Episode 26: Jamie Beaton

In Leaders Getting Coffee episode 26, we are back into the topic of education, this time with an entrepreneurial CEO with a vision for a better world through education.

 

Dr. Jamie Beaton is the 29 year old co-founder of Crimson Education Group. He has carried a passion for education, borne of an entrepreneurial mother who hung her own university degrees, three of them, in his bedroom when he was a small boy.

 

He went on to excel at Kings College in Auckland, before leaving our shores to study at Harvard University in the USA. Now, some ten years later he has a double degree from that most esteemed of universities, as well as eight other university degrees from the who’s who of prestigious education, including Stanford, Yale, Princeton and Oxford.

 

His own entrepreneurial efforts led to the creation of Crimson Education, an organisation that supports high school students to gain offers to the world’s most competitive universities, including those he has attended. Crimson Education now has  a network of over 20,000 students and with over 2,300 tutors and mentors around the world.

 

In this episode, Bruce Cotterill talks to Jamie about what makes the best universities and how an aspiring student should select a university. Their conversation is littered with tips and ideas for those considering studying abroad. And parents might be pleasantly surprised at the cost of doing so. If you look in the right places, it might not be as expensive as we think.

 

There’s also plenty of discussion about the state of the New Zealand education system, how we can improve it, and why we should.

 

Episode 25 of Leaders Getting Coffee is a “must listen” for any students and parents  considering University as a next step, and how to maximise that opportunity. And we hear the story of a fascinating young New Zealander who lives and breathes education. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
This is an iHeartRadio New Zealand podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Hi everyone, and welcome back to Leaders Getting Coffee for
episode twenty six. My name's Bruce Kottrell. Back with you
again and it's great to have you with us for
what I think will be a very memorable episode of
Leading Leaders Getting Coffee. As always, thanks to the team
at enzed me, the people that used to talk zed
be and the Herald who help us put these podcasts together,

(00:49):
and of course to the Business Herald where my regular
column appears, the latest of which appeared on Saturday, the
fourteenth of September. The headline read TV and z's financial woes.
Can Jody O'Donnell revive the struggling broadcaster as fortunes. You
might have noticed the TV and Z released thereinancial results
a few weeks ago, and I guess you have to
feel for the new CEO, Jody O'Donnell. There she was

(01:12):
announcing an art attax loss of eighty five million dollars,
including a sixty two million dollar impairment and more particularly
a twenty eight point five million dollar operating loss. Of course,
she's only been in the job for a few months
and that loss therefore is not hers, but belongs to
those who've gone before her. To her credit, she fronted
up and on newstalk ZB she talked about having found

(01:35):
ten million dollars in savings so far, but needing another
thirty million dollars of either savings or revenue to turn
things around. But during that discussion she made one curious comment.
She said, we're at the ideas stage, and I quote,
we're asking all of our staff for ideas about how
we can increase revenue or decrease costs. I couldn't help
but thinking that ifert Rupert Murdoch owned tvn Z and

(01:58):
a loss of eighty five million dollars had just shown
up on the company's books, I don't really think they'd
be at the ideas stage. But that's just me. I
had to I had to look back over the past
few sets of financial results at TV and Z. Since
twenty twenty one, revenues dropped fifty one million dollars, and
operating expenditure coincidentally has increased by fifty one million dollars.

(02:19):
That's one hundred and two million dollar swing in three years,
and that level of expenditure continues today despite revenues continuing
to fall So the challenges for O'Donnell and her team
are firstly to get the cost base right for the
new financial reality. Secondly, she's rightly talking about the digital strategy,
but that's not a cure. All. TV and Z have

(02:39):
been talking about digital for years and now they're very
late to that particular party, and that alone won't enable
them to win. Thirdly, and this is the thrust of
the article, and it's my opinion, TV and Z needs
to return its focus to quality, unbiased, direct, reliable, accurate,
timely news and current affairs content to anchor television one

(03:00):
in particular. You see TV and Z News and Current
Affairs used to be a must watch, but it's not anymore.
And here's the thing, nothing of note has replaced it.
So the opportunity is there to reclaim that space. As
long as we live in a world where global misinformation
reigns supreme, I believe there's a glaring opportunity for a
news organization that's non partisan and to become the trusted

(03:25):
source of news and current affairs television. This is logical
turf for TV and Z because they've occupied that space before,
but in my opinion, they've lost it for the time being,
so please go and check out the column. It's under
the headline TV and Zed's financial woes. Can Jody O'Donnell
revive the struggling broadcaster's fortunes. It's at Herald dot co
dot nz or under published articles at dubdubdub dot Bruce

(03:48):
Cottrell dot com, Forward Slash Blog. Thanks again for being
with us. We'll be back with you shortly with this
week's guest. Welcome back to episode twenty six of Leaders

(04:09):
Getting Coffee. Today we're talking education, and we're with one
of the most innovative education leaders of the moment. His
name is doctor Jamie Beaton, and he's the founder of
Crimson Education. I should warn all of you listening that
no matter how educated you are, this introduction has the
potential to make all of us feel like underachievers. Jamie

(04:30):
Beaton is just twenty nine years of age and he's
graduated from Harvard University magna cum laude in twenty sixteen
with a double degree in Applied mathematics, Economics and applied Math.
In twenty nineteen, Jamie graduated from Stanford Graduate School of Business,
a place where I spent some time with an MBA
and a Master of Arts and Education, and he completed

(04:52):
as Doctor of Philosophy or PhD in Public Policy on
a Rhodes scholarship at Oxford University, where his study comprised
the analysis of the drivers of student satisfaction and student
outcomes and online learning environments. If you're not getting tired yet,
hang on. He's got a Master in GLO Global Affairs
at Singham University from China. He graduated from the world's

(05:14):
highest ranked law school at Yale with a Jurist doctor
For those of you who don't know what that means,
it's a professional doctorate in law. And he's graduated from
the University of Pennsylvania with a master's an Education Entrepreneurship.
He's currently studying for Masters and Finance at Princeton and
finally for now an MAA and International Relations at War

(05:34):
at King's College of London. Upon graduating from Harvard, Jamie
worked as an investment analyst for Julian Robertson's Tiger Management,
and by then it already co founded Crimson Education, an
organization that supports high school is to gain offers from
the world's most competitive universities. Think Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge, Yale,
Princeton and so on. Jamie's grown Crimson Education to include

(05:57):
a network of over twenty thousand students and two three
hundred tutors and mentors around the world. Crimson has raised
more than sixty five billion U S dollars from some
of the world's leading venture investors and operates across more
than twenty countries, and it is the world's largest and
high highest ranked college admissions consulting firm. In twenty twenty,

(06:19):
he launched the Crimson Global Academy, a world class, fully
accredited private online high school which is currently working with
more than seven hundred students from thirty countries and top
faculty from the UK, US, Australia and New Zealand, and
they are providing both the A level and AP curriculum
for those students. The school is backed by advisory board

(06:39):
members including former New Zealand Prime Minister Sir John Key
and former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Few other points
of note. In two thousand and seventeen, Jamie is featured
on the two seventeen Forbes Asia thirty Under thirty list.
He's still under thirty all these years later. He's a
New Zealand Young Entrepreneur of the Year, a New Zealand
Innovator of the Year, and he's also the author of

(07:00):
the book Accepted Secrets to Gaining Admission to the World's
Top Universities, which is published by Wiley. So I met
rather long note doctor Jamie Beton. Welcome to leaders, getting coffee.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
Delighted to be here, Bruce, exciting stuff.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
It's great to have you. Boy, what a what an
educational line up there is. I would normally have to
speak to twenty people to get that many degrees between them.
What on earth made you decide to run down this
particular alleyway of life?

