another executive function under development is, you know, compartmentally it's organization. And with that is prioritization. I think a lot of people have difficulty with prioritization. I think there's a lot of organized people that don't know how to prioritize things. And, you know, I'm definitely one of those two. I mean, it's hard to prioritize. You don't know what's like you really, you really don't know.

what takes precedence over something in in the in in a hierarchical like prioritization level. Like that stuff shifts, right? And being an entrepreneur, it never sticks. It's it's very fluid. You know, you one day you you might have this priority and you know there might be a a fire that you have to put out. So it reprioritizes things. So it makes it very challenging if you don't have a level of organization to be able to prioritize. So I found that these Kanban boards

Trello specifically, I was use Mon using Monday for a while, but Trello specifically is a very open framework. It's very extensible and you can kind of mold it in a way that fits your organization slash prioritization style.

My business partner, who I'd met at ANOVA, she was on the hardware side and I was on the software side. she, I remember the first time that we met was in the ANOVA office. and this this, like I said, was prior to me starting the business with my friend before I moved down to San Diego when I'm when I was living up in s San Francisco. She saw me working on Trello. I had all, I had all my teams, I had my dev team, I had my

design team, I had my UX team all on separate boards that kind of all connected. And so we ran all of our tasks through Trello. The whole company was literally built on Trello. I mean this this company was it's it before I came into it it it was at zero revenue and by year three we were at about sixty five to seventy million in in ARR and

Then we sold the business for a quarter billion dollars to Electrolux. So this this multi multi-million dollar business was literally built on Trello. It was built on a Kanban board. I mean, amongst other integrations and stuff. You know, it wasn't just Trello. But

Trev Warnke (11:40)

It's the system behind the system.

Cory Borman (11:42)

Yeah,

exactly. There's systems that were connected to, you know, but but Trello is like kind of the task. It's the accountability tool. It's the task management tool, right? Like you you take the whole idea is, you know, it's it's behind this this Angela Duckworth term called chunking, where you like take things from a very complex state and you break them down into like really manageable states. And there's like a mnemonic called invest for that, but we don't have to get into that. And that kind of helps you figure out.

It's a very software thing, right? Like it helps you figure out how to take that complex component or that complex whole and break it down into small and manageable chunks that then build back up to that, right? So that's that's how you can build out a Trello board. And that's how we that's how I built out all of my Trello boards working at ANOVO. Well, Carla recognized that. And she said, Well, you know, what are you using? What is that? And I it's Trello, you know, and here I am just like

just completely nerded out, you know, in just in the machine or in my computer, just building out bores and tracking things and, you know, like make like just completely optimizing it, making it more efficient, making the systems more eff efficient, which, you know, in turn makes my team more effective. And you know, I really had I had it I had team overseas in Ukraine. So I had to manage them as well. It was, you know, it's very taxing, it's very exhausting, but to imagine doing that, not using a Trello board.

now is like I use Trello for everything. So Carla at the time was doing tutoring. And me always loving education or had you know have always loved education.

We didn't really talk much at at that time, but a couple years after ANOVA was acquired, Carla re reached out to me and she said, Hey, I'm I'm looking to she had worked at Apple. So she she and she and her husband worked at Apple and she worked with Steve Jobs, like literally with Steve Jobs. She worked on the first iPod. she worked on she worked on a lot of the hardware products at ANOVA. She worked on she worked at Xbox.

She worked at NASA. She's very she's double double E electrical engineering. And she's got a a degree in physics as well. So she's super, super smart. And so she was teaching she was tutoring kids while she was doing hardware. she she was a hired contractor. So she'd come in and build products for for companies, and then go to another company and do the same thing. she did that after Apple.

So she was tutoring via Zoom for about she's been doing it for about 10, 11 years now, but prior to us meeting, she was doing it for about seven, seven years, seven, eight years. And she started to take on this Kanban to keep herself organized. And she realized that it had a direct correlation to.

The success of the children, which is, you know, measured by grades, graduation rates. Like I think her number one success, her success metric that mattered was how many graduations did she get invited to. That was something that she always teased about. But it's a really good metric, though, if you think about it, right? From an ed from an educator's perspective. Because you know, grades can only tell you so much, right? and and you don't, you don't know that, you know, there's there's a bell curve with grades. There's there's a lot of external.

factors that go into how how things get graded. but something that she was recognizing was that being organized in this Kanban board and running things across this Kanban board from a backlog to doing or to in you know to in progress or doing to done, right? Like it's pretty simple like Kanban board. It can be or it can be really complex like you know like Jira, if you use Jira for software development. Super, super complex. But now

Jira actually, Atlassian, who's the makers of Jira, they bought Trello. So now they've made Trello extremely complex. so I don't mind complexities, but a lot of people do. They have a very difficult time with complexities. And so don't

Trev Warnke (15:47)

something at Trello which was very simple which is the one of the best parts about Trello was how simple it was.

Cory Borman (15:52)

Yeah. And you know, going back to what I was saying about setting people up to be successful, I mean, the hardest thing to do, if I'm if I'm gonna practice what I preach, I'm not gonna, I can't give somebody something that's super complex, right? Because like I have to break it down for them into small manageable pieces. Well, what better way to do that than through a visual Kanban board than something like Trello? So Carla was using that with her tutoring and it works really well for virtual. It works great for virtual. And so she had called me up.

I had I had a digital marketing company before, after ANOVA that I ran for about five years. And I loved it. It was great. But I think there was a period where I said, okay, I'm ready to do something. I'm ready to service myself, right? I'm ready to

I love the clients that I had, but I was ready to build something that was my baby. And I did feel like that when I was at ANOVA, but I didn't have that total ownership, right? So this was something that Carla and I could build from the ground up, based off of her analog, right? So I I took her analog and we built out our program first, which is academic coaching. and

That kind of became one-on-one and group virtual. And we used those, we use those students and those coaches. We call them academic coaches because of the executive functioning that I had mentioned earlier. So not only do we deliver subject matter expertise, but we also work with them through a like a weekly planning subject where we help them organize. because our front office software has a very light version of.

Kanban board within so that makes up a key component of our software.

Trev Warnke (17:31)

So you're when you're saying that you're so you're helping the students organize, right? Like the ones that that you're tutoring in a sense or coaching.

Cory Borman (17:36)

Yes. So if we're if I were to say, if I were to put it in one tagline is we help students become more accountable. Okay. Yeah. Not only in their work, but also in in their life as well. Because it transfers over, right? You know, you always get people saying, you know, mixing business and pleasure. Well, it's kind of hard not to do that when you're an entrepreneur, right? Like 'cause your your life isn't separated by it's all it's very incorporated, right? It's not separated by your business and your personal life.

It is it's very personal, especially if you build a product. And

Trev Warnke (18:09)

single one of my best friends owns a business and I do business with them. You know, like that's just like once you're an entrepreneur, that's just your that's just part of how it is, right? It's just nothing wrong with that.

Cory Borman (18:18)

No, I mean I don't think I mean you obviously have to in you know, and being a being a

A lover of behavioral psychology.

Not just because I love to read, but also because I need and want meaningful and successful relationships.

You know, you have to you have to know how to balance your behavior at home and at work as well, right? Like it's not ultimate stoicism, although stoicism can be helpful, in especially in business. Maybe not so much in the house. but I mean, I'm a I'm an extreme enthusiast of of behavioral psychology. So like I've read pretty much all B. F. Skinner's books and you know, working with kids as well.

