A Master's Degree We All Wish Existed with Stu McMillan and Rich Clarke

Hello and welcome to Leave Your Mark. I'm your host, Scott Livingston, and this is where I explore the influences that have shaped the lives of our incredible guests. These are the stories of lives we're talking about. Follow me on Twitter and built by Scott and Instagram at King O'Pain or link up with me on my Facebook fan page, Scott Jr. Livingston. My goal is to empower and inspire a community of people who take every opportunity to live a high performing life. Hey friends, quick note before we dive in. If you're a therapist, trainer, or performance pro who's serious about mastering the gray area between rehab and performance, check out our neuro-reconditioning courses. We've built a step-by-step path to meet you where you are. Start with ninja moves for quick practical drills, go deeper with essentials to understand the neuro foundations that drive movement and performance. Level up with foundations are 12-hour digital course plus a zoom lab to master neuro-mechanical assessment. And if you're ready to lead the complete program is our 14-week mentorship with live sessions and a 3-day in-person event. There's a step for everyone. Come see where you fit. Visit ReconditioningHQ.com and learn more. Now let's get on to our podcast guests. Enjoy. Today is a special edition. I have a Stuart McMillan and Rich Clark on the line. I will let them pseudo-introduce themselves but they've been on the podcast before both great performance practitioners, one from the UK and the other one from, I don't know, he's from all over the place. Stuart, where do you say you're from when you say to people I'm from somewhere? You know, I was asked this just yesterday and the answer depends on who's asking. Hearts unknown. I'm born in England, moved to Canada when I was 12 and then all my people are British and still live in Britain. So for, I feel British. And if a British is asking me, "Hey, where are you from?" I'm from Blackburn. But if you're asking me where I'm from, Scotty, as a Canadian, then I'm going to say I'm Canada because I lived in Canada for 28 years. I'm a British Canadian or a Canadian, but yeah, I'm just definitely not American and people think I'm American. I've lived here. That's what I know, that's what I was looking for. He lives in America, but he is not American. I'm interested in being an American, I've no interest in being an American. So there's nothing wrong with America, the country. Yeah, I enjoy living here, but it's no interest in that at all. And Stu is an elite sprint coach and an elite performance coach and Rich Clark is an elite performance practitioner who has a bend on change of direction training and looking at how people move laterally and in different directions. But they are also very gifted humans in all kinds of different angles. But the reason we're here chatting today, and you guys can kind of spool off of this and just reintroduce yourself in some sense, is the two of them plus others involved with the organization called Altus that Stu was a part of creating over the years, have embarked in creating a master's program for performance practitioners in alignment with a UK educational institution. And I suggested that in order to let more people know about what they were doing, we have a podcast and talk about it. And we might end up not talking much about it, we might end up talking about Stu's problems, but that's okay. That will be the shift in the gears that we go into. But maybe Rich, why don't you tell us the genesis of this and sort of just reintroduce yourself for the listener because it's been actually a while since I had you on this podcast. So thank you. Yeah, man. Sounds good. Firstly, thanks so much for the invite. It's interesting to hear Stu there say that he likes to call himself British whenever we do jump on a call. The first five seconds I get is his version of a British accent, which let's say to say that he's spent a long time out of the country and that there's maybe some details to be done there. It's not black, but anyway. It's not grey. It's not grey. It's not grey. But I appreciate it as an endearing process, I think, that we go through. But yeah, look, that appreciate the introduction. Rich Clark, British performance coach, spent most of my previous 15 years worth of career 50/50 between coaching and education, which is where the artist's education component came through. So loads of different roles over time, in and out of four different universities, lots of different clubs or organisations and coaching environments. Right now I work with GB3X3 Basketball. I have three X3s, the branding, not three on three, three X3. With GB3X3 Basketball and then spend the majority of my time actually building what is to be the future of education without a fire education with our new master's degree. So have been, I guess, adopted. Can I say adopted into the artist ecosystem? Yeah, I think that's fair. I remember and Rich, you're a little bit younger than we are. So you'll have a better memory of this. But I remember, I don't think we'd ever met before. And then I remember having coffee with you in Birmingham. And I remember it very well. We're sitting in this coffee shop. I remember the coffee shop. I can't remember the name of it, but I know where it is inside this little arcade. And we ended up talking about this. We didn't even end up talking about it. This was the reason for us getting together to talk about education and more specifically kind of higher education and maybe the future of education. And this was maybe seven or eight years ago. I don't know what the genesis of that meeting was, whether that was, it was probably you reaching out or me reaching out and say, hey, let's have a chat when you're in town or whatever. And then what was the genesis of us getting together? I can't remember. I mean, I think you're right. I think it was an education-based thing. I think I worked in Birmingham at the time. And you were over for something or other reached out. I had always been a long-time artist-engager in terms of like lots of people are with kind of following the content, a lot of respect of your perspective and the way that the artist's brand or the artist's ecosystem saw problems and approached things and approach performance. And I think it was like, I mean, at that stage, I kind of had this on my radar in terms of finding a new way to do things, was running mass degrees and running undergrad degrees at the time, just constantly thinking, man, this sucks. There's got to be a better way for this to exist for the staff, for the students, for the employers at the end of it. There's just every part of it was just dysfunctional and didn't work. And I think at that point in time, that was probably me really tactically just putting the feelers out there like, what is your perspective on the coach education space at that point in time? Because I knew that I wanted to do something drastic that made substantial shifts in it was also aware that doing that single handily is almost impossible and it was going to have to be a little bit bigger than that. And I think for