Speaker 3 (07:32):
From a young age, I've always loved learning.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
I remember growing up with my mum who she had
a MBA degree, law degree, Commerce degree on the wall
of my bedroom, and she always told me that basically
education was a single most powerful way you can advance yourself,
advanced society and beyond. I loved academics. They have treated
almost like a sport, like how a cute you might
treat rugby. And I really enjoyed going to school in

(07:54):
New Zealand. And then once they began at these top
universities in the States, they found the learning environment fascinating,
the people us meeting, the relationships of fesses, all that
stuff incredible. And then, of course, as I kept bought
in Crimson around the world, there was a lot of
overlap between every new experience that I garnered at a
school like an Oxford, a Princeton and being able to
really help more and more.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
Students get into these universities. And I've just kept going.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
So it's been a great source of joy in my life.
Not the most conventional way to learn, but certainly it's
been very interesting.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
So by my calculation, you're currently working on your tense degree.
Have I got that right?

Speaker 3 (08:27):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
Many would argue that you've proven your point. You're now
running a successful global business. You've got ten university degrees.
Are you going to continue to study?

Speaker 3 (08:40):
Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (08:41):
For me, studying is about really being able to deep
dive into all these new arenas. Actually recently began a
degree in healthcare policy at Cornell, and I think there
is a few ways to as efficiently learn these whole
new domains in some of these programs. Of course, I'd
love to read books, you know, go to conferences, learn
from amazing mentors, you know, all the different ways in
which people generally learn, But I do find these types

(09:02):
of university experience is also pretty awesome. And being in
New York, some of these great campus is like Columbia
and Cornell are really close by, so I think I'll
keep going at least while I'm still enjoying it.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
Wow, I wanted to ask you a quick question about Crimson.
Where did you get the name from? Why not orange
or blue or green or yellow? White? Crimson?

Speaker 3 (09:24):
I think you might appreciate this.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
So you know Kings's color my high school, King's College
is maroon, and Harvard's color is crimson, and so I
felt like once I got into Harvard in the early
admission round back in twenty twelve, you know, it was
a bit of a good luck charm, and so given
the Kings the Harvard, I thought, let's go for crimson.
And I like crimson because it's a very bold, striking color.

(09:46):
And for many of our young Kiwis that are hitting abroad,
they're taking a sort of once in a family risk
adventure to go to the other side of the world,
to embark on this whole new phase of life. And
so I like the kind of boldness of Crimson as well.
So I think both in terms of the throwback to
Harvard and King's College as well as that you know, bright, vibrant,

(10:06):
see great name and it served us well ten years later.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, it is, yeah, a good and a good reason
to do. So you've already answered my next question, which
was going to be where did you go to school?
Tell me about life at Kings.

Speaker 3 (10:20):
So I love Kings.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
I first of well, went to Saint King's Prep and
Isaiah a scholarship, then headed off to King's College. And
I loved Kings because there was an environment that really
encourages all around excellence and whether you're a top trampoline,
you know guy competing in the Olympics, and I think
we had a fellow doing that all the way to
you know, hardcore athletes and other fields like rugby, to
you know, musicians at the top of their game. We

(10:43):
had kja Arper, who's gone on to become a Hollywood
star a couple of years from below me. You know,
Kings really gets behind people that are shooting for greatness,
and I think that's a really wonderful aspirational culture. And
there are many schools that do have quite a lot
of sort of tall poppy dynamics, where you know, trying
hard and academics isn't that encouraged. But I always felt
so supported at Kings. I had some amazing teachers. I

(11:04):
actually went back recently to talk to some of the
current students there, and many of my old teachers like
Missus Adams, Miss Stalport, Missus Mung were all there and
they were legendary, and it really helped me to, you know,
have an amazing high school and then get off to
schools like Harvard and thrive. So eternally grateful and you know,
it was an amazing time.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
What were you like at school?

Speaker 3 (11:24):
I think I was pretty similar to how I am now.
You know.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
I was very social, I was very ambitious, pretty extroverted.

Speaker 3 (11:31):
I loved learning.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
I took a lot of different subjects, but I also loved,
you know, tennis, I loved hockey, I loved a bit
of theater and you know, things like clarinet and debating.
So I tried to get really involved in the school.
And I certainly had had a competitive streak, but I
was also pretty lighthearted a lot of the time. And
I actually had really differing friend groups from folks that
just sort of hated academics. Didn't end up going to university,

(11:53):
but I loved hanging out some of these guys, playing poke,
athm etc. All the way to my hardcore academic kids.
You know a lot of the students that come from
you know, olympiads and things like this, So it was
a real mixture and I love that vibrancy.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
Stuff. You You then went on to university, and your
first university was Harvard, which is probably the university that
most of us would aspire to as being our ultimate university.
What was that like?

Speaker 3 (12:22):
It was totally mind blong and going and you've got.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
These really high expectations, but I mean, it just blew
it to space. To give you a sense, I landed
at Harvard, and in the first week I met more
kids who told me they wanted to become the US
president than folks that in my entire life in New
Zealand that said they wanted to go into even politics.
There was a level of aspirational ambition that was almost
ridiculous but somewhat inspiring that I think, you know, it

(12:46):
makes you dream big, whether it be folks like Zuckerberg
who obviously was building Facebook, to people that you know,
aspired gone to government or entrepreneurship in other areas. I thought,
you know, there was amazing professors. I had Larry Summers
as my thesis advisor. He was an advisor of many
of these top presidents like Obama, and he taught macroeconomics
to me in his office, so amazing. And you know,

(13:07):
I also built some amazing friendships these guys like you know,
Brand and Tim and Tafarai who I see regularly and
I just had actually catch up with these guys in Utah.
So amazing social experience, aspirational I learned a ton. I
took classes in the whole variety of fields, from renewable
energy to finance negotiation, to business in China to computer science,
and it set me up for all the degrees that

(13:28):
I did to follow, and also of course opened the
door for me to get a job at Tiger, and
you know, really gave me some credibility in my early
you know or rather you know, twenties or so to
help raise capital and get Crimson firing.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
Good stuff. You mentioned a whole lot of your classmates
who wanted to be president. Most of them would probably
be better than the couple of candidates we're looking at
at the moment, wouldn't they?

Speaker 1 (13:52):
Yeah, I mean interestingly, one of the fellows JD. Vance,
he went to Yell Law School for I finished.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
A degree really recently.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
And there was also vit Bramswami who's in his mid
thirties and also ran for president turn the Republican Party.

Speaker 3 (14:05):
So these guys actually.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
Didn't come through you know, too far, you know, I
mean too many years ago. And I would say they're
both sharp. I mean, I think Trump's become very controversial.
He went to Wharton of course, business school at University Pennsylvania. Yeah,
I mean there's a lot of great talent behind these
candidates in both parties. Actually, So you often think of

(14:28):
Trump and you think of sort of his oddities, and
you think of camale as you failed the bar and
has you know, various issues and she changes her mind
loser and policies.

Speaker 3 (14:36):
But behind them there's some incredibly shop operators.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
So you know, it gives you a bit more confidence
than if you just watch the debate and sort of
quake in fear.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
Yeah, certainly the debate doesn't give you much confidence, but
you've touched on a whole lot of different universities. What
makes a university excel in.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Your view, I think it starts off with a return
on investment for the people that choose to go to
the university. Fundamentally, education for most people is an economic
transaction where you invest money in learning and you've got
to get returns from that experience. There are some folks,
obviously like me, who just love learning, but for the
most part, this actually has to add value to you
as a person, and it's got to add value to society.

(15:11):
So the most important thing to look at is are
the graduates getting high paid jobs? Are they earning more
than folks who aren't going to university? What kind of
careers are hiring them? And you know, is the degree
actually transmitting into useful skills?