There is a lot of behavioral components that they just they don't get from their teachers, nor nor do they really get from their parents. Like parents don't really have time to think about behavioral psychology and, you know, work with their kids from a behavioral perspective. They just they like to farm it out, right? For the most part. Some do, you know, but they're the outliers. so yeah, so that pretty much brought me to swoon.

She was doing s Carla was doing swoon tutoring before. And then we decided that we were gonna launch Swoon Learning because I wanted it to be a bit bigger than that, than you know, more than just tutoring. So I had to convince her that software was the model to scale, that humans and human human capital and human cost is a very delicate, it's very delicate subject. You know, it's a very, it's a very delicate

I guess cog, you know, like like the cost of goods and services, right? It's like a it's very delicate. and it can be very expensive, especi especially in a startup stage. So as much as I do want to continue to hire academic coaches, because we we do believe that at the core of education is still a human to human relationship. because we have found a lot, and you can stop me and pivot if you want, you know, to talk about something else or if that if that cleared up.

Trev Warnke (20:17)

Good yeah.

Cory Borman (20:18)

something that we have discovered in our so we've been around for about three and a half years. So something, but you know, Carla's been teaching for forever. She's she's got a kid. and the really the the success model that I had mentioned earlier was how many graduations you go to. Well, she

was able to get her daughter who absolutely hated math, which generally is the case, right? Like you your your parents do something and you kind of shun them, you know, well maybe not shun them, but you you choose not to to go down that path, you know, as more of like a revolt against your parents, right? So you you choose to do something different. So her Carla loves math, but her daughter hated math. And so she was able to get her daughter to love math.

And get into UCLA. And that becomes kind of a model for how if you want to look.

I'll be the first to say that if you if you don't want to go to college, don't go to college. You know, I don't I think college has its place in the world, but it's not for everybody. So if you're really good with working with your hands, the trades need really talented people, you know. But if you want to work with your mind or if you really want to work with AI, because that's pretty much like what it is nowadays, then you know, getting a college education and being socialized within that environment.

And you know, going and having that discipline built up in college is really going to help you work with other people in the real world, right? Because it's like it is a team, college is a team sport. so yeah, so I guess so I guess that that pretty much like leads us up to where where I am currently with with Swoon. so our software is is pretty mature right now. it can handle

It it can handle quite a bit of load. We have two different business verticals. We have one that still does the tutoring, but then we have an institutional vertical. So we have a couple of schools that we're working with that our tool, front office, acts as a complementary tool. It's not a supplementary tool to their learning management systems or their.

security information systems, the LMS or SIS. They're not really meant to replace those. Cause those those are, I mean, talk about complex. Those are super complex. And it's it's hard to compete against the incumbents in that space, like against like Google, even like Schoology, iReady Connect, yeah, even some schools use Microsoft. yeah, Google Classroom is the one.

so it's really hard to to compete against them because they have they've got like pricing dominance, right? You know, their bulk. So most most Canvas is another one. Most schools use Schoology, Canvas, Google Classroom. Google Google Classroom makes up the bulk. And you know, they're they're such low cost. They they almost like I think they even give it away for free at at some point. So especially in the United States, I don't think it's a I don't think they're

as global. but then you have like open source tools like Moodle as well, where you can like basically build out your your LMS platform. So like competing with that stuff, that wasn't really what we set out to do. What what front office does is is it's it's the accountability software. So it's the accountability integration, which a lot of these systems don't necessarily hold you accountable to things. They might offer the metrics in as far as grades, attendance, you know, stuff like that to the teachers.

But they don't track work very well. They're mostly just storage facilities. So you can store a lot of documents and whatnot, but then accessing those documents and having them be valuable to a student or to a teacher is quite lacking. Also, another thing that FrontOffice does that is quite different from some of these other legacy LMSs or SIS, maybe not so much the SISs.

but the the learning management systems for sure, is there's no human, there's no human component that is ever present, that, you know, or that's omnipresent, I should say. at the core of what swoon learning is, it's you can always book an academic coach. not so much on the institutional vertical, but more on the academic coaching vertical. So what we've done is we've created this kind of

handshake where we're you know it's like it's like uber for for extended help if you want to think about it that way right so supply and demand there's in schools in in an institution and we work primarily with private institutions so in a private institution you have students who are hard are you know realistically are hard to identify if they're having challenges

because there's there's layers and layers and layers of technology and humans and bureaucracy within within these institutions. So it's hard to detect if a student is having, you know, a a challenge, not only behaviorally, psychologically, and or academically, right? So even even like athletically too, right? So like a lot of the kids that we deal with in high school or that we work with, I don't want to say deal with, but a lot of kids that we work with in high school.

Have their student athletes. Like a two-thirds of our kids are student athletes. So they come to our academic coaching side of the business, the tutoring side of the business, and they look for their parents look for extended help for them because they're having challenges in academics because they're excelling in athletics, right? So that balance is something that we recognized early on as well, that we service. So but in the institution side.

because there's a lot of you know those layers that that I mentioned. it's it's a lot of the times, you know, the teachers, it's a one to thirty, one to fifty ratio. They're and they have multiple classes that they're that they're actually running, you know, in the school because of of labor shortages and you know all kinds of different problems in schools. Private's a little bit, you know, a little bit more I'd say, or I don't want to say organized, but private's a little bit more functional.

You know, then in public. I think public's a little bit less functional because there's more layers of things. and different expectations, of course, right? Funding, whatever. but in the private institution, it it sometimes is difficult. And in the public, of course, it's difficult to identify when it when a child is struggling at the most opportune moment. Right. You can tell if a kid's struggling because their grades are, you know, precipitating, right? They're

getting lower and lower and lower over time. Or their recidivism, you know, is that the right word? No, their truancy, right? Their truancy rates of not showing up to class are high. Yeah. So get rid of recidivism. That's that's institutional

prisons. So it's truancy, their truancy rates are plummeting as well. So there are, there are ways to, you know, there are indicators, right, that schools use, but they don't really pay attention to those indicators that much. It's usually at the last minute where it's a it's a panic buy, right? Tutoring is is a panic buy. And so what we want to do in the institution with our front office plugged into that is we want to be able to identify when those kids are

we want to get them on the on the on the on-ramp, right? We don't want to get them on the off-ramp when there's emotional need. You know, we want we want foundational functional need. So we want to be able to identify when a child is beginning to struggle so that we can intervene. And a lot of this I learned from working at

It was communication lab was the name of the company that I started with my friend, the the applied behavioral analysis. it was all about intervention. It was all about how quick to intervene can you be, right? So it was a very like behaviorally psych it was a it was a very behavioral or very psychologically driven intervention. And so we think that a lot of the students that that are are dysregulating in the school, whether they're neurodivergent or neurotypical,

has a lot to do with the anxiety of not catching things early on, right? Like this is this is this isn't new, you know, that what what I'm talking about, right? Like predictive, predictive analysis isn't new, right? so we have this up we have this opportunity with with front office that we're currently working with schools in order to give them more human language-based insight into if a kid is at

a beginning stages of a of a downfall or depreciation right level. Catch them before and then integrate and kick them over to front office, swoon front office, right? which is our tutoring version of the system and allow them to get extended help. So that's kind of where that Uber for Uber for tutoring or you know Uber for I can't remember what I actually said before.

Ur Uber for extended help. That that's kind of where that comes in. Because we can be that handshake between where we have vetted academic coaches that already work for us and work with a lot of kids actually that do go to these schools that you know we're that we're working with, but where it's a seam almost a seamless

acquisition of a vetted academic coach.