a long period of time, the artist was the only organisation where I thought, I feel like there's philosophical alignment as well as bringing different skills and different kind of parts to the puzzle. And yeah, that was probably me just trying to, at an early stage, kind of get an idea of maybe where your guy's perspective was and where your head was with this kind of bigger picture. And then I think roll on however many years passed between there and then and now and things very quickly came together. I suppose, just over 12 months ago. Well, let's hold on a second, Stu. The reason why you guys got together, Genesis, was the coffee. That's first, like it was, there was no conversation without the coffee. I think remember, Stu being very specific about where it was that we were going to meet to have coffee, which was fine. Always open to good recommendations, but you're right. It's everyone knows I like coffee and the amount of Starbucks gifts because I get still to this day. Oh, he likes coffee. Here you go. Here's a $20 Starbucks gift certificate. So it's, there's a disconnect. So I just take that, you know, the risk of that disconnect even being there. And I say, we're going here. Okay. Whether it's their town or their city or whether they're, you know, regardless of what their coffee knowledge is, I'm the one who chooses for sure. Very. So my Starbucks sponsorship just evaporated, I think, or something. I love the background on this. And you and I actually talked numerous years ago, too, about the subject matter around, you know, how people, something like this could exist. I remember having a conversation, I don't actually recall exactly where, but what then creates like there's, there's coffee conversations and there's kind of thinking about things. And then there's actually making SHIT happen. So segue forward, what's the instigator of you guys act while actually making this happen. And then I have another sub question to that. But what, what makes it actually happen? Yeah. Well, there is, there is just conversations and just coffee conversations, but it was pretty clear that rich was pretty explicit that this was something he was going to do. Like, do that right away, you know, and that's why I remember this conversation, like he was explicitly asked, you know, if you were to design a master's degree, what would that look like? And I hadn't really thought about that before, right? And, you know, I mean, I, we, we work in education in the private sector. I hadn't thought about any of that stuff. So it was, like, it wasn't, it was, for me, it was just two guys who work in the same industry, having a coffee and having a chat about some things that maybe Rich is interested in, of, to Rich, it was much more than that, I think. Like he was really, I, what I'm doing right now sucks. Yeah. I find a way to do this better. You know, let's, let's try to figure out a way to do this. Right. And then I guess over Rich to actually, you know, keep us, get us up the day over the next sort of six years. Well, that, that leads me, before you answer that, Rich, what leads me into this next, which I think is going to set the table for you to some degree is, what was it? Can you tangibly describe what it is that you were trying to solve that was a problem that you were going to do something about? Like what were the big issues that in this new program that you've created, your, you feel you're resolving? Yeah, absolutely. I have to, I find it really difficult to do this succinctly because there's just lengthy kind of, well, that's why we're on a podcast and not everything. You don't want to hear me talk about this, but not you know, it's a mega. And another thing. The big thing was just like, I remember sitting there in, in, in, in office, where I worked with other colleagues. And this was at a time when I was teaching on an undergrad program at Anomaster's program that we had written as a group. And things were pretty good. We thought we were doing things well. And you still just sat there at points in the year, just pulling your hair out either because of lack of student learning, lack of student engagement, lack of student effort, or it was because of institution on barriers of, oh, you suggested you want to do this, but you can't do that because there's this because of all of these other things you have to consider. Or it was because of the recognition that we as a department needed to do more for the student to make the steps forwards that we needed to. But the institution just put too many things in your way that you couldn't do that without just, you know, giving up every other component of your life and kind of go and, you know, kind of crazily, but beyond the, beyond the scope of what your role was. And, you know, long story short, there's all these different things where we just sat there at a point and just said, there's got to be a better way of doing this. Because the students need better outcomes, clearly the industry is making that relatively clear. The students need different types of, not so much different types of content, but they need the content to be facilitated better with mentorship, problem solving, staff that can actually really help them do things in the field. And you've got students kind of spending way too much time and way too much proportion of maybe their attention on some of the much more academic referencing and writing style and producing a long piece of, piece of research. By no means am I saying that I'm not valuable, but it's just a much bigger proportion of the program for people that actually want to graduate and go out and do applied coaching roles. So there's all these things with content of programs, exactly what you had to do, how much time you were afforded to give to the student group, how flexibly you could create modules or assessments or the durations of different things. The fact that a course has to be delivered by a particular group of staff that have been employed full time and then end up what ends up happening and every institution probably over the world is staff end up teaching on things, aren't really their expertise because they need to fill up the workloads and so many different things that all came down to the students don't get a great value for money deal. The staff don't get a great level of autonomy to really use their expertise to create something which is optimized for that student and ultimately what that results in as that results with two things that aren't really perfectly aligned and aren't working together effectively to produce what should be really capable coaching based graduates. There's lots of things wrapped up in that in terms of level of study whether that's undergrad or post-grad and what people's expectations are and you do get some good institutions with some good programs but I kind of in the end just constantly became uncomfortable with being the leader of a program at a traditional institution when your role is to try and sell that program and to promote the oh yeah you should come study with us when really I'm sat there and inside I'm thinking this isn't what I really want to recommend that you