Speaker 3 (15:24):
That's like phase one.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
The second thing is, you know, how strong are the
profess is how strong is that network are the fellow
students a university folks you want to learn from. There
are many universities which really will emit anybody and there's
not a collective sense of aspiration or academic strength at
that school. The culture can be actually quite you know,
bad and sort of undermining your ambition. I think some

(15:46):
of these top schools they pull groups of aspiration, young
folks together and they kind of make everyone better off.
So I think that second kind of crowd thing is
an important phenomenon.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
Probably the third thing would.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
Be, you know, I guess, a sense of integrity, you know,
global ambition and knowledge beyond just sort of what you're studying.
I think the US schools do a great job of
opening up to broader perspectives, which is valuable, and not
taking any one perspective too seriously.

Speaker 3 (16:08):
So that's some of the things that I think to
find a great university interesting.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
So if you think about all of the universities you've
spent time in, what are the highlights.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
So I remember in my Harvard negotiating class, we had
the four Mexican President roll into our thirty person class
to describe some of the negotiation you know, conflicts he
went through. My professor had taught CIA negotiators, you know,
high stakes terists, terrorist negotiations, and that class was just
instrumental because it trained us in all kinds of different

(16:42):
styles of negotiation, which became immediately useful when I was
raising capital, acquiring companies, you know, dealing with competitors, dealing
with conflict in terms of you know, maybe you're letting
a stuff in the go or having some sort of dispute,
so very interesting stuff. So I would say that that
negotiation class at Harvard was amazing. Stamford Business School incredibly
inspiring because at Harvard undergrad everyone's got different aspirations. Some

(17:03):
folks want to be academics, others want to build a
business like I did. As I have business school, everyone's
trying to swing big. They're either venture capitalists betting big
on innovation, or they're trying to build great companies like
what I've tried to do at Crimson, And so every
single classmate has that shared passion. And then from all
over the world, so very inspiring. The last one that
I think was particularly interesting was Yell Law School. At
Yell Law School, many of the folks who actually are

(17:24):
Americans who want to go into government, public polls, in
public service. Many spend a lot of time at the
Marquee New York law firms and big commercial law firms.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
But their ultimate aspiration is more in public service. And
it's fascinating meeting these people who.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
Are so strategic and they've got such a sort of
long term outlook on what they want to do. In
their career and how they want to help America on
the world stage, and the kind of actions they take
even on campus.

Speaker 3 (17:47):
To set up these political careers they're developing.

Speaker 1 (17:50):
So you know, Americans are strategic bunch, and I think
all those environments have been fascinating and I've learned from
all these different classmates and been a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
That sounds terrific. You mentioned when you're at high school
you played a bit of hockey and that you had
a few other interests. Do you have interests today that
are outside that university life or are you buried in
what you're doing totally.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
I actually have a lot of different interests, so you know,
I certainly, you know, love going to these universities, but
you know, I have all kinds of hobbies from rock
climbing to paintball to roller coasters. I play this nerdy
game called Warhammer, which takes me all around the states
in the world. I love movies, you know, fitness, running
of course, some good food.

Speaker 3 (18:32):
So yeah, I try to keep.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
Things very dynamic and Cerddainly, I have a lot of
focus in my life on education, both through Crimson and
all sets through.

Speaker 3 (18:40):
My personal studies.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
But there's still a lot of other pieces to my life,
which adds a lot of vibrancy and you know, interesting
growth as well.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
Fantastic. Your career after Harvard, your career by Harvard graduate standards.
Your career started normally enough. You went off to work
for an investment fund in New York. In this case
it was Tiger the Tiger Fund. What was that like?

Speaker 1 (19:05):
It was the moment it was awesome baptism by fire.
On my very first day in the office, I had
to pitch a stock and I pitched the stock which
I can share now ten years later.

Speaker 3 (19:14):
It was SeaWorld.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
Just then see what had gone through this pr scandal
and basically they had this or this orca whale documentary
called Blackfish come out and it had led to this,
you know, huge issue where their attendants dropped off a
cliff and so I had to form this view whether
it would rebound or not. So I pitched the stock.
We made a big position on it. You know, it
was you know, by I mean, I'd come.

Speaker 3 (19:34):
From New Zealand.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
But when I hit it to the States, I had
forty dollars in my bank account. A couple of thousand
from scholarships came after that. But basically I was thrust
into the hedge fund land with you know, big numbers
going into these stocks, and I was accountable for the
results of all these positions that were being put on.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
So it was it was high stakes.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
It was an amazing learning environment, and you know, I
loved the responsibility that the team put on me to
find these unique ideas. And you know, Tiger took me
to all corners of America, in different parts of the world.
Both finding companies were great investments and finding companies were
great shorts. And it was a wonderful training because it
taught me to look for what makes the company great
and also what leads the company astray. And when I

(20:12):
think about building Crimson or even acquiring companies, investing raising capital,
I think if that lends the public market investor, the
stock market investor who's trying to figure out if the
company is kind of a load of bologney or is
actually a really good structural winner. So an amazing baptist
by fire with an incredible mentor in the late Julian
Robertson and some wonderful fellow analysts that I learned a
lot from.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
Every day I was going to ask you about Julian
because he's obviously been a wonderful friend of New Zealand,
sadly no longer with us, but a wonderful friend of
this country. Tell me about your relationship with him. How
did that come about?

Speaker 1 (20:45):
So I first met Julian interviewing for a scholarship in
New Zealand, and then when I was a first year
at Harvard, I sent him an email because he was
using Crimson for sity tutoring for some of the scholars
that were gone for the Robinson's Scholarship program. I reached
out and said, Hey, I'm a key we I'm working
for a hedge fund right now, I'm building Crimson.

Speaker 3 (21:01):
I'd love to meet you. I met with.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
Him, and you know, he quickly put me through his
Tiger hiring test, which was this interesting, very intimidating iq
EQ kind of psychological assessment. I then was hired by Tiger,
and then he became my first investor in Crimson, and
from there he really took me under his wing. And
you know, honestly, there's no one in my life other
than my parents that have had such a huge impact
on me in terms of opening up the world, getting

(21:25):
behind me, intruting me amazing mentors, teaching me the principles
of business but also leadership, and seeing him in action
was just incredible.

Speaker 3 (21:33):
And he was at a phase of his life where
he was.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
Really focused on mentoring and I just learned to tux
from him. So it was just an amazing, amazing experience
and I'm so grateful for it. And frankly, there'd been
no Crimson without Julian, you know, and his ambition and
sort of his belief in us was rocket fuel to
a bunch of young kiwis that really didn't really hadn't
seen much in the world yet.

Speaker 3 (21:53):
So we're eternally grateful.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
What a terrific story. So let's talk about Crimson Education.
For those listeners who don't know much about it, how
do you describe the organization?

Speaker 1 (22:07):
So, Crimson's flagship service is helping ambitious high school students
getting into the world's best universities. And this might sound
a bit obscure, but in many countries around the world,
from Korea to Japan to America, or the UK to
the Middle East to China, getting into these top universities
is really one of the peak aspirations for students around

(22:28):
these countries. To get into a school like Harvard, it's
often a process that involves intense of academics, extracurriculars, leadership essays.
From age fourteen to eighteen. Many kids start preparing for
thisss even younger at the age of ten, and so
Crimson provides this suite off five six different mentors, research programs,
online courses, training for interviews, application essays, school selection, all

(22:51):
the strategy to really get into those top universities and
really get your career off to a bang.

Speaker 3 (22:56):
So we began a New Zealand.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
By twenty sixteen, about three quarters of New zealand as
had gone to the IVY League.

Speaker 3 (23:00):
We're trained by us.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
Today, we've sent over a thousand kids to the IVY League,
more than six thousand's top fifty US universities, and we're
the biggest organization of our kind. That's our flagship service
helping high school students gett into these top universities. Yeah,
we've since rowing and we've been able to do things
like acquiring Number Works, which is a popular tuition brand
across New Zealand, launching an online high school, and also
providing online IB support through our Revision Village platforms, So

(23:25):
we do a whole variety of things to really help
ambitious students reaching their full potential academically and providing really
a lot of different services that a mini Jamie, you know,
fifteen years ago.