Trev Warnke (29:35)

I mean, so I'm just gonna give my perspective because my those of you guys that don't know, my wife is a teacher. And so this is the conversation that you're telling me honestly is her biggest obstacles, right? What you you guys are trying to solve are their biggest obstacles because their their classrooms are pretty full. so she's in the public school system, which is a little like public school systems are pretty full. I feel I don't know private world that much, but I know public schools for sure are pretty full of kids. in their classrooms are like she she kind of has like a one to twenty-seven ratio right now, which is a pretty big ratio.

This is my understanding. I'm literally just repeating what she's saying. I don't know anything about schooling much. But but her biggest thing is like they have to be very reactive to a lot of the issues happening, right? And so they're being reactive to when these kids have already fallen off. They pretty much just get suspended for although some of these things that they're going into, versus like having a a stage to go to. tutoring is not really something that's

even offered to the kids, right? It's more just like it's usually

comes down to they're saying it's behavioral issue when really, as my wife says, I don't think it truly is a behavioral issue, but it's showing up as a behavioral issue issue because the teachers, the principals, like even their school specifically, has downsides to the point that they don't even have like all the things that they go from principal to not even having an assistant principal now. And so there's just like this these stages that schools are losing because of you know overall things. But I do think some of the things you're talking about sound like they're they're problem solver for like let's catch the kid

really when they're on the downswing, put them into something to bring them back on the upswing. But what happens in schools right now is that that puts the that pressure is actually put on the the teacher to like they're seeing the downswing, which then is going to affect the the numbers of all the kids in the school, which is then going to affect the finances from the from the state that come into them. So they can go from like a B rated school to a D rated school or vice versa. Like you're doing well, you can go from a D to a B rated school, which affects finances, at least in Arizona. I don't know all the other states if they follow that that exact scale or not.

But here it does. So like their Chino Valley middle school was a D-rated school, but the high school is a B rated school. That affects the kind of finances coming in. And so, but one of the biggest things is because of the kids' academic fall-off, that put that pressure put on the teacher to like, you need to do better in the classroom. But it's not a classroom issue. It's actually this kid's falling off. And so you guys are solving, okay, front front office is catching, hey, we know this is about to happen. Let's then intervene before this happens, and nobody is.

of the wiser in many many ways meaning like, hey, the kids not gonna have issues, they're gonna be back on track, but it's also not gonna affect the school who's gonna be losing money because sp specifically in the public sector is gonna be losing money because if we have enough kids going into this, we might go down in in ratings because of our test scores, which will then negatively impact the money that's coming in.

Cory Borman (32:14)

Yeah. I'm glad you validate that because, you know, that's really what we're seeing a a lot and what I read as well. When I read, I mean, I read a lot about education, naturally, you know. I mean, I've read a lot about education for a really long time, but I read a a lot about I read a lot more about it nowadays.

Trev Warnke (32:31)

I'll keep on with with mine for that that kinda help validate you is where the problem is with parents is they think it might be a teacher issue as well. And so then they go to homeschooling or they go to something else that think so I grew up in Illinois or Iowa, sorry. Grew up in Iowa. We lived in Illinois. Both of those schools are district based states. Meaning like the district you're in is the schools you have to go to. In Arizona it's an open enroll state. So you can go to in if they're in Chino, they can go to school in Prescott or Prescott Valley they can go to school anywhere they want.

So parents will blame the teachers or the system in a sense the system or blaming the teacher that this is happening, will then take them to a Prescott school and they'll fail in the Prescott school too and move them to a Prescott Valley school. And within a year and a half, that kid's back in Chino Valley again, realizing like, hey, it took me to take this kid to all these schools thinking it was teacher's issue. When it really was, the student was falling through the system and the parent needs to invest in getting them more help too. So it's like it's a double thing, whereas the parents are bailing and going to something else thinking it's a teacher issue. When it's not,

the teachers, the ratio's off. So begin just validates the idea that like catch it early, but tutoring and things of that nature, we have to get them back on pace. You just can't ignore it. Just can't catch it early and like, well, the teacher has to teach better. There's just no ability to teach better. We need more time with this kid.

Cory Borman (33:39)

Yeah, there's unfortunately like most things, unless it's, you know, observed by many, right? Most problems are most problems don't have a single point of failure. So

This isn't just conducive to the education industry.

But overall, I mean, you know, people they don't want to blame themselves. I think it's easier, it's cost effective and less taxing if you blame somebody else for something, because then you don't have to hold yourself accountable to it, right? looking at the mirror and holding yourself accountable is can be can be a difficult position, you know, for anybody, especially for a parent. I don't have any kids, but you know, I work.

I get I get enough I have a large sample size where I can

somewhat determined, it's not fully deterministic, but you know, with that extremely high probability of what's going on, right? So I don't necessarily and and I think that's I think that's something that happens a lot in society is I mean this could be a whole nother topic that we talk about, but I I won't go in too deep with this. But I think when when when people have children

First of all, I think maturity is a choice. I fully believe that being mature is a choice, right? So just because you're fifty years old, it doesn't mean that you're gonna be a mature human being, right? You might not be a great role model for a a younger person, right?

But I think a I think what happens a lot is when people have kids, they

somewhat lose touch with themselves and live more vicariously through their children. So it's a lot harder to keep up maturity because they're living through their children, right? And children are mature. I mean, it's just what it is. you can have a really mature younger child, but if their brain isn't fully developed, I mean, they're just, they're, you know, they're they're not fully developed. They're they're immature. I don't mean that in like a sociological kind of a way. I mean that in a biological way

somewhat physiological way as well. So I think a lot of parents regress their maturity. And it's e when you're when you're and I might be going on a limb here, but I'm okay with doing that. When you're less mature, you're gonna hold yourself accountability. You're you're gonna when you are less mature-minded, you're going to not hold yourself accountable as much. Because I think mature-minded people.

have experience in the world. They've had challenges in the world. They've had, I don't want to use the word failures because I try to use the word challenges because we don't like to use the word failure a whole lot. But there there are, you know, a lot of challenges that more mature minded people have. and, you know, life is a distribution curve. It goes up and down, up and down. And I think the the easiest path is to is to stay as close to the baseline as you can, right?

And and I think a lot of parents can't do that. I'm not, you know, so on that note, the blame game. we actually did a podcast episode on that. so maybe there could be some like cross cross-linking here, you know, for that episode when we put it out. there isn't there isn't a point of blame in in the world. the w we live unfortunately, but maybe fortunately sometimes we live in a very gray world.

You know, there it is it isn't black and white. It would be so much easier. There'd be so much less anxiety if it was black and white, but it's not. There's certain things that might be close to it, but usually societally at large it's a very, very gray area. So it makes sense why people would want to blame others. you know, it it relieves them of responsibility or relieves them of well, maybe not responsibility so much, but it definitely relieves them of accountability and

When you're living vicariously through your child

I would say high 90% of our parents think their child is the smartest kid on the face of the earth. And that couldn't be any further from the truth. As we know, especially in the United States, I can't speak globally, but I'm sure it's very similar in a lot of countries. We live in a competitive environment, you know. you go to you go to preschool, it's competitive in its own right.

Right. You go to kindergarten, it has competition as well. You get into middle school, it's there, you know, you start to get into organized, active, competitive things, right? Like sports, clubs, things like that. You get into high school, you're just moving through these ranks, right? You're going through these like layers of competition. You get into high school and it becomes extremely competitive because now you're becoming an adult, right? And you can push your body.