actually do and at some point in time when you have that internal conflict knowing you can do better and knowing better is needed I'm not the kind of person who can sit in that scenario forever so it was about creating better outcomes more efficiently better value for money for my student side but then also from a staff side about creating something that staff feel really proud to be part of that they can elaborate on without massive restrictions and what it is that actually that they and or cannot do and the overtime can be iterated in a way that will genuinely become the best thing that has ever existed in that space instead of a replica of the other 50 that there are in the country so yeah that was it that was kind of where we where we got to and I guess kind of over that period of time that I when Stu and I first kind of connected about it the big thing was always about how can you make that happen there's a reason why we are the first private group who have kind of put this kind of sports performance based program together that has higher education credits because there's about there are barriers in place but I'm being able to get a program accredited in that way isn't an easy thing to try to try to do I understood that process because I've done that within the institution and then you recognise a hold and I've like me and a couple of other colleagues have written this been part of the validation for it do all the delivery design the assessments mark the assessments and work with the students who start to finish so the only thing that's missing is for somebody to say yes we will validate this for you and award credits to students and then you working out as an individual like over how and then how do you market that and then that was there clearly we need there needs to be a much bigger system here which is where kind of you know the connection with with artists or you know kind of me proposing this more formally to to Stu and Kevin came in and yeah and here we are love it that's that's you know what's really nice hearing you talk about that rich is that you know there are ideas and there are most certainly challenges to overcome things like this but sometimes especially and and I'm kind of curious how you guys did make this happen because part of the I think the animal in the kitchen or the sticky wicket and all this is that the institutions do put up lots of barriers to making this happen so you can think about it a lot but it doesn't mean it's going to actually make it make it so right and it's not always even sort of in some call it business worlds that might be a financial limiter but in this case the rate limiter is really the institutional elephant in the room so to speak so Stu how does riches like you talk about it you knew he was going to do this what made you want to be a part of him doing this and being the call at the front of house for this possibility yeah part of it is is my my own experience and my experience with higher education is pretty limited just to my own experience so I hadn't done what rich is done worked within higher education but I know obviously lots of people that do and have and then the more I work in private education the more I hear about all of those problems and those issues that Richard alluded to and how similar they were to my own experiences and so then I had okay that this it provided me a little bit more insight into what all of what Richard was talking about there so I started to okay now I didn't know that any other option even existed hadn't got a clue until I started having a conversation with Richard and as you know Scotty we've known each other for a long time I've always been a little bit of a contrarian so if somebody comes to me and and offers up an alternative to what I feel is maybe not serving the community well yeah I mean let's let's let's do it let's do it and then when Rich actually said that yeah there is a real true alternative here and he as as he said when he you know had that initial conversation you know over a year now with myself and Kevin about this is what it would actually look like in practice we can do this yeah all right this is because this is now just the combination of of as I said like eight years of conversations you know this isn't this is this is I know Rich has been working on this really hard for a long time and this is something that was just an idea for me until I met Rich and said okay yeah this is this is something for sure that we can do and for sure from my perspective like Rich with his experience within this and then our experience with the private sector and the network that we have and all of the students we have and the private students we have I feel like this just ended up being just a a perfect partnership and a perfect opportunity to bring our expertise and our reach together with Richard's expertise within this and as Rich says is build something that's really really cool yeah that's awesome so Rich in a way of informing the listener how did you get over the biggest hurdle which is to have this kind of institutional backstop and for the listener who might be interested in some in following this how how do they end up getting a call it legitimate master so to speak yeah sure I think that the opportunities to do this for people began to become more prominent post-COVID digital education online learning and I think that that facilitated or that catalyze lots of different things beginning to change in the education space that's obviously coinciding with me just continually trying to work out how could I get my own program validated yeah and ultimately there there are a couple of institutions out there the one that we are working with is based in Europe but is an internationally recognized institution there's definitely one in Mexico that I had contact with there's a there's a handful of places out there who are degree awarding institutions where they recognize the model is changing and they are trying to kind of get ahead of that so in this case the model is an institution that says we will validate and award higher education credits to a degree program as long as it meets the rigors and the quality and the requirements that all other degree programs need to but instead of their model being okay well we have an idea for a program so we will hire some people full time ask them to write it we will then validate it but we will also own it and therefore we will do some of the components of it and these will just be educators on it actually their model is to say okay if you've got a program that you think is at a certain standard because hours is what we call level seven a master's degree you can go level six level five level four level eight PhD programs if you've got a program or an educational force we will support you to see if it's of the relevant standard for it to be awarding or to be aligned with higher education credits so transferable credits to different higher education institutions all over the world and instead of them trying to take full ownership and full control over it they say these are the things that have to be in place you put these things in place will help you