Speaker 3 (23:34):
Would have found super useful in high school.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
So, like any startup, I imagine you've had your highs
and lows. As you reflect on some of those, what
comes to mind.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
I mean in twenty sixteen, we basically went very guns
blazing to expand from New Zealand and Australia to more
than twenty countries in two years, so I was really
living out of a suitcase.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
This was a truly frenetic time.

Speaker 1 (23:59):
We went into countries like India, Korea, and we had
a lot of these markets.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
That really, you know, began growing really nicely, but some.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
Of these things were total dumptifiers, and actually competing in
a place like China or Korea it can be very tough,
especially if you're not familiar with the culture locally and
you haven't built that local infrastructure. So I would say
some of those early expansion efforts are very difficult. We
had to kind of retrench multiple markets then re into
with stronger teams at later points in the journey, I've
also you know, made a lot of investments in terms

(24:28):
of different education companies around the world net net been
some great winners, but some of those early deals had
plenty of learnings around people, around culture, how to integrate them,
and there was plenty of learning curves there too hiring
as well. You know, I hadn't built out things like technology,
digital marketing. I hadn't you know, hired folks over my
age before, and so there was plenty of learnings around

(24:49):
you know, how you basically find executives who can grow
with a culture, different phases in the organization. And I'm
really thankful to folks like Penalte Barden, who's actually the
CEO of our Crimson Global Academy.

Speaker 3 (25:01):
She was a people leader from vend and zero.

Speaker 1 (25:03):
And I didn't believe in HR back when I was
beginning Crimson my mum, you know, who's a fantastic entrepreneur,
very skeptical for the h chart apartment, and I sort
of grew up thinking, you know, waste of time. But
as they got past a certain stage, I realized that
actually that kind of structures were every necessary, and so
Penny helped me put in place a set of values
that really spoke to our ethos and helped to scale
how people function.

Speaker 3 (25:23):
So that was a big one.

Speaker 1 (25:25):
So I think for entrepreneurs listening, once you get past
one hundred staff, I do recommend you know the odd
h R professional.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
I've been through that myself.

Speaker 3 (25:32):
I was.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
I wasn't a great fan of the h chart apartment,
especially when they you know, you used to give me
a sixteen page form for my review or whatever else
it was. But I came to realize the value of
them as the business got bigger. So how many people
do you currently employ in Crimson?

Speaker 3 (25:51):
We have eight hundred and fifty full time staff at
the moment.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
Full time and all around the world.

Speaker 3 (25:57):
Yeah, totally global.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
So some of our big hubs of full time staff
would be the US, China, Korea, New Zealand and Australia.
But we have about We've got about twenty two countries
now with physical teams on the ground and twenty six
offices across our major businesses like Crimson's college admissions and
college wise.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
And do any members of your team? Are they people
who've come through the Crimson system in other words, your
scholars or have your scholars all gone on to do
something different.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
So actually we've had both. I think about folks like Sarayah,
who was one of my first students. I was actually
teaching at the set and k Rhad in Auckland. She
got into Columbia. She then helped us launch the Middle East.
She now runs our whole Middle East and India business.
Other folks like fung Jo, my co founder, one of
my first students at Crimson, has grown to be an

(26:49):
incredible leer in organization.

Speaker 3 (26:50):
So we've hired many of our former alumni because I
mean we know them very well. They're focus.

Speaker 1 (26:55):
I've also invested in many of our alumni through Crimson
too and then also tennis into Crimson. Our Crimson alumni
aret amazing companies like Open Ai, Mackenzie, Bain, BCG. We've
had many go on to raise millions and benja capital
and build different companies. We've had Rhodes Scholars, one of
our early students, as a global top ten tennis player.

Speaker 3 (27:13):
The list goes on and on. So we really have an.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
Amazing set of alumni results that really inspire the next generation.
And there's a real culture of mentorship and giving back
throughout the Crimson network.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
How cool is that we're with Jamie Beaton, founder or
co founder of Crimson Education. We'll be back in a moment,
back with Jamie Beaton. Jamie, you just started talking about

(27:43):
the students you help. How do you ideentify them?

Speaker 3 (27:48):
So over the years we've built a set of really
powerful diagnostics.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
We look at students, academics, extracurriculars, leadership, their high school.
We've got a lot of good data on in different
high schools around the world, as well as their aspirations.
You know, are they looking to go to the top
US schools, UK schools, What kind of prayer paths do
they have, what sort of financiate scholarships that they need.
So we evaluate all of these things and then look
at what kind of impact can Crimson make over the
time we have from now all the way to application time,

(28:14):
what sort of schools are possible and what does that
look like for the family. And then from there we
can give them some different options around what outcomes, you know,
do we think are achievable.

Speaker 3 (28:23):
And that's really how we get the journey started.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
We often get the students to complete diagnostics around math
and English. We've got some psychometric testing and then we
get them rocking and rolling through the Crimson program.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
So so do the students typically come to you or
do you have marketing activities that enable you to find them.

Speaker 3 (28:45):
For the most part, students around the world come to Crimson.

Speaker 1 (28:47):
At this point we've built a really strong brand in
all these countries, you know, the US, across Asia, the
Middle East and beyond for elite academic outcomes. So if
you're an aspirational student in New Zealand, chances are you
know Crimson and you know we're the best part of
the Ivy League and beyond. So students usually come to us.
Within this niche, it's very strong. We do certainly events
around the world and just raise awareness of folks that haven't.

Speaker 3 (29:08):
Thought about this pathway.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
So recently we had a great event in Auckland with
Sir John Key and of Riety for alumni from Crimson.
One boy tyrena Amaris student from Wellington College just got
into Columbia. Other folks like a boy called David who
just got into Harvard from a CD strath Allen and
various other rockstars. Ryan a boy from a boy from
I think Balclu through Godden to Dartmouth and other scholars

(29:30):
on stage with several hundred folks.

Speaker 3 (29:31):
In the audience listening to their education journey.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
So we do a lot of blogs, content, social media,
you know, books, other things to help students learn about
the process.

Speaker 3 (29:41):
But for the most part people.

Speaker 1 (29:42):
Reach out to us really known Crimson and our reputation
for academics.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
And there's been much talk of late of the state
of the New Zealand education system. Are we producing kids
that can compete on the international stage.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
I think we produce some kids that can compete on
international stage in spite of a horrific state of education.

Speaker 3 (30:07):
System right now.

Speaker 1 (30:08):
To be honest with you, I really think this is
a massive structure issue for our country.

Speaker 3 (30:13):
The NCAA curriculum is a bit of a disaster.

Speaker 1 (30:16):
In our data, we see that students to take NCAA
versus A levels the Cambridge qualification, the A level, you're
about six times more likely to get into, say all
Co Medical school those with NCAA. Nca is taught in
every school across the country in very different ways. The
biloge in chemistry, rigor and concepts are years behind A
levels and IB it's basically not rigorous enough, particularly in

(30:38):
fields like math, as well, and I think, you know,
really it's a huge dis service. The key we so
those that end up getting abroad, they have immense work ethic,
they have workarounds that we often help these kids take
Extra A levels, AP exams, scholarship exams, university courses. But
the core NCAA curriculum is in a very peerless state
and it has to be reformed.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
So so what you're saying is we produce a few
kids that can compete internationally, but we could produce so
many more well if we're in our schooling system, right, That's.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
Totally right, because in order for you to actually get
out the other end of New Zealand system today and compete,
you basically have to first of all, ignore some of
the weak culture that really undermines academic excellence, where students
are encouragedment to not strive. A lot of schools don't
even have acceleration programs, so once you're doing well in math,
you just hang in your year group.