Push your mind a lot more. Then you go into college. A lot of people don't like to leave college because they're afraid to get out into the ultimate competitive world, right? So I think competition has definitely played a big role, or the lack thereof, or the

idea of competition being a negative has played a role in the blame game as well. Because I think that a lot of parents, I'm just generally speaking here, okay. I'm I'm not I'm not saying that this is an all, right? This isn't a majority minority kind of a thing. But what I see a lot, and I'm a very competitive person. So maybe I see it from my lens like this a little bit, you know, differently. But like I said before, we have enough

We have enough data to show that a large majority of our parents, not not the not the ones who their kids are student athletes, but mostly the ones where their parents aren't into some kind of competitiveness or competitive nature. Cause it can it it doesn't it it's not a negative. Okay. I think that's kind of what I'm getting at. Competition is not a negative, right? I think it's become a net negative, or it feels like it's become a net negative.

Where in reality it's a net positive because we do live in a capitalist society and competition pretty much runs what you know, overarching what capitalism is. And I don't see that changing extremely for a while. but what I do see changing is is attitudes of parents who

don't even accept that life is competitive, right? There's stuff called gentle parenting that, you know, I know we've heard where it's it's very psychologically driven, almost even manipulative. I mean, I think that there's a fine line between influence and manipulation. And I think a lot of people get caught up, you know, when they get somebody to do something, they at at first it might be, unless they're like, you active one of those

That 2% who actively knows what they're doing, right, when it comes to influence. they might take that a little bit too far. But influencing a kid to be more competitive in a positive way, I think has lost its luster. So that I don't think exists in the majority of households. And we see that, you know, there were like it there, there's outcomes from that, there's results from that.

Kids aren't able to handle. I mean, even there's a a lot of adults. This kind of goes back to the emotional dysregulation and meltdowns. I mean, you see it all over the internet where people are having meltdowns. You know, there's there's all kinds of stuff going on out there in the in the world that shows that, you know.

competition might be looked at as something as a negative, right? And it trickles down from from parents and what we might want to classify as mature people and down to the more immature minds. And it becomes less influential and it becomes more manipulative. And so then these kids go to school and they're behaving just as if you know, social media has I don't want to blame social media fully either, because you know, parents have control over what their kids do.

I think a lot of parents don't feel like that because they've lost that control or they feel like they've maybe lost that power. But like I said before, and kind of like tying this all back up, to your comment about parents blaming the system or parent parents blaming the school. I mean, there there really is just a few th there are a few things to blame. You know, you can you can blame the teachers, you can blame the the the students, you can blame the the system.

and you know you can blame the the the the parents right but it all kind of works in concert so if there if there isn't reinforcement going on at home nor is there reinforcement for studies and behavior going on at school and even out there in the environment and even you know some kind of controls on what

influence or manipulation is coming in from a from a screen. like all that stuff needs checks and balances before a parent can blame a teacher or a teacher can, you know, blame the student. Right. It's it's it's a very it's a it's a very complex, difficult system to keep operational, you know. we

Trev Warnke (42:54)

But we

Cory Borman (42:55)

we see the blame game.

a lot. It's it's it's very it's very heavy within education.

Trev Warnke (43:01)

thing you were going there I wanted to piggyback on that real quick was because earlier you said that one of the things you do is besides obviously just the the learning or the tutoring part is also helping them like organize their schedule and be a little

Cory Borman (43:12)

Schedule. Life skills.

Trev Warnke (43:13)

because some of the stuff that you're just pointing out there has them distracted or unfocused and you need to help like put certain parameters in place. Like guys, to do this we have to like put some organization in your s in into your time. So

Cory Borman (43:26)

Yeah, I mean we're not we're not clinical, you know, psychologists. Like we we don't have any like clinics on our staff, you know, on our team. But you don't have to, you know, you d to be a behavioral behavioral or behavior interventionist or behavioral therapist, you just you need to be a high school GED and then you go and you take a course in order to do it.

So you don't have to have like a full accreditation to kind of work with this SEL is what they call it in school, so social emotional learning. I think there's been too much of a focus on SEL in school, unfortunately. And and SEL, SEL is somewhat of a placating therapy. it's not really a therapy, it's just kind of like a manage trying to it's it's a it's an attempt to manage emotions in school than it is an attempt to.

increased merit, maybe. Maybe that's a general statement. I mean, it definitely has more components to it. But I think there's been, especially in public schools, there's been a huge focus on social emotional, the social emotional learning aspect of it, tending to feelings. So going back to kind of what I was saying about or what I was beginning to say about gentle parenting, it's a very like SEL kind of driven

methodology at at at the home and at the school. So imagine if you're getting both of that at school and at home and in the environment. I mean, we live in a very sensitive environment, right? I mean people should be sensitive to other people, but also people need to have some grit, you know, like people need to be able to like we don't want to raise I don't want to raise dependent children, you know, I want to raise independent children because my my father is an entrepreneur. I'm an entrepreneur.

A lot of my friends that I'm around or a lot of friends that I have are entrepreneurs. and it's just kind of it's a way of life, right? Like entrepreneurship is not it's a choice, of course, but it's I don't know, putting a little bit of pressure on oneself to have a greater gain at in the end seems a little bit more, I guess, fun. Maybe it's my ADHD, you know, than

having a a you know, a steady life.

Trev Warnke (45:33)

Well, it's something you you actually said earlier on why you wanted to no longer run a SaaS company or marketing agency and move into something that has a mission, right? Mission entrepreneurs are naturally mission driven. and a lot of times when we build businesses that just bring in income, that's actually not much of a mission for us. Right. And so we are mission driven people. Not everybody's mission driven, but the reason that entrepreneurship is a life

because you're on a mission to do something great in in the lane that you feel like

This is where I think I can impact the world or this is where my my attention is, right? so I think a lot of that is like just your your mission driven. And it's like, it's and I would say for the most part, most entrepreneurs are more mission driven than they are financially driven. Financial,

Cory Borman (46:10)

Yeah.

Trev Warnke (46:11)

that when we talk about competition, the competition is about how much more money I make. Competition is how impactful can this be. Money comes along with the journey. and I do think the true entrepreneurs that are really building great things, this somewhat like Elon Musk kind of stuff, right? Is like, yes, the guy is worth more money than anybody else.

However, all the things he's building have nothing to do with money. They have to do with mission-driven things that bring in a ton of money because he's chasing after something so big. Money comes along with it. But the idea is he's on missions that nobody else is willing to tackle or have tried to tackle. And I think that's what we all are on to start. We're not doing what Elon Musk is doing, but we have our lanes where we're driven, like this is what, you know, for me, it's like what God put me on earth to do. This is a thing I think that I've developed a skill set over a long enough period of time to this is the lane I think I'm finally being.

Cory Borman (46:56)

Yeah, I mean it's the purpose, right? Yep. Yeah, mission purpose, kind of very similar. I mean whether you like Elon Musk or not, I I I don't disagree. I mean, I think he's he's done some pretty incredible things for humanity. I think one of the one of the bigger I guess challenges

I would almost go on a line and say it's a it's it's a one of the bigger problems is money in politics, right? 'Cause I I think that that over the years has really it's really created a a kind of a two headed monster. And because of media, I'm not just gonna blame social media because I don't really I I I like to hold myself accountable to things because I feel like I can actually get

I can complete goals if I hold myself accountable, right? I mean some sometimes I sit sometimes it takes me a while to get going, right? but that that's that task initiation problem that I have. So like I have to find stimulation in order to like really get moving. but I but I understand, you know, you know, there's there's a lot of there's a lot of political views. I won't get into that obviously, but there's a lot of political views on on Elon Musk. Whereas, you know, kind of where you're coming from

I I I tend to agree a little bit more. Yeah, he might, you know, be the world's first trillionaire. but I feel like he's creating incredible value for humanity. And in you know, in a sci in a society that we have, in a in a in a capital structure that we have in the United States, you get rewarded for that, you know? And I would imagine he gives back. I don't know a whole lot about I've read both biographies, like the the

Ashley Vance one and then the Walter Isaacson, I think, on both on Elon Musk. But I don't remember them talking about like philanthropy. maybe I maybe I just didn't pay attention to that part. but I'm sure he gives back in some ways, you know. I mean, I mean he does it through his products and services. But but anyway, you know, out out outside of Elon Musk and, you know, what he's doing. Yeah. Where, you know, I'm I'm a very, as an entrepreneur, I'm a very mission purpose driven person.