once it exists this is your responsibility to to deliver to market to operationalize and as long as you stick within these restrictions that make sure that it is at the standard and the quality and the length and the volume that it needs to be we're happy to check the work and to you know externally award that as a as a higher education credit and the only thing that kind of comes up there is there you get different types or different locations of credit awarding the US has a credit system the Europe has a credit system the UK has a credit system the same way we've all got currencies and we've all got our own slightly different things but in the same way currencies work all of these credit systems talk to each other that all we know that you know 10 European credits is the equivalent to X number of US credits or X number of UK credits so this just happens to be a European based institution that will award people European based credits but that doesn't really matter mean anything until you turn around to another institution and you say I've done this masters I'd now like to do a PhD program and then they would say oh okay you've got European credits let's just check those yeah okay they are aligned we understand that now congratulations come and join us for a PhD program but even then most people probably don't need to worry about that because most people don't go past masters level education and they go into employment and the employer wants different really good skills and really good coaches where they know they can trust that they could be somewhere and had a had a good quality applied education so yeah it was really about binding an institution where that was the model that they were happy to support private education providers it was really easy for us like they said that they've appreciated how easy it was for us because I had been through that process of I know what it needs to look like I know what documentation is needed I know how to validate these things so there wasn't as much kind of they would normally have more hand holding in terms of with a traditional maybe private online educator that wants to add credits to a program and yeah that's been kind of a long we're just now getting towards the end or in the kind of final probably the final kind of seven to ten days to be honest we're becoming an official member college our test higher education will become a member college of a degree awarding institution and it will be a registry registered validated master's degree and we will build from there you know Stuart very impressive for you Mike yeah it's not for me and this is very which has done 99.99 nine percent of the work on this really has I've had a really privileged position of access to Stuart Millen's brain and Stuart Millen's writing and content ecosystem going oh I'm gonna take this and I'll make that sound like it's my stuff well that was going to be my question to you Stu what were what were some of the call at the lines in the sand or call it the visions that you had for something like this that it had to be if you were going to put the altous brand behind it and sort of be in this marriage so to speak yeah I think you know Rich you in your first question to Rich there Scotty alluded to a legit masters and so that that my brain jumped on that first person for the foremost yes this is a legitimate master's degree you get an MSC in strength conditioning and coaching so if you if anyone's interested in this master's degree you get a real master's degree it's a real master's program and the second to that question there is like I sent out you know I've been doing this for a long time Scotty you've been doing it for a long time we know a lot of people when you've been doing something a long time you know a lot of people in the industry a lot of people in the profession I talked to a lot of them you talked to a lot of them we know that the system is kind of failing coaches younger coaches and I remember sending an email out to about 50 friends and colleagues you were one of them about five or six years ago asking about what are the skills and the traits and the abilities that they look for in coaches like what are the most important things and are they seeing them and they're just not right they said these are the ones that we're that we hire for and these are the ones that we're actually you know this is what they're actually getting when they're finishing their master's degrees and then they have to go and do a bunch of internships and so on and build those abilities those traits and then maybe in two or three years they're at the level where now we we're comfortable hiring them so it started with that like what are those abilities those traits that myself as a as somebody who owns a company who's looking to hire coaches what do I look for what does Loneland look for what does Scott Livingston look for what do all these other coaches and leaders and facility operators whatever what are they looking for in these coaches when they're looking to go on hire them and that's what it is like so that's that's when we started building this curriculum that's what we started with like what are those skills those traits those abilities that we want coaches to have who are the best people to teach these skills these traits in these abilities well primarily it's going to be coaches it's not going to be lifelong educators that have been sitting in in their lab or their classroom for for 30 years this people are actually doing the work and then it's just you know then you're you're kind of just governed by the things that have governed us from day one we just want to be excellent you know we just want to do this really really well so everything that we do we're trying to do well you know every course that we write we want it to be the best possible course that we can write the best the best program you know any program that we have and spend some time with us we want that to be as good as possible as it was with this so it's you know this is a lot of work between primarily myself and Rich just kind of outlining what this could be you know really coming up with this curriculum again mostly Rich and then we got to a point yeah this is really cool like if if somebody went through this program spend 18 months working through this program would you be comfortable hiring them 100% yeah Nick and go right into a job right then and there so then it was just became it became okay who's now going to be the people that we are most confident in being able to deliver this work so then that's that was kind of the next step is is going out and recruiting our tutors right and you for the listener you guys have run one year of or one iteration of this concept and what did you learn in that Rich in that first year that you could couldn't do or work didn't work and how are you revising it moving forward and also maybe you can elaborate or elucidate on what it what it is like for the listener who might end up being interested or is this a two three whatever what's the time frame and how does it work quick break here we'll be back to our podcast in just a few moments hey just a quick break to