Speaker 3 (31:30):
There's no push to go further.

Speaker 1 (31:32):
A lot of schools don't really have a culture that
really encourages academic excellence.

Speaker 3 (31:36):
The many schools don't even have teachers that can teach
the more advanced classes. Beyond that, many schools lack the
role models the folks that have gone to excel academically,
and so there is this culture where actually the worst
forty schools in New Zealand, only three percent of those guys
go to university. They get UE. It's a very tough state.
So I think you need a lot of resilience, you

(31:57):
need a lot of stubbornness, You need maybe some parents
that really believe in education to get outut of the
system and make it out to have a great success
a lot of the time on Watunately, it's tied to
income a lot and parents education levels as well. So
I think it is a big challenge right now that
the nation has to grapple with. And of course the
government right now is making some decisive moves to try
and fix it. But I would say that it is

(32:19):
it is. It is far worse than your average qu
probably expects.

Speaker 1 (32:22):
And I see this because Crimson operates around the world.
I see kids in Singapore and China and New York
and California, and there is a massive gap and intensity curriculum,
rigor and focus. Even the way the school the system
is set up. Where in New Zealand. You get into
university with your UI. It's quite easy to get UI
by international standards. Sure, a lot of kids in yet
thirteen that they're chilling their relax they're hardly even trying

(32:45):
that final year. The incentives don't even set up well
to motivate kids to try hard to get into these
top universities.

Speaker 3 (32:51):
So I think it's a serious problem and it has
to be reformed.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
Do you see other countries having similar challenges or are
we an outlier?

Speaker 1 (33:00):
I think off western developed countries that are high income
New Zealand is one of the most struggling that I see.
Australia is significantly better, and other countries like America. Certainly
in some low income public schools, it's very bad in America.
But America also has hundreds of outstanding schools across the
country and a huge charter school movement in certain states

(33:20):
like you know, for example, Florida, Arizona.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
That also rises a lot of kind of.

Speaker 1 (33:24):
Entrepreneurial reform within the system. China obliterates us in terms of,
you know, rigor of the system. Even Russia, we have
a lot of kids, you know, that go through these
education systems in Russia in the middle and that region
Eastern Europe with great math and physics education.

Speaker 3 (33:39):
So I would say New Zealand combines a weak.

Speaker 1 (33:41):
Curriculum without a particular aspirational academic environment, and then a
teacher shortage and a distance issue as well. So it's
not like Sierra Legone, but it is is honestly a
major liability compared to other Western affluent countries like Canada
or America.

Speaker 2 (33:57):
I was afraid you were going to say that, but look,
turning turning to the students you work with. Do you
do you have to see something special in them to
work with them, or do you take on all comers
and get the best outcome that they can that they
can achieve.

Speaker 3 (34:17):
It's the second.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
So our job at Crimson is to find where you
are right now and amplify that to make you the
best version of yourself. So how we think about it
as every student, there is thousands possibilities to how high
school could play out. They could find an inspiring group
of friends, they could find some great teachers. They could
you know, develop an aspiration to go to a certain
top interesting, global university. We want to be the most

(34:37):
ambitious voice in their life more so than even their
parents for them around helping him chart a course to
reach you know, those amazing ambitions, whether it be working
at Tesla like car Alumnisong or working at a top
Wall Street firm like car Alumna, you know, for example,
Lucas or a boy from Hamilton, Samil who's now building
a multimillion dollar AI company in New York. All of

(34:57):
these kids began in New Zealand and went global. So
we don't mind where you start. We just care that
you have a bit of aspiration, a bit of ambition,
a bit of hustle or help people get there.

Speaker 3 (35:06):
So that's really and we've got a whole suit of
different services from kids that are struggling in.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
Math at units like Number Works all the way to
Crimson Global Academy, where you can go four years a
hidden math, five years a hidden math if you want to.
And we've got some fourteen year olds that finish high
school you.

Speaker 3 (35:19):
Know, many many years early. So we've got personalized learning
for the whole suite of learners, you know, across the spectrum.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
And how do you how do you identify and recommend
or select the universities that those students should apply for.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
So We've got the biggest database of successful applications the
top universities globally to these us UK schools.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
So we have a lot of data and a lot of.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
Various algorithms chants, the algorithms where we can look at
the kids' academic stats background and see what sort of
schools can they get into, because the first step is
what can they get into? The second thing is in
what's a good fit for them? Fact is like which
said do you want to live in? What kind of
major is you're interested in? What kind of scholarships do
you need? What countries do you want to spend time in?
So we often have our kids are applying to multiple countries.
Our keys will often apply to Australia, the US, UK,

(36:06):
IS Young Programs, even the Middle East, even Europe. Will
help them then find the best schools for them, get in,
train them and then help them choose the right offer.
And we've got so many reps now one thousand thousands
of kids globally that we have good dat.

Speaker 3 (36:18):
Aplustles, a good intuition.

Speaker 1 (36:20):
We've also got nearly three hundred full time counselors and
all they do is this kind of work, so that
really gives us a great resource when it comes to
helping these keywiks get in global It's amazing.

Speaker 2 (36:31):
And so what's the most important factor for any young
person deciding which university You've already mentioned friend groups, the
cities they want to live in, what they want to study.
Is there a single thing that, based on your experience
and all that data works best for the outcome for
the student?

Speaker 1 (36:50):
I mean, the single most important thing is which university
best maximizes your odds of getting into the career you
want to go to. So for example, I wanted to
work for a hedge fund when I finished.

Speaker 3 (37:01):
Harvard was very.

Speaker 1 (37:02):
Effective at setting you to those types of war street jobs.
For some folks they want to work and create a
few They want to get into Broadway, you know. Universities
like Juilliard are great for that. If you want to
do medicine, maybe you want to do Cambridge medicine, like
for example a student Linda who came from North Shore
and then went off to Cambridge Medicine. So you need
to really think about that because it comes back to

(37:22):
what's a really strong investment for your future.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
I think things like the weather.

Speaker 1 (37:25):
You know, I used to joke like I'd go to
Harvard if it was on Antarctica.

Speaker 3 (37:28):
I just don't care about that. But you know, those soft.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
Factors are important for some, but I think ultimately it's like,
how will this set up your future in your career
and you know what comes next?

Speaker 3 (37:38):
That's the most important single factor.

Speaker 2 (37:40):
Brilliant. And do you help them with funding as well?
Do you help kids get access to funding?

Speaker 3 (37:46):
Absolutely?

Speaker 2 (37:46):
So.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
We've got a full financial aid scholarship team and their
job is to help students figure out how they can
fund these degrees. One mistomer about these Ivy League skills
people think they're really expensive because the thicker price is
very high. But for many of us students like Tyrenna
from Columbia or you know Sam Taylor from out Monganoi
who's now at Harvard, or Cohen Hamana, a young Mara
boy from Rota Rua who's now at Harvard, going to

(38:08):
Harvard was cheaper than going to the University of Auckland
because of the scholarships they offer. Many of these top
universities they want the best global talent, and so often
it's actually very affordable to go once you get in.
So the key thing is you want to get these
kids to be world class level in terms of their
academic ability and other skills, and then you can win
the scholarships, win the financial aids. So we have our
clients getting financial aid, merit based scholarships, negotiating aid offers,

(38:30):
all the good stuff. Certain University is like you know,
New York University, Abu Dhabi. Basically everyone you go, everyone
who's you send there gets a full scholarship. So we've
got a lot of good strategies to help in kids
from all kinds of different income backgrounds afford these top universities.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
Cool. Well, that's that's interesting, and I know there'll be
some people listening listening with interest, especially when you say
a sentence like Auckland University is more expensive than Harvard.
That'll get that'll get a few people listening. We're with
We're with Jamie Beaton, founder of Crimson Education, Perennial University
Graduate and we'll be back in a month back with

(39:16):
Jamie Beaten from Crimson Education. Jamie, we touched on before
the issues with the New Zealand education system, and you
mentioned that the Newish government they've been in place now
for eight or nine months, starting to do some quite
good work in that space. One of those spaces, of course,
is charter schools. Charter schools part of the answer.