I I really want smart. I w I want a smart America. and and even you know even if internationally speaking, if people are coming to America because I know they love it, you know. I mean, we had an unbelievable migration many years ago that, you know, that I don't think those people are coming here because they hate America. I think I think they're coming here because they don't like where they're coming from and they want a better life for their families.

I I believe that's the majority of you know migrants who come here. and so

There's an assimilation problem in the world too. Well, maybe not the world, but there's an assimilation problem. I think just kind of generally speaking, with migratory patterns, but like human migration, if we let in too many.

And we don't allow them enough time to assimilate, you know, that can organize and and can grow into

something that might not look very American, right? But I think over over time, if you're here, you're multi-generational American, you understand how wonderful of a country America is. And I'm not I'm not saying that other countries aren't wonderful. You know, I've traveled and but I've never lived. That's the thing, you know? not saying that I wouldn't try it, but I do I do love I love what America has built and I want to make

I want to help.

International students who are becoming American or Americans

continue to be the most innovative country on on the planet, you know, going back to competition. Competition plays a huge role in

probably more private markets than than you know than public. And I don't mean public in in regard, I mean public funded, right? Pri private funded markets, I think, are naturally competitive. I mean, that's kind of the whole point. public funded, you know, you're Milton Friedman had this you know, famous econom economist. He had this he wrote this book called Freedom to Choose that I just finished

And there were like these four I think you call them like spending archetypes or four spending categories. Like the the first one is category one is you make your own money and spend your money on yourself. The second category is you make your own money and spend money on yourself and other people. The third category is you make somebody else's money and spend it on yourself. And then the fourth is you make somebody else some you somebody else makes money.

for you. I mean it's the same as the third. Somebody else makes money for you and you spend it on yourself and other people. So it's a it's a spectrum, right? And I think what's bifurcated down the middle of that is

the public and private markets, right? So publicly funded or or private and public, right? So being in a private, being a private enterprise has its benefits in

Somewhat competitive capitalism, which is probably redundant, right, in saying that because like capitalism is naturally competitive, but or or being reliant on public funding, right? Which doesn't have a lot of competition. It's actually somewhat frowned upon in

nongovernmental organizations, right? it's like a right side up pyramid versus an upside down pyramid, right? Like

It can be. Depends on how your organization is structured, right? but going back to that, you know, competition and the purpose, I I think you there's there's a lot more freedom within the the the private framework than there is in in the in the public, right? Because there's a lot you have a lot more responsibility and you have to hold yourself accountable in the private, in the public. And and like I said, I'm I'm speaking very generally, right? Like this isn't always the case.

But overall, if you're a dependent,

There's, I think there's less accountability, right? Because you're spending other people's money. So that drives a lot of our my personal mission, my my personal growth, my personal struggles is I, you know, I choose to, I choose to make my own, I choose to have my own destiny, right? I have the freedom to choose. And and I believe that. And I think that, you know, creating more.

There was there was a quote, I don't remember who said it, but they it was something like

This

Ti today's college students are tomorrow's

government, right? I it's something like that. But I think you get the point, right? Yeah. The education the how we educate the kids today is how they're gonna govern when when they get into power. And we're seeing that. You know, we're seeing this stuff flips all the time. Things go back and forth all the time. I mean that's just the the nature of the beast, right? Nothing ever stays the same. We're we're seeing, you know, we're seeing a a a lot of different ideologies, you know, hit

I guess the sociological market, right? Or the

Like political science, right? Like we're we're I mean, we're we're seeing we're seeing a lot of maybe not political science, but like that's that that's a discipline within how the societal market moves from a political echo socio political economic or a sociopolitical kind of perspective, right? So we're seeing we're seeing shifts fundamentally at like a large level, right? seeing a lot more kids

Gen Z specifically, you know, they're they're they they just have it in their minds whether they've been taught that or whether they're actually experiencing it. Cause I I remember I'm a I'm a millennial cusper. I'm a millennial Gen X cusper. So I'm right on the cusp. So I can dip my toe into the millennial world and I can dip my toe into the Gen X world. I remember life being pretty, pretty difficult.

you know, looking for a job, going or going to school, going to college, looking for a job, job didn't work, got to get another job. you know, it it was who you know, not what you knew at that time. And then we moved into this transactional world with millennials and Gen X or Gen Z and now Gen Alpha, where it's it's been very transactional. Now I think we're moving back into a

a relational, you know, world where it's because there's the systems just eat everything, right? So you you put in an application for a job into an applicant or an application or an applicant tracking system, an ETS, and it's just going to get gobbled up. You know, it's it's not it's not going to actually touch a human's hand. It might go across the screen of a human, but I think we're entering we're we're re entering a world where it's the it's who you know, not what you know. And the relationships are becoming much more

important and prominent. But you hear Gen Z talking about how difficult it is in today's world to to affordability, right? That's always that's always a hot topic for well for politics. It's a great topic, right? Like a lot of fear comes from affordability. and I'm not saying things aren't affordable. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that at all. But I look back to, I mean you you have to account for for many things, you know, you have to count to

You have to account for the globalization of things. You have to account for inflation, you have to account for like many I I believe economics drives pretty much everything, right? Drive it drives pretty much every decision that that we make, whether we think it or not, right? Like even even displaced people who live on the streets are thinking about money, right? They're thinking about how to get things, right? Like it's it's hard to to get things if you don't have some sort of an economical, you know.

outlook on things or an economical drive, you know, to understand economics or s or or a f a psychological drive to understand economics, right? but the Gen Z, you know, which is a lot of kids that that we we we do work with, Gen Z Gen Alpha,

They would prefer, and I think this goes back to the competitive nature. It seems like they are have a higher propensity to discuss how difficult life is for them from an affordability standpoint, rather than understanding that life is competition, right? That they they they have to actually really compete.

And so moving moving into this kind of more relation relationship based world, I that's something that at Swoon we really try to help them with. because a lot of our academic coaches are very relatable to them. So we're trying to bring this like more relationship back to a a transactional world or a world that's been transactional for 10, 15 years, right? Maybe even more, maybe even more than that, right? Maybe even since like dot com.

That's really where like where transactional started to happen, right? Commerce, e-commerce on the internet. I think that's where we lost the the ability to relate and buy and sell things, compete with one another from a personal level, you know, because you can tap your phone and get pretty much whatever you want. You can go on Amazon and there isn't a product that doesn't exist. You can download an app and it can do pretty much anything and ever everything that you want to know, or everything and everything.

anything and everything you could possibly want to do. also, you know, with Google, there's everything that you would want to know, right? And you can get your answers like that. Very transactional. Now with AI, it's it the transaction has accelerated exponentially because of AI. Now you can build an app, you know, to do whatever you want. We've completely lost touch with humanity. Completely lost touch with that. A lot of the schools right now

As well, they're starting to ban phones. They're starting to ban screens in school. I think that's a great thing, to be quite honest. Our mission at Swoon with our products, because we could talk about legacy as well, like in a little bit if you if you want to go into that. But really our mission is to keep the human at the center because we know that kids aren't intrinsic learners. They're just not.