tell you about something I'm really excited about our neural reconditioning courses whether you're new to this work or looking to become a leader in the rehab to perform its space we've got a step for you ninja moves gives you fast practical drills you can use right now essentials dies into the core neural concepts that help you create lasting change foundations helps you master assessment and strategy with a complete neuro mechanical framework plus a hands-on zoom lab and our complete program is the ultimate 14 week mentorship that brings it all together live sessions advanced programming and an in-person event to cap it all off no matter where you are we've built a path to meet you there and take you further head to reconditioning HQ dot com and get started or shoot me a DM if you want a chat about where you fit all right back to the show yeah sure um we're part way through the first year so we have you know almost been through um 50% of a lot the core taught component of it's the iterations are constant and the learning is constant and the biggest way not so much with the concept and the content within it because we're we're pretty kind of set with that what's really unique and what's challenging but it's also really important is the operation realization of it it's the logistical process of having students who are studying remote for the majority of the time who then have the have the we have the in-person residential components because that's you know that hands-on in-person it's still going to be really important is that process of actually making sure that you have something that isn't just great on paper the same way coaching works when it actually comes to the delivery of this for people who are in different parts of the world of the first group 95% of those who are full-time coaching so you're working with people in different locations different time zones who have full-time coaching roles in different sports in different contexts and their own schedules and that is the piece which becomes really really important for us and that's the piece that I'm constantly iterating with and thinking is there a better way of doing this to make sure that people can constantly feel engaged and feel connected and have someone to directly speak to all the time but at the same time don't feel overwhelmed by missing live calls that are coming up in their calendar and the balance of that is super important is super difficult and is where the majority of our iteration and idea generation is kind of coming now so to kind of expand on that so the program is and is technically an online program but we put these in-person components in because we think that that's really really important you can complete it without them it's just slightly more difficult in terms of you have to accrue the hours you've then got to obviously make sure that you've got the skills in order to be able to complete the assessments that you need so we encourage everybody to come to things are in-person as of September that'll be an in-person opportunity in both the UK and in in sunny Arizona and then as part of kind of that remote delivery of the program the program's kind of got a few different parts to it the core being the centralised pillar of the core curriculum and the core content of which is primarily asynchronous so people can work through in their own time over their own schedules and work through this kind of problem-based learning structure that we have we talk about everything in this is the problem here is our step-by-step solution to it and then all of the concepts and all of the traditional technical things that people might might learn come in to support that solution so there's that core kind of centralised pillar of content which is it's slightly more asynchronous but then there are live calls synchronous components where students will get a calendar that'll have these are the live tutor calls when you'll be online with with an expert who will be talking through about how they problem solve those those kind of things and then we have a mentor and stream which is a little bit less directly related to that core centralised content pillar but it is about those really important skills of self-awareness personal development thinking about your career problem solving in your own in your own context and just general kind of personal and professional growth of which we are super excited about having you on board to be supporting with Scottie in September and then the final piece is that in-person component when three times in the first 12 months we come together for five days and just have a really immersive experience where the tutors will come along and we know we cover core themes that round up all of the content that we've been through so far in that in that kind of block or that stage so it's really like that these different moving parts of the in-person the live online the asynchronous self-paced online and then obviously a forum that will you know allow lots of add-hot conversations and feedback with some of the tasks that students complete and it's about the distribution of that and it's about the implementation of that to fit different types of people on different schedules to ensure that anybody can engage in this and you're not just sat entirely on your own in a different country never speaking to anybody doing a self-paced programme that's not how this this should feel to the vast majority of people it's so people can kind of choose the way they kind of engage with it in the sense that you can try and go full-time and get it all done in 18 to 24 months you can go part-time and take closer to kind of that 36-month three-year spread we're trying in September to go with almost like a flexi approach you speak to lots of applicants and they're kind of I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to engage in this properly I'm not that apprehensive about the time about just the commitment because it's a big programme that's a big big commitment so the flexi approach is almost more okay join us complete the first block the first block is worth 20 of your 90 credits let's get that completed take as long as you need to complete that once that's done we'll move on to the second block and they can gain some confidence and almost you know much more slowly take gradual steps to get that completed and it's a maximum registration of five years that's the maximum time anybody can be can be officially enrolled so we really think actually that we've done a good job so far of building an ecosystem that has got a wide variety of content types for different people that has got lots of different speeds at which people can study with us and ultimately something that very few people who are really motivated to get it completed couldn't fit it around their lives and around their professional work environment to the point that we don't even really have really hard set assessment deadlines traditionally in universities you get like late late penalties because you've missed a deadline and all of this stuff and it's not about that it's about you producing the best work you possibly can and making sure that your