Speaker 1 (39:41):
I think charter schools are absolutely part of the answer.
And I'll give you the reference point of New York.
So I have this great a charitable organization I'm involved
in called the Tiger Foundation, which is basically the Tiger
Hedge Funds theilanthropic arm. What they do is they give
a lot of grants to different organizations across New York
to alleviate poverty in the city and beyond. I focus
on the education area, and one of the main grant areas.

Speaker 3 (40:04):
Are chider schools.

Speaker 1 (40:05):
Now, I go to these schools and Brooklyn and Queens
in the Bronx. Some of these charter schools make the
campuses of schools like Dio in New Zealand.

Speaker 3 (40:14):
You know, look rough They basically, these chart.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
Of schools enable entrepreneurs to come in create innovative schooling models,
raise private capital, raise government funding, and deliver an education
model and then the market chooses. If you don't like it,
you don't go, and if you want to go to
your local public school, you go. The challenge in New
Zealand or with any system that's fully basically all public
schools is that there's no competition and so if you're
the local public school in a certain area, there's no

(40:38):
one holding you accountable. Once you've got charter schooling, there's
actually alternatives and so people can choose online, offline, different options,
they can move and that.

Speaker 3 (40:47):
Creates, you know, everyone, everyone's got to level up a
little bit.

Speaker 1 (40:49):
And of course no one, no one wants competition right
if you can just do whatever you like and be fine,
But for the students and for the parents, it's important,
and particularly in a state of education right now in
New Zealand, you need innovators who are trying different things.
Will every charter school work, probably not, but this is
a way if you just get up the learning curve
and to actually get around some of the resistance of

(41:09):
you know, huge unions and big restrictions. I'll give you
a funny example, but you know, Crimson, we've got many
folks in our team that they're Stanford PhDs.

Speaker 3 (41:17):
They've worked for places like NASA.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
These folks couldn't teach New Zealand schools right now even
if they wanted to because of some of the licensing
requirements where they've got to go to do like future
college credentials. That's kind of crazy because if you've got
someone like you, say Bruce, if you want to teach
business in New Zealand and the school you couldn't do
it right now, and in a charter school that's actually liberated,
so you'd be able to. That's one such example. The
other thing I'd say is, right now, if you're a

(41:40):
teacher in New Zealand and you're a computer science teacher,
you're paid the same as an art teacher. Now I
love art like the next guy, but that's nuts because
that computer scientist you could go out there and work
for zero, work for Crimson, or work for pushpay or
something or rocket lab, and actually their market rate is
really high. And if you can't reward them for that
stem skill, you're gonna have a big shortage.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
So, surprise, surprise, you've.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
Got a huge shortage of math and computer science teachers
across the country.

Speaker 3 (42:05):
So you need to kind of a little bit.

Speaker 1 (42:07):
The compensation scheme for teachers to reward that the area
is the subjects that are in the most scarcity, Like
any normal economists would think to do and charter school
and provide some of that liberalization to then get the
system flowing and actually be able to pay teachers more effectively.
So I think it's a no brainer. And if the
system is working so well, you know, fine, okay, but
that's not the state today in New Zealand. No parent

(42:29):
thinks that's a state today, And so I think charter
schools are important. The one caveat, i'd say is, of course,
you need to make sure there's good quality charter school
operators going in and there's a rigorous review process because
obviously it's public funding.

Speaker 3 (42:40):
You've got to treat these things seriously.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
But you know, there are many many public schools across
the country today that you know, frankly, are disappointing kids
and are letting our students down.

Speaker 3 (42:50):
And so the question is what is the alternative? And
so I think it's a no brainer. And I've seen
it work for a while in New York, in Florida
and Arizona, So I think, you know, done well, it
could be a great initiative.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
The only thing is, you know, it's only going to
be a small portion of kiwis in these schools anyway,
So you know, get it or love it, like, it's
not a big deal because it's only a small portion
of Kiwi's I say, let the experiment run wild, see
how it goes. We can learn from it and hopefully
it fixes some of these horrible statistics affecting our kids.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
That's the key phrase. Hopefully we'll learn from it and
we'll make the public schools better as a result. You've
got your own charter school, the Crimson Global Academy, which
I presume is an online school. How does that work?

Speaker 1 (43:30):
So it's actually a private school at current Crimson has
applied to open a charter school in New Zealand, but
our current Crimson Global Academy is a private pay school.
So what this means is, let's say, let's say you're
a key We like say Anna, who was a part
time student at an NCAA school.

Speaker 3 (43:46):
She could take extra aliens with us, and she was
able to get into Oxord Medical School or take.

Speaker 1 (43:50):
A student like Jade Skeets and Carey Carey. She was
at Carey Carey High and it was not particularly rigorous.
She loved the school, but it wasn't that rigorous. She
joined CJ or Crimson Global Academy for a couple of
extra subjects, loved it, moved to our school full time.
This girl from Carey Carey just got into Princeton and
Columbia Prince in the facilit degree in Computer Science, which
we think is amazing. So Crimson Global Academy enables Kiwi's

(44:12):
nationwide to have a world class school and option. It's
led by a fellow who led the Stamford Online High School.
We've got some amazing headmaster there like Mark Phillips and
many many teachers that have taught it from the world's.

Speaker 3 (44:23):
Best high school. So it's a great way for Kiwis
no matter where you.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
Live Wahiki or you know, the North Island, the Peak Northland,
et cetera, to jump in and have a great.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
School from Kiri Kirie to Princeton. You're changing lives, aren't you.

Speaker 3 (44:38):
I mean, that's what I love about education.

Speaker 1 (44:40):
It is the single most highest leverage way through to
lift society forwards, whether it be for New Zealand inc.
As a whole individual Kiwis. You know, it is a
true force multiplier and so getting it right for as many.

Speaker 3 (44:50):
Keys as possible is huge.

Speaker 1 (44:52):
We're focused on our initial impact on helping aspirational Kiwis
at really the top of the academic curve, get up
there on the world stage, compete and bring those skills back.

Speaker 3 (45:00):
But the more impact that.

Speaker 1 (45:01):
We can make broadly across the system, the more excited
we are.

Speaker 2 (45:06):
So how do you keep innovating? You're sitting there, I
know you've got new initiatives with I think University of Pennsylvania,
You're collaborating student internship programs. You've got to just keep
thinking your organizations to keep thinking of new things so
as you'll attract new kids and new universities. How do
you do all that with a global business that's largely

(45:26):
decentralized and a head honcho who spends half as time
studying for new degrees.

Speaker 3 (45:34):
Great question.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
So we study the space extensively, and this is probably
where a bit of my Tiger training comes in. We
look at a lot of different organizations all around the world.
We often see a kind of new model, for example,
merging in a place like India or a place like Korea.
We can spot that trend and bring that global. We
also talking to students. I take on a lot of
personal students at Crimson, so does my co founder fun Joe.
By actually teaching the students working with them, we get

(45:57):
many insights and to actually what are the pain points
in their life, what's actually changing, what are the gaps
that led us to launch units like our research unit
where kids going to research project online with top professors
of PhDs around the world. So we have quite a
great innovation cycle. And when we're launching new businesses at
Crimson new education units, many of our alumni are the
ones who then.