Being an intrinsic learner is not only intrinsically validating, but you know, it's intrinsically motivating. Like you have to be able to motivate yourself to want to gain new knowledge and learn new things. I'm lucky because I have ADHD. I can't help it. My sensory organs are like satellites. They're like, you know, satellite receivers. Like my ears, I I pick up everything. And like I try not to, I can't block out.

I make I make signals from the noise, whereas most people just hear the noise, right? And so I get locked onto something and I get into a flow state and I want to know, I want to know deeply about it, right? But I try not to like waver into other categories because I know that that will that will overstimulate me and it'll make me melt down. So I try to really focus on one thing at a time, which kind of brings me back to the Kanban. But swoon it's

be because we're kind of tying this all back together, because we're a private entity, our goal is to make kids independent. Right? I think a lot of public entities

Have a collectivist mentality, which isn't a bad thing. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. but it's kind of like Jeff Bezos and his two pizza team, right? Have you ever heard of that? Okay, so Jeff Bezos said because he was dealing with so many people, right? And he said, a team of workers should only be able to consume two pizzas. Anything bigger than that needs to be broken, right? This is not, this is not like a the the the concept of chunking.

or Kanban or you know agile or breaking things down into smaller components and then building them back up to you know to the greater whole it's not new you know this this is this is this is something that you know is it's it's biological right but in schools it's not you don't see this in schools and that's another thing that we're really trying to break through and and solve because it works for me

It works for Carla. It works for every it works for every software engineer. I mean, we use a tool, we use Asana right now for our software engineering, but we're moving over into front office because we're we're ready to build our, to build front office using front office as a tracking tool. and that's kind of goes back to the eating your own dog food, right? That's what software calls using your own product, right? Because I want the product to be amazing.

And that goes back to the mission. It's not driven by. I am not driven. I am not driven by money, does not is not the extrinsic motivator for me. Having an amazing product that gives value to people at a fairly decent cost, right? I mean, obviously we need operating income, right? But that's that's really that's the mission. That's what drives, you know, me and Swoon Learning. And fortunately, my business partner shares the same.

shares the same vision. So in order to do that, you have to use your own product. So if you're not using your own product, then the devs aren't learning how difficult, you know, things might be if there's bugs that arise. product managers or product owners like such as myself and the the the ones that we have working working for Swoon, they're not able to feel the pain when things go awry. This so we're not able to feel the the end user's pain.

Right. If you're if you're not using your own software, if you're not eating your own dog food. And I've always been a huge proponent of that, especially for the for the companies that I've worked at when I've had jobs. like I love learning, so I worked at Pearson and I got paid to make books and read books. It was incredible. I hated cooking, so I found a tool called a precision cooker. It's a sous- vide device that I there was a startup that I I worked for.

And that was the one that got sold. and so I learned how to be a better cook, right? But that wasn't just for me. That was that was also for the relationships in my life too, because you know, food brings people together. If you can give people good food, at least good food, I mean, it could be great, but if you give them good food, they're gonna like you more, you know, because you're feeding them. It's nurt it's nurturing, right? It's nourishing, I should say.

So, you know, that that kind of mission of of eating our own dog food and and using our own tool and and pushing all of the builders of this tool to use it themselves and and you know feel feel the pain themselves is gonna make the product exponentially better. And that's that you know, that's really what drive I'm a very product-driven person. I like

I don't like gadgets so much, but I like I like I like networks. I like things that can build upon itself, right? I think Bill Gates said a network is something that I'm gonna probably absolutely demolish this, but he said something like an a network it becomes so it's a platform, and then it becomes a network. No, sorry. He he said something along the lines of

Like people always use the term my platform, right? And and I I don't like to I try not to conflate that with a portal, right? Like a portal is like a window into something, right? A platform, he said, is when the network becomes more valuable than its users or something like that. I really the the idea behind it was the users make it a platform, right? The users make it valuable.

And so that's really the goal of that's the goal of of delight in in in building software is or building any product for that matter. You could easily build any kind of product that you have right now and and you know have it fulfilled by Amazon and sell it on Amazon, or you could sell it direct to your website. You can go D to C, right? and then you could you could

drive it to zero and you could probably become a multimillionaire, right? Or a multi-billionaire if you want. But and you could wipe your hands clean of any customer service. I've seen that happen all the time. I've seen that happen so much. But talking about legacy, that doesn't build any kind of a legacy, right? Given that I don't have children that are of my biological own, I mean I have a lot of kids that we service my for me to build a legacy, it's through the tools that I create.

Those that's my child that's my child, right? Front office is my child. And I want of like any parent, I want everybody to love my child, right? I know that's not the reality of things, but

Front office is, you know, it's it's it's definitely my legacy. it's why I get up every morning and put myself through some of the entrepreneurial pains. it's why I have, you know, the anxiety that I do around making it or breaking it. it's it's why I decide to not go on vacations, you know, multiple times a year. It's why I decide to, you know, eat noodles and

and you know, rice and nothing else sometimes, you know. it it's it entrepreneurship's a way of life, but that that legacy of having a network effect or having a network is I mean that that's really what drives that's really what drives me.

Trev Warnke (1:06:12)

So I mean, you you were going on so much good stuff. I didn't want interrupt you, but I think the last thing we'll kind of finish with is so through all through all the stuff you went through is you did talk in the beginning about two verticals, right? Yeah. One vertical would be front office, right? So that's really the stuff that's going into schools that are creating the stuff to really find for schools the obstacles that could be coming for the ch kids, right? Going from, hey, we're we're we're using data to give you feedback that this we're about to hit a drop off point.

and other things that you're you're building in the front office over time. But that's kind of the part that I kind of took from it. And then lean, then that goes has the ability to feed into the other vertical, which would be like the tutoring style, coaching business, right? So those are the main two. So people that are look that are like, okay, swoon learning, this is what this is. This is these two verticals. What would who would they want, who would you want them to connect you to? So, like if somebody's watched this, like

this sounds really cool. Why doesn't our school have this? Like, are you wanting to be connected with?

superintendents, principles, who's the people that you're looking to be connected to that somebody like watch this video? Because for the most part, or could somebody, I mean there's a the front office needs to be connected with one of those kind of combinations. Could somebody just join swoon learning and just be get tutoring from you guys? What can people do that are watching this video? How can they access your stuff?

Cory Borman (1:07:24)

So we don't we don't have like a freemium version right now of it's all pretty much closed beta. well beta and the institutions. Goldmaster Alpha is in in in the tutoring vertical. So fr front office is is the connector, right? So front office services, both the the academic coach, the tutoring side of things.

and connects students and parents and coaches on swoon front office. And then we have the branded kind of white label school front office, which we generally say. So, you know, you could be you know, Horizon High School, you know, HHS dot front office dot swoon learning dot com. Right. So that's more like the white label. and then but these two talk.

Right. They they both integrate into each other. So they need extended help. they they can find it with within swoon front office, right? The the tutoring vertical. so as as far as the on the tutoring side, all we're always recruiting for new for new academic coaches. we're not we're we we pay we pay really well, so we don't want

We we want a certain level of of a coach, right? They have to have they've gotta have

Pretty high achieving credentials.

