Ed Hoffman

Ed Hoffman, thanks for joining me for Coffee with Cool People.

Well, thank you for having me here today.

Absolutely. So, you know, this is an opportunity for me just to just meet and spend time with folks out in the community. And, you know, one of the things that somebody told me was, you know, you know a lot of people, but you don't really know a lot of people. And that really, when I heard it, it struck me. And I said, well, what a— what better way to get to know people better than just to sit down and ask them a little bit about themselves. Because I think we all kind of walk around seeing people and waving and smiling, but not ever necessarily stopping long enough to, to get to know them. And you and I have known each other for years, uh, you know, I've been blessed enough to have the boys, uh, kind of under your tutelage at school. And but never have sat down and talked, so I thought it'd be Cool to spend time together. So to start off with, I guess my first question is, who is Ed Hoffman?

Okay, that's a very fair question. I'm a dad. I have 3 children. My daughter Caroline, who went to Clemson. My son Eddie, who went to Coastal Carolina. And my youngest Gwinnie, who went to Carolina. So I'm not only a house divided, I'm kind of a house scrambled. If you will. I'm also a husband. I'm married to my lovely wife Julie, and we have purchased a house here in Florence after many years of renting at first. And so, you know, so going back, I've been here now 12 years in Florence, so it was a great move for me. Wasn't sure how it was going to work out when I first got here, but it's been really good. And as the head of Trinity Collegiate We've been very, very fortunate because we've been a very