Speaker 3 (46:15):
Launch those units.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
So we do have a really strong innovation muscle and
a lot of our best innovations have been homegrown new
initiatives like the Crimson Global Academy.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
Fascinating. I noticed that, and I mentioned in the introduction
You've got people like Sir John Key and Kevin Rudd
alongside you. You've got this enormous grasp of the state
of education around the world. There must be scope for
an organization like Crimson to influence the standards of education
in different countries. And to do that you probably have

(46:48):
to influence government. Is that an area of sort of
focus or development that you foresee for the business.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
Certainly throughout the last several years we've been more and
more involved working with different governments in various countries, from
the Middle East for example, to you know, various New
Zealand interactions with various advisors and beyond. We're always very
keen to share insights learnings with public policy makers that
can kind of magnify the learnings we have within Crimsons
and more and more students.

Speaker 3 (47:19):
So that's definitely a really interesting area.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
As an organization, we focus often on getting to the students,
getting to the pearance, because that's the fast way to
make a lot of impact. But certainly as we get
larger and larger, we're very keen to work with governments
to you know, magnify that learning. I think with Crimson
Global Academy there's a great scope to do that. But
I would say for the most part, we focus on
working with families, working with communities, working with schools, working

(47:42):
with parents directly given their speed of impact, which you know,
I don't like to sit around too much.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
We can tell that you don't like sitting around too much.
Jamie Beaton, Jamie Beaton, the founder of Crimson Education. We'll
be back in a few moments to talk about AI.
Back with Jamie Beaton of Crimson Education. Jamie the noise

(48:11):
of the moment, or of the last sort of twelve
to twenty four months, I guess is all about artificial intelligence.
There's no question that it's going to play a massive
role in education. What do you see the role the AI?
What do you see the role that AI is playing
here and now today in terms of education? And where

(48:31):
do you see that sitting in three years time?

Speaker 1 (48:35):
So there are two things about AI today that are
worth noting, I think in terms of immediate current state
affecting the system. The first thing is, for many students
for the last ten twenty years, if you wanted to
have tutors in every single subject, you wanted math and
physics and chemistry, bilage teachers, they'd be fairly costly. What
AI is doing is it's dramatically cutting down the cost
of access to instant tutoring, to instant feedback, instant coaching.

Speaker 3 (48:59):
Recently, when I was at Princeton, for example, I.

Speaker 1 (49:01):
Had these tough math questions, tough finance questions, tough concepts,
and I could actually use the A to tutor me
on all these various concepts and it was fast and instantaneous.
That's very powerful because it actually means that more and
more kids across the world can actually the world class
education experience fast. That's the good side of AI at prison.
The bad side right now is a huge portion of

(49:24):
a usage is actually high school students using AI to
write their work, to plagiarize essays, to you know, crank
out English class things last minutes, to do their homework
for them. And there's a lag where schools don't have
the tools to detect this kind of work, and a
lot of students will actually be actually seeing their learning
rates decline because they're getting hooked on AI as a
short circuit in their education. What school should do, in

(49:45):
the short terms, have live assessments, not at home, you know,
not projects, but actually live assessments where kids have to
perform in person without laptops, and that actually requires you
to study and learn the concepts. That's a really important
safeguard temporarily until some of these detection.

Speaker 3 (50:02):
Tools get stronger. You want kids to be able to
use AI effectively.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
But I would say right now, what I see across
the world is a lot of kids using AI to
short circuit the proper work. And beyond the ethical issues,
you actually see kids experiencing this kind of learning loss
because they aren't really engaging with the hard work of
making these essays.

Speaker 3 (50:18):
And formulating arguments.

Speaker 1 (50:20):
So there's a good in a bad right now for AI,
and you know it's only going to get amplified over
the next several years. So we're releasing a lot of
tools at Crimson, from AI tutors to AI marketing tools
for teachers, to AI feedback tools for their college applications,
and it's really really exciting frontier for us. But I
do think it's important that teachers are aware of how
widespread these tools are, just to make sure that kids aren't,

(50:42):
you know, really skipping the hard work formulating these essays themselves.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
Well, this may surprise you in this question, but of
course my generation grew up we had to turn up
at our school exams with nothing but a pencil case.
Sometimes we could take a slide rule. We certainly didn't
take calculators or computers. Do you foresee kids going back
to the exam room with there's nothing but a pencil
case in order to get around the sort of problems

(51:09):
you're highlighting.

Speaker 1 (51:12):
So certain classes, like say computer science may actually that
you take your laptop and then code and then AI
tools in there, because a really strong coder of tomorrow
will actually be able to use AI very fluently to
answer questions, and so I would expect to type a
questions being asked on exams will change, and actually there'll
be expectation of more output per hour because you can
use the AI tools to help. But for subjects think

(51:33):
for example, English or even math. For sure, I think
a lot of these exams will be done certainly with
screenlock technology where you can't use AI tools or even
pen and paper if necessary. And it's important that some
of these assessments aren't done on laptops, aren't done with AI,
because you want to make sure that actually, you know,
students are absolutely learning. So I would say there will
be probably a bit of a bifurcation in different types

(51:54):
of assessments around the world in different subjects as well.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
We do you think it's going to sit in three
to five years time, AI and education.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
In three to five years time, I think basically the
whole world will have a personal tutor for all their
core subjects. Teachers will largely be responsible for motivation and
for you know, holding students accountable with that human mentorship relationship.
But content delivery will be being delivered a lot more
efficiently by these AI tools, and this will actually lead
to some great learning outcomes and growth. I also think

(52:26):
there'll be a lot of subjects that integrate how to
use a productively to be a more effective scientist, to
be a more effective you know, computer scientist, or a writer,
and so there'll be a lot of you know, opportunities
for you to learn how to combine AI with human
creativity to write better. So there are a couple of
things that I think will be going on. You can
also expect to see AI mental health therapy as well,
you know, for students with for example, a mental health

(52:48):
challenge or some anxiety, they can.

Speaker 3 (52:49):
Chat the AI bots throughout the session.

Speaker 1 (52:52):
And you could also expect, you know, teaching to go
beyond just the sort of you know nine to three schedule.
We've really got to teacher available to you whenever you want.
What it will do though, is all mean that if
you're a really motivated student, you can even go faster
than the current state. And so, you know, the the
challenge of these kind of tools is if you're fundamentally
a lazy student who isn't engaged, the gap between you
and someone who's using AA tools and learning effectively will

(53:13):
get wider and wider and so you need students to
motivate it and fight it up to use these tools,
and so you'll need that human.

Speaker 3 (53:19):
Motivation as well. It won't just lift everyone up miraculously, Jamie.

Speaker 2 (53:25):
We could talk about AI all day. I suspect and
people like you keep old dogs like me sort of
on the hook on that sort of stuff, and it's
absolutely fascinating. But I just I want to talk about
your leadership experiences because from a very young age, you've
obviously taken on so much and put yourself in a

(53:46):
position where where you've essentially backed yourself and made things happen.
If you look back on those few years that you've
spent with Crimson, what have been the biggest challenges? Is
it finding funding, is it finding talent? Is it making time?
What are the biggest challenges that you've I've seen in

(54:07):
your leadership career.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
Mark Zuckerberg on a podcast actually said this really interesting
line where being a CEO of Facebook, he's got to
open his emails every day and it feels like a
gut punch in the morning because every day there is
more problems that come through that you could he could
take a month to solve. And that's every new day Now.
Obviously Crimson is a tiny speck in the ocean. Give

(54:33):
you to a big company like Facebook. We've got some
scale now with a lot of staff around the world.
And I think as a CEO, you ultimately have to
deal with the most thorny, challenging problems to get escalated
due from all corners, and so you need a lot
of resilience, stamina, great determination to make sure that you
can shake off you know, challenge, shake off conflict, shakeoff
you know, failure fast, get back up and keep going.