Trev Warnke (1:08:39)

Where are you getting those coaches? Are they like college students? Are they teachers? Like what where are these kinds of

Cory Borman (1:08:43)

College students, a lot of juniors and seniors in in prestigious schools like UC, University of California, California CSU, California State Universities. We've got coaches from Harvard, a lot of recent graduates as well, you know, because they're they're looking for work. So I went back to I won't go into I'll finish answering your question here, but I won't go back into like deep detail about the Gen Z. But you know, there's I don't think it's like there I think there's like a

Hundred and fifty thousand jobs that were cut in in high tech this year or something like that is something ridiculously high. And so, you know, a lot of them are not college graduates, but imagine that their college graduates are competing against those who have just had tenure and got let go. So there's a lot of experience that they have. So the competition is fierce, right? Especially with this AI revolution that's happening.

Especially in high tech, white collar. White collar jobs are, you know, really, really challenging and super competitive right now. So we want to create jobs by allowing you need education, right? Education is a pillar. without education, you don't have society. Without society, then what is there? Right? What what's what's life?

So these so these kids are coming right out of college and they're not able they're not able to get jobs. So why not why not contract or employ them to use, continue using what they're what's fresh in their mind to strengthen and reinforce their skills, which really allows them to be more competitive in the market, right? In the job market. if they choose to go into the in into the job market like that, right?

But you even need that, you need that in any job, right? Like having education discipline will give you a major advantage in any job, whether it's white collar, blue collar, green collar, whatever you want to call it, right? You definitely like education is I mean, it's it's ubiquitous. You need it. So we're always looking for

third, fourth year college students at prestigious schools or have really good great deg degrees. On our website, on our careers page, we have a criteria of what we're looking for for jobs. so we're looking for them as far as, you know, hiring. And then you know, we do have we do have a because we pay, we pay well and we attract

High functioning, high discipline, highly accreditated academic coaches.

We're probably on the upper end of what a a parent would would wanna pay. but more fluent. I would say somewhere in the range of

Hundred and fifty plus household income. I mean we have a lot of we have a lot of customers, parents, guardians who are doctors, lawyers, electrical engineer or engineering engineer,

You know, like product people. So like very affluent jobs, right? Very high paying jobs, where they care deeply about their child's education and they and they understand that life is competitive. So not a lot of we don't really do a lot of low income

My brother has a my brother has a a coach company, entertainer coach company. And I I remember I asked him one time, I said, and then I'll I'll get to the institutional side. I said to him, I said, what what kind of clients do you take? I mean, I know I know who his clients are, but I was like, like like what like if if you could if you could put it plainly to me on how you know how your operation how you you're

leasing operation works. Like how how would you explain it? And he he said, We get bands on the way up and we get bands on the way down. That's pretty much his sweet spot. Right. So like he's not dealing with the bands who are on the top or entertainers who are on the top because they can afford to buy their own entertainer coach. And they're not dealing with the entertainers who can't even afford to leave their town to go play another show.

Right. So he has a he's like a he's got a segment, you know, within within the within his customer range. So we're definitely on the way up, you know. and not necessarily on the way down. We're pretty mu you know, we get more the very affluent people because they they care deeply about their kids. And though

Trev Warnke (1:13:04)

those parents can find you through like learning online or something or are they coming from schools that are recommending how are you how are those parents finding you guys? Like how how are you marketing to them so these parents like, hey, my kid, you know, we're in this category, right? It's good. Like we we are we're doctors stuff. My kid needs it. Can they just go on to swoonlearning.com or something and be able to like Yeah.

Cory Borman (1:13:22)

Get tutoring.

They so they can go on to swoonlearning.com and they would just go, they would, they would get started. There's a there's a call to action. Book your free session there. So we we offer free hour-long sessions to evaluate where a child is in their in their learning journey. and just to get some you know basic information about the kid and and and their school and their you know parents and and social life and and whatnot.

and then we offer free 30 or 60 minute academic, one free academic coaching session. So a parent and a child collectively can decide whether they want to do an hour long with a specific coach. So we'll match them, you know, we'll match them with a coach. And so they can decide if they want to do an hour long session with one coach or they want to do two 30 minute sessions with with two different coaches so that they can, you know, trial.

two different coaches or multiple coaches. yeah.

Trev Warnke (1:14:17)

So that that right there is the we call the swoon almost tutoring coaching avenue. And then what's let's go down the institutional one. What what's that look like?

Cory Borman (1:14:25)

So the institutional one, we have some beta programs right now that we're working on with with some schools. one in San in San Jose. the applications it's slightly different. with the with the the tutoring version of of front office, swoon front office, this one doesn't necessarily track grades and attendance because you don't really you don't really need to do that.

Yeah, yeah, it's covered. Yeah. And it's one on one, right? So like you you're either there or you're not, right? And and it's mostly and it's very high high dosage, high focused, academic coaching, right? Do I want to pause or you think it'll we didn't want to hear that? Okay. and so but on the institutional side, there there's there's there's many more tools involved, you know, within within the school front office, right? There's there's the attendance, there's the grade book,

There's the ability for SWUNASSIST, what we call it SWUN Assist is our AI. So there's a Swin Assist dashboard that provides a much deeper level of reporting for for their for their analysis, right? For the teachers analysis. And that was kind of that was that natural language analysis, the natural language feedback that SWUNASys does. So it doesn't just give you like a bunch of reports, right? That you have to kind of dig through. It's not like Google Analytics where you have to be a rocket scientist, you know, to really understand.

all the dashboards in there, but it's more it's it's very it's a it's a don't make me think kind of way of surfacing information. And that that's a Steve Krug. I don't know if you've ever read any Steve Krug. He wrote a book called Don't Make Me Think and and and Rocket Surgery Made Easy. So it's all about usability. He's a usability guy. And so it's it's like a don't make me think kind of reporting, right? Like it's it's a very chat based re reporting.

And so they they have access to to a lot of those tools that that the tutoring side doesn't have access to. Cool. So day day to day operation kind of operation.

Trev Warnke (1:16:19)

side of things who who are you wanting to be connected because obviously on the side we know tutoring that category is going to be somebody that's higher end income family what's the institution if somebody's like hey I hear this I love I wish our school had this like who would I be able to connect with swoon to make sure this you know we could get this in our school

Cory Borman (1:16:35)

Sure, superintendents, head of schools, you know, deans.

Trev Warnke (1:16:39)

And

you're probably looking towards more private schools, like this is public with

Cory Borman (1:16:41)

Really makes as much sense. So yeah, procurement departments, even IT because there has there there's there's IT integration.

you know, like configuration that we have to do. They they have their certain requirements. So it's got to pass through that as well. but yeah, mostly private private institutions. I'd say like head of schools. I I don't know if there's principals in private. I'm not sure if there's like the principal title in private. I think I think they're like head of school.

Trev Warnke (1:17:06)

enough about the different school systems to Eric has always been in public, that's all I really know.