kind commitment into producing that work you have felt has been really valuable to your own development not you have to get something done by midnight and two days and you've now got a cram in to get something completed which ultimately happens with everybody life gets in the way and you know you've got to try and fit things in so it's it's really flexible which makes it very much more difficult for us to do versus saying you have to fit specifically in this box but trying to be really flexible really dynamic ensuring that it can really fit for people who are out there coaching because that is a critical part of of their development anyway and those have been the primary iterations because the the problem solution approach that we've gone with which is really novel it's absolutely top draw I think it is exactly how everything should be it should be approached sounds like stew I like that can I add yes yes you can sir like I don't want people who are listening to this to think and I'm not saying that rich what rich said will give them this thought but often we got this a lot and I know rich got a lot is people think people who had a some thought that this would be an easy way to get a master's degree and this is not easy like we want to be the best master's program on the planet which means this is not going to be easy this is not something you just sign up for you know give it give us some money in 18 months you got a master's degree and off you go you can go get a great great job this is hard like it's really really hard so I don't want you know I don't want I don't there to be any confusion around that like this this we're starting with as we said like this is what the expectations of what this role will be for you post degree program you can need to know this this this and that and that's what we're trying to teach you and that's not easy you don't get that you we don't get that just from you know spending two or three hours a week online and then in 18 months as I said getting the master's degree it is difficult it's a real master's program that's we're going to require quite a lot of work and yes we're being as flexible as we possibly can to all people because as Rick said most of our students right now are are coaching full-time and they'd have been coaching full-time for for years so we have to be you know respectful of that but it's still difficult like I think if you if you ask our 30 34 students we have right now I think in our first cohort if you ask them how you know if this is challenging they'll all say yeah this is hard and we'll also ask them are you enjoying it and every single one say yeah we're loving it that's awesome yeah I was going to ask off that by the way yeah I was going to ask off the back of that what are you guys particularly I don't like using the word pride because there's a bit of a sort of seven deadly sins background noise to that but what it what it makes you feel warm and and fuzzy about what you've created in some sense rich first and then two second I'd love to hear what what you're really excited about yeah um I think I can answer that in two different two different ways one from just like a personal perspective and two because of more of a student outcome perspective from a student outcome perspective the thing that I think I'm really proud of and that I think that we do really well and that we do very differently which is what really build the uniqueness of the program I would just summarise this synthesis what typically happens in lots of programs they've naturally become quite reductionist because you've got your biomechanist teaching this bit you've got your physiologist teaching this bit and you've got you know a couple of essences in there doing some more applied interdisciplinary stuff but they've become a little bit fragmented and the biggest issue that students have is that they just do not have the ability without lots of support to draw all of that stuff together on their own because the curriculum doesn't tend to do it well for them and for them to do that entirely on their own is really really challenging and actually the way that we deliver things is all about synthesising things together all of the time um and that I think is something which is the most unique which is probably the concept of the program if I had to summarise it in like a single sentence that's that core word for me is the synthesis of different things together to solve problems but then kind of more from a from a personal perspective it's always nice when you've looked at a problem for a long time and you finally find a way to do it and especially where I have lots of friends who work in institutions in different parts of the world of whom by the way are great practitioners great academics lovely people I'd speak bad about the traditional hg system but I have lots of great friends that are in it but it's always cool when you just have people who never thought that you could actually do this because how are you actually going to get this thing validated and how you're going to have your own master's program like what you can't do this privately without this is these institutional walls and these and these guide rails and I'm just like god I done though and that's always a point of a point of pride of knowing they're going to be a solution to something and finding some kind of light at the end of a tunnel of trying to trying to solve that kind of thing especially something that's really as impactful as what this is like that's always that's the big motivator for me that and really making sure that we're achieving those kind of transformative student outcomes that we really want to and that should have been happening over the years. That's awesome. Steward what's your take on that? Yeah for me it's our friends and our colleagues in the community in the industry that we went out to when we asked them to be involved in this and the pride and the happiness with which they entered into this and the amount of work that they put into this that that is really what makes me proud about this like this you know every single person we've asked if they wanted to be involved has jumped at the opportunity every single one of them and every single one of them has taken this like it's their full-time job and that makes me really happy. That's really cool yeah I like that on that note for the listener who might be interested in it and you could I don't know who's probably Rich's better person to answer the question but I'd love to hear also the altous background noise but who are they going to be taught by Rich like who can somebody taking this can expect to be learning from? Yeah absolutely so to to caveat what I'm about to say is we're expanding this team out as we're moving towards kind of running some in-person components in in London or in Europe where we're kind of just coming towards the end of what have just come towards the end of a recruitment process or an expression of interest process for kind of more European-based based coaches but on the US side of what have kind of already been established there is the core altous team and I'll maybe allow Stu to just expand