(54:56):
I think this is a stamina driven long term marathon
as an entrepreneur, and that's ultimately I think that's a
nasty is really important. So I would say as a leader,
my style is lead from the front, you know, to
walk the walk and you know, really you know, lean
into what I do. So I love education because I
live at what I'm you know, espousing at Crimson, and
I really expect, you know, if there's anything my team

(55:18):
has to do, you know, I would, you know, want to.

Speaker 3 (55:20):
Do that myself first and foremost.

Speaker 1 (55:22):
So there are a couple of my core leadership principles,
but I would say just maintaining that stamina throughout all phases,
you know, the good, the bad. There's still that, you know,
constant need to recalibrate, and I think when it comes
to also managing relationships, it's a really important dynamic as
a leader. You know, we foster very strong culture at Crimson.
Balancing a culture of high performance with high trust, high accountability,

(55:44):
but also a friendly environment's very important. If it's too friendly,
you know, you can have mediocrity, but if it's too
high performance, it's too cutthroat. And so finding the right
balance and maintaining that high performance consistently for a decade
that's critical, and I'm always recalibrating it. Of course, every
culture is different, every person's different, But that's another thing
on my mind as well. The final thing I touch
on is hiring a lot of the time, you know,

(56:06):
I think in my role, I'm forming a lot of
snap judgments of people's psychology, they're ability to grow, adapt,
how they'll fit into our culture, and so I think
being able to be a good judge of people is
very over important and that's a skill I keep trying
to develop and grow of a time, and I think
my accuracy is getting better and better with each year.
But you know, there's always mistakes I make, and you know,
it's always fun to figure out what went wrong and

(56:26):
how I can learn from it.

Speaker 2 (56:27):
In the next phase, you mentioned stamina, and after ten
university degrees and more to follow, I suspect you've got
plenty of that. Is that your best skill? And if not,
what do you think is your best leadership skill?

Speaker 1 (56:41):
So my stamina actually comes from my mum, Paula. She
makes me feel like I'm lazy. She's I won't actually
I won't say her age, but you know, she seems
to have a Benjamin butt an anti aging phenomena, and
whenever I'm with her, she's always taking calls. She works phrenetically.
She looks after my grandfather and our family, and you know,
she's been like a fire cracker since I first came

(57:01):
into the world, and I've always seen her as someone
with just incredible resilience whatever's happening. So I think I
was very inspired by her, and you know, certainly that's
a trait I put a lot of value on because
I think, ultimately, you know, no matter how academic you are,
no matter whatever your ideas are, you know, execution and
stamina of the two things that I think to find
great entrepreneurship, and so I don't know whether I'm particularly

(57:22):
good at them, but that's certainly what I obsess about.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
You've mentioned your mom a couple of times. Is she
your your leading role model or other others?

Speaker 1 (57:32):
So, fortunately, I've built a really big network of mentors
and advisors around the world, our investors, our Crimson parents,
supporters along the way, passionate educators.

Speaker 3 (57:41):
Top entrepreneurs. So we've got a really broad based network
of advisors which I tap into. But certainly number one
will be my mom.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
And you know, she's been in my cour obviously since
the very beginning, and you know, I always learned from
her and she's been an amazing source of resilience to
me as well. So yeah, certainly my best mentor in
my mom and Jamie.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
I imagine you have plenty of admirers, particularly for your
education exploits. But what do you admire an other people?

Speaker 3 (58:09):
It's a great question, I think.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
I mean, I admire so many different strands, you know,
from artists that are just incredibly creative, like a pop
star like for example, I don't know, Cardi b the
creativity shee brings to her pursuits all the way to
the stamina required to compete in athletics at the highest level.

Speaker 3 (58:27):
So I would say, you.

Speaker 1 (58:27):
Know, I'm impressed by all kinds of walks of life
different people. I think probably, I mean, it sounds like
a cliche, but I do think someone like Elon Musk,
who has the ability to literally dream beyond you know,
the Earth, dream you know, to a new stratosphere, and
then have the courage and conviction to will these things
into reality, inspire the best and btis to work for

(58:49):
him and you know, really create these organizations despite there
being huge skiptism around him, continuously thinking about SpaceX, thinking
about Tesla. Now, he said this thing recently, which is
funny him to say outloud, but I kind of agree
with where he said. He is the most impactful person
when it comes to fixing climate change and renewable energy

(59:10):
if anyone that's ever existed. And of course the bit
on the nose for him to say that, but he
brought you know, Tesla cars into the arena. That triggered
an arms race with all these car companies to pile
into electric vehicles. And you know, without him, that'll be
you know, chucking along and Petro engines. So I think,
you know, he has the ability to idate far beyond

(59:31):
you know, current stat of humanity and then make it happen.
I think that's incredible because I think it's somewhat you know,
it's hard to think about sort of what could be
one iteration away. But I think these folks that idate
whole new sort of paradigms incredibly inspiring. And yeah, I
have great admiration for him. And then also even political
leaders that can do this too and lead great reforms.
I think about the Brazilian, the Argentinian, you know, a

(59:54):
leader that was elected.

Speaker 3 (59:55):
And he's totally changed the game and broaden a whole
new approach. I really respect these kind of you know,
radical change makers.

Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
People are prepared to break the mold the people, the
people that in our respect, and you're certainly doing it. Jamie.
I only have one more question for you, and you
can probably guess what that is. And I try to
predict what people are going to say when I asked
ask them this question. And usually I ask a sports
person this question and they give me an answer about education,

(01:00:24):
and I ask an educationalist and they talk about the
health system. So I don't really know where it's going
to go. But if you could be the Prime Minister
of New Zealand for a day, what's the one thing
that you'd like to do.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
I would want to make New Zealand a truly world
class education system. I think there are so many issues
that currently face New Zealand, but if we had a
world class education system, we'd create more amazing companies. We'd
have more high paying jobs, we'd have more filled students,
would have happier teachers, our economy would do a lot better,
our key list could compete on the world stage more effectively.

(01:00:56):
I think that's really the north star of our success
as the country. So if I if there was one
way I could focus on, I'd want to come in
there and bought a world class education system.

Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
I totally agree with you. There's a couple of other
things that you mentioned. If you've got a world class
education system, you get better health outcomes and you get
less crime, and those are both things that are plaguing
us at the moment. So I couldn't agree with you more.
I think if we could double down somehow on education
and have the intellect of somebody like you, young men

(01:01:26):
sitting in behind it, I think we could do a
lot worse. Jamie Beaton, thanks for joining us on leaders
getting Coffee. I have no doubt that the conversation we've
just had will have influence parents, students, and many many
others to seek better educational outcomes for the people around them.
You've put some massive hours into your own education and
for that I admire you and it's a great pleasure

(01:01:48):
to have you share some of the knowledge you've gained
with us on leaders getting coffee. So thank you very much.

Speaker 3 (01:01:54):
Thanks much, Bruce, A real pleasure.

Speaker 2 (01:01:56):
Finally, folks, my leadership tip of the week. As is
often the case, I've tried to stay true to the
theme of the day, and this time it's about education,
and it's an important one to remember express especially for
those of us experiencing some challenge, some challenges in these
reasonably difficult times that we're all sort of battling with
at the moment. So the little saying goes like this,

(01:02:17):
when everything around you is falling down, the one thing
that will never leave you is what you have learned.
When everything around you is falling down, the one thing
that will never leave you is what you have learned.
That sums up the value of education from my perspective.
That's it, We're done for another week. Thanks for joining
us on leaders Getting Coffee Episode twenty six with the

(01:02:37):
co founder of Crimson Education and CEO former CEO doctor
Jamie Beaton. As always, if you have any feedback, please
get in touch at info at leaders Getting Coffee dot com.
Remember that our favorite charity is Bike for Blokes dot
co dot Nz and we'll look forward to seeing you
again soon with another wonderful New Zealander and another great
leadership story. Until then, have a great couple of weeks

(01:03:00):
and we'll catch you next time.