Cory Borman (1:17:10)

Yeah. And that has its hierarch hierarchical, you know, or or org units or whatnot, or no hierarchical titles, right? So it's a little bit different in private schools. So like charter schools, because like I I think I believe charter is like some some private, some public funding, right? They they do raise and homeschool for sure, homeschoolers, international students, because we are very human at the center.

human focused. we have a plethora of different ethnicities and we have a plethora of different language speakers within our our academic coaching. We have about a hundred contractors that that work with us and they they speak all different types of languages. Very, very diverse. We're very div diverse group of of coaches. So plugging into a homeschool, like we we have

I also on the other side, or on the institutional side, there's there's the ability to lesson plan. So T you can build out a lesson plan and plug that right in. And there's there's a plan there's a plan board and we should probably do like a demo at one point, like maybe like another podcast where we can do like a demo or something like that. But

Basically the way the way that it works is because we haven't really talked about this this portion, so maybe you can like cut this in some more. so the institutional side has you know a certain set of features. one of them is called a plan board. the the on on the on the tutoring side front office it has this as well, but it's not utilized as much, right? It's it's it's more, it's less curriculum driven, right? It's more

the the plan, the the session plan. It's more like a session plan rather rather than a a curriculum, you know, plan or based off of like a syllabus. It's not ped pedagog pedagogical, pedagogical. Is that how you say it? How do you say that? Hey Siri, define pedagogical

Trev Warnke (1:19:02)

Yeah.

Cory Borman (1:19:04)

All So

you can put that in there. So the the tutoring side is less pedagogical, right? Whereas the the institutional side is very, you know, it's very rote, you know, like this is how it has to be. So we develop this plan board that the teacher puts all of their lesson plans in there for the for the semester. And then unlike a typical Kanban board where it's more shared and open, it gives the teacher control to be able to.

mirror, we call it mirroring, they are able to mirror a lesson or a test or any kind of a an assignment to a specific group of students, right? So like to their class. So like a group equals a class. And on that student's end, they have a workboard. They don't have a plan board. So they're only doing work. So whatever's mirrored that the teacher assigns, it's like a teacher handing out homework in a class, right?

You only hand it out to the kids who are in your class. You're not going to hand it out to everybody else, right? You're not going to invite more people into your class. It's specific to those students. So they mirror it to those students as workboards, and the students all upload their homework. They're not working on the computer. They're doing handwritten homework, taking a picture of it, and then uploading it to front office. Front office in the future, we we're going to have Swin Assist is going to help with homework grading.

It's going to help grade the homework and basically give the teacher a checksum against what how they would grade it, right? It's not going to tell them exactly, hey, here's here's here's what we think the homework is. It's going to kind of it's going to walk through them, you know, with it so that they're not just relying, because we don't want the teachers relying on AI as well. We don't access our AI, we don't expose our AI to the students. It's all agentic in the background.

Some customer support they can use Swoon Assist within, but they it's not it's it's within our closed garden. We don't allow our our AI to access externally, like the you know, the internet, like like a lot of these, you know, tools. Yeah, like open AI, right? Or perplexity or clawed or whatever. so it's a very closed, it's a it's tools for teachers, right? Like these these the system that we built are tools for teachers. So

Any any s any school that is looking to hold their kids more accountable to turning in their homework, they would want to they would want to subscribe or rent, you know, front office, right? They'd they'd wanna purchase a license to to to front office.

Trev Warnke (1:21:35)

cool. Yeah. I I just kind of wanted like somebody to have like actionable steps at the end. Here's what we're looking at there. And those connecting points are great too. Where can they so what do you guys have for like resources in terms of like what website, Instagram, like where can they learn more about you?

Cory Borman (1:21:49)

Swoonlearning.com is the best place to learn. There's there's not a ton of information on front office up there. but if you know they can go to our contact page and and reach out to us if they want to learn more about front office or get a demo. There, there's a drop down there that that says, you know, request demo. in we're on we're on Instagram, Swoon Learning. We're on every everything's handle is Swoon Learning. So we're on Instagram.

We're on Facebook. Facebook's probably our number one go-to site. We've got community on there as well that we interact with. so if if actually if if you know any of your audience is in is is on Facebook communities, you know, we can we can jump into those communities. We just need to know which ones they are and we can offer some assistance. and we have we're on next door, we're on YouTube, threads, TikTok and

And Yelp. We've got a five five O rating on Yelp, I think like around Yelp's kinda finicky about letting reviews come through, which is really strange. but we've got about fifteen reviews on there right now. So do you guys do Google reviews at all? we don't have any. Okay. We yeah. we're on Google My Business, but yeah, we we don't

Trev Warnke (1:22:59)

But the thing is iPhones use Yelp, Google all all Androids use Google. and that's why it's like why are they both important? But Yelp has like these blockers to them. Google has a lot more open.

Cory Borman (1:23:13)

system which is more

Trev Warnke (1:23:14)

Yelp's rules are they have to have reviewed enough different companies. You

Cory Borman (1:23:18)

Right.

Trev Warnke (1:23:18)

you being a first review doesn't usually make it

Cory Borman (1:23:21)

Yeah, it's in the not recommended which is so stupid. Yeah, I don't like it. It has

Trev Warnke (1:23:24)

nothing

to do with like that's not how review systems should work but yeah regardless so so we did you went into your legacy for sure but let's just go ahead and leave this with something like what's the biggest like you know we know what the business is we know why you built the business like what is like the what's the future what's the next two to four year kind of like thing where where are you going with Swiss?

Cory Borman (1:23:44)

we'd really like to become, like I said, the accountability tool for for schools. the one-on-one tutoring is, you know, it's a it's tough to scale one-on-one tutoring. We do offer a program called Skills Accelerator, which helps with learning loss over the summer. we incorporate strategy games.

at the end of sessions of course to use the skills that they build up over the summer. I mean, that's in language arts and math. and we haven't done any science yet, but we're we're continually building out those summer programs. we we mainly have the skills accelerator in at at the school that we're working that that we're working with in San Jose on location we had it, but we but we're you know we're we're definitely can do it online.

in in larger groups. So summer programs is something that we, you know, we we see being a a component for virtual learning in in in the future. but ultimately we want front office to be the homework tracker and the accountability tool for private private schools for the most part. And we really want to get

into more institutions nationally but more specifically internationally because that you know the the globalization you can't slow it down.

Especially with population growth. You know, you just you can't slow down people wanting to come to the United States. you can limit it. But they're there, you know, people are gonna continue to come to the United States and we wanna continue to educate them. So if we can get them before they even come to the United States, then well, if we can help them, I don't wanna say get them, but if we can help them with how

The American culture is and how we teach.

And we educate by way of American culture before they just land in the country and are unaware of of how things, you know, work here. I think that's a hu that would be a huge benefit to any anybody trying to migrate, you know, or or to immigrate, to migrate, yeah, to the United States. So we're we're really

trying to put a huge focus on international students as well and and try and get be a part of international schools tool set, right? Be a part of their toolbox, where we can

'Cause I hear that a lot. I I hear a lot of I have a lot of international friends and and I hear a lot of them saying things like understanding the American culture prior to arriving here is a is a big benefit. And it makes sense, right? Like logically, right? Like if you go if you go to Europe, say you go to Italy, like wouldn't you want to

be educated on Italy a little bit before you went there, right? Just something, like maybe some history, maybe like what their industries are like, maybe where to go, where not to go, and what what if you could have swoon learning help you with that, right? So we we kind of want to be this conduit for general education at at some point. I mean, that's probably like the the the the big hairy audacious goal is really what we say is like no admin, right?

n no administration. So like if you need if you need education, you can plug into with a human being rather than like watch a video and you don't need to deal with like

the administration piece of it. You can just get right to learning.

Trev Warnke (1:27:26)

Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Well, I love where you're going with this, Corey. Thanks for

Cory Borman (1:27:30)

Thank you. Guys, thanks.

Trev Warnke (1:27:31)

checking out this episode of Brotherhood Behind Business Podcast. All Corey's information will be down in the l show links below. We have a podcast on our website as well. We'll catch you guys next time.