on that when I hand over to him in a second but also we have different tutors whose particular skill sets suit different blocks so each block has got a slightly different theme we kind of go from movement and coaching to some of the more technical strength power speed agility development to some conditioning planning periodization and long-term athlete development piece towards the towards the end we've had Danny Foley and Rob Wilson have been our kind of primary supporters in our first block where Danny naturally brings that that kind of movement expertise or Rob brings that kind of coaching leadership based expertise you know Stu kind of mentions pride then about people just being excited to be involved Danny's a great example where typically we tend to have each tutor with us for at least two days of our five-day residential and Danny's just like yeah I'll be there all week just straight out just wants to be there to just soak it up and and be involved in being involved himself so those guys have primarily been been heading up the the first block through this block we've been we've had Dennis Logan involved who's one of the you know a long-term exos exos original who's again done lots of education who's been absolutely great along with Stu and myself from a speed and change direction of perspective you mentioned some change direction from here at the beginning sky appreciate that and then as we go into block three Meg Young is going to be supporting us in block three Jonah Rosner is going to be supporting us in block three from a conditioning perspective and I think unless I mean you put me under pressure to make sure that I absolutely capture everybody but I think that that is pretty much everybody Rob Wilson will be back in our in our third block as well so those are our core kind of us based tutors for the moment but then we have lots of other people involved Nick Ward massive part of the program who is an excellent facilitator he also runs and supports the mentorship program comes to all of our residentials and you know facilitates learning and supports the support the student Joe club support scientists from the UK Joe is a another one of our mentors supports the program slightly more remotely although I you know I hope that will have her involved with European based residential is moving forwards but again supports the program from mentorship perspective and then we also have a bunch of people who support from an assessment side of thing the assessment side of thing is the hidden the hidden workhorse of learning in the sense that until you ask somebody to physically put on paper the stuff that you have learned you have no idea whether they have generally understood what you've done and that piece is really really critical from a student perspective and our perspective in terms of how we facilitate that so we actually have a a little group of five or six assessment coaches who are slightly more academics at time people who are used to kind of reviewing kind of some kind of assessments and supporting students through that type of work but who are also excellent practitioners and they work more directly with students one-on-one to create their pieces of work and go back and forth with them to make sure that they're producing something of value to themselves and obviously to the quality that the program for program needs you'll be joining us in September Scotty so we would start it to add you to the mentoring team going to be absolutely kick-ass to how you involved and we'll probably have another the real four names to add to that from a maybe more than that from a UK perspective or from a European perspective come you know a few weeks time after people are listening to this very cool have you contacted Webster's Tictionary put that "Pracademic Word" into the I think someone else has already got that I'm definitely stolen that off someone so yeah that's definitely in there I like that one that's good Stuart how I can somebody who who has been impressed over the years with what you guys do as as a private educational organization expect from the guys in that organization and their contribution to this program sorry Scotty I'm not sure if I fully understand well are you are am I going to get to drink a coffee with you if I take this master's program or am I just going to talk to some Stuart McMillan Avatar on you know a Zoom call or something oh yeah no you you you you need a lot more I before you get to have a coffee with me Scotty yeah that's that's that's ways down the ways down the road no it's you know from from our perspective you know and as Rich was saying I think we've done a really good job putting together a great faculty so far and looking forward to introducing more members of that faculty over the next few weeks and then you know internally you know I do quite a bit you know especially through the residentials but as well as helping Rich build out the curriculum and then Kevin does so much work in the background Kevin doesn't do a heck of a lot of the actual practical teaching but this wouldn't this doesn't exist without without my business partner Kevin Tyler's work as well and then Andreas just kind of glues everything together you know Andreas is is Uber superhost you know he just does such a great job of hosting all of our apprentice coach programs he's hosted every single apprentice coach program we've ever ever done he never had and it's just a really good positive person on the ground when people do come here and then as as Rich alluded to you know the work of of Nick Ward you know Nick it's it's it's it's really important then and I don't think we've got anybody involved yet Rich that kind of don't know who we are and what we're about you know and it's you know Nick is I've known Nick and Scotty you've known Nick is almost as long as I have for you know 25 30 years so it's there's there's this we don't need to sit down or spend months together trying to get the expectations across to anyone who's involved in this they all know by the way okay if I'm getting involved in this eldest higher education master's program this is going to be the requisite you know expertise that I need to bring to this this is what I need to bring to this I need to bring everything that I've got because this is going to be the best thing that we can possibly make it make it over the next decades to come hopefully yeah that's cool well I sort of back in here to bring this in I mean I got obviously honored to be asked by you guys to be involved in this as a mentor for your peeps in the North American side I believe as Rich has explained to me maybe you can sort of clarify for the listener because I think that's a unique part of what you're doing that you wouldn't necessarily experience in a a legit master's so to speak that why why have this and what is it sort of what what is it mean sort of to the to the essence of the program Rich yeah I think it's due alluded to to it earlier that question of asking people what's really important for developing coaches graduates you know the early early career practitioners very commonly the vast majority of the things that come on that list are nontentical skills and it's very difficult to absorb to learn nontentical skills that it needs facilitation it needs personal connection it needs someone to challenge you and ask you why and how you're going about doing things without that people sit still they stay the same practitioner they've been every year for every year of their career without having somebody pushing you a little bit to ask you difficult questions and you can't do that without having contacts and without having somebody to you know facilitate that a little bit and it would have been very easy for us to design this and kind of go ah you know what this mentor chip component like ah someone would say it's a little bit fluffy it's not really what the higher education space is for that it doesn't exist in any other institution in the reality of things and it would have been very easy to say like ah it's not let's just know where about that piece like it's not it's not it's not a prerequisite for us to deliver what we need to deliver for things to be things to be awarded but it's probably the most valuable piece it is up there with the core skills that that we're kind of delivering in terms of the the solutions to the performance problems that we're talking about and you know we've definitely looked at it as different ideas of like does this become a very direct curriculum support session or does it become a whole new thing on its own and become a whole new beast with almost like a side curriculum that runs alongside it which is just bonus time and bonus development and it's the latter that it's really become because we can support that curriculum with Q&A and you know clarifying things for people and tasks and feedback like spreading butter you know that's very easy for us to do but the mentorship component is so easy for everybody else to just discount because it's harder to put together it's much more costly it's much more time consuming you can't do it in big groups you have to have small groups but it is one of the most developmental important parts of the program and at no in no point in the future would consider that not being within the curriculum and not being built into it because I think for me that's what makes this coach development versus just an education program there's lots of education programs and if I call it coach development and it's about you know coaching outcomes but unless you have got that kind of piece in there I think that it's very questionable whether it meets those those descriptors um so yeah that's definitely the one of the biggest best best pieces so what we did goes we we thought who is the best person in the world to join the team and this is where this is where this conversation got birthed from just Scotty I tried to talk him out of it you know I gave him probably 70 different names and he said no I want Scotty Livingston are you sure he said yeah I was okay I think you probably shoved my name forward or rich and he was like okay I'll deal with this guy if I have to there's no there's no dealing with anybody everybody is absolutely dream to work with awesome any last thoughts guys before I let the listener and yourselves go from you know obviously if somebody wants to do this how do they go about registering applying and then if there's other things you want to make sure they know before we shut this puppy down but yeah I just say if people are interested um artist website you'll find a little section on there now that's artist higher education and that'll take you to an application link you can obviously find out more about the program look at the curriculum go through our prospectors you can book a call with me and just kind of have a one-on-one chat to talk about your circumstances and stuff absolutely fine application process application process is quite tough quite tough we get a high volume of applications we not everybody will receive an offer to study as part of that application process there is a little kind of entry quiz you get as an idea of kind of where people starting knowledge level is that there's there's no threshold for yes no parcel fail on that it's all kind of contextualized with a big other part of somebody's application but yeah just um would welcome applications of people who are genuinely interested in doing something different and standing apart versus just kind of you know sticking with tradition and doing what they might consider to be the easiest most convenient thing for them um and anybody who wants more information can reach out to me to speak about the details but you can obviously get the prospectors the way I'd maybe summarize the program is it is the best bits of everything that artist has ever produced everything that I have ever produced and kind of delivered through my HE time plus then an influx of ideas and concepts from all of our tutors from but you know what will be all over the world who have all got their own expertise and and perspectives on different things then it's just become and we'll continue to become a very impactful diverse program for anybody within the strength conditioning performance space awesome well congrats rich for making your idea dream come true and I think it's you know one of the reasons why I was attracted to being a part of it is I know knowing what I know what to do in yourself like it is going to be something very unique and special so it's pretty cool to be a part of it so Stuart any last thoughts from the the wise old owl with the long beard that continues to grow longer I mean mine's mine's is gray but I don't feel I can get it in there that way man I wish I could get mine a bit longer to be honest um no I think Rich did a really good job there's something everything I had really nothing more to add from that just just appreciate your your help with this Scotty appreciate you having us on appreciate you being a part of the program appreciate everything you've done podcast keep doing what you're doing buddy thanks buddy appreciate you guys well thanks for making the time I think we'll get this out next week and hopefully it'll help those who might be sitting on the fence uh reach forward and and take themselves to another level which I'm sure this is going to do so have a great rest of your day guys and thanks for coming on thank you mate thanks buddy thanks yeah hey before you go if this podcast got you thinking about how to get better results for your clients come check out what we're doing with neuroreconditioning there's something there for everyone whether you're just starting or ready to take a leadership role in the rehab to perform in space head to re-conditioning HQ dot com or hit me up directly if you want to chat about what's right for you appreciate you being here see you in the next one thanks for joining us today on leave your mark I hope we've left a mark on you today and we wish only that you pay it forward by sharing this story taking the time to read and comment on this podcast please follow us at twitter at bill by scott and instagram at cable pay and become a member of this community at scott you will be sitting on facebook have a great day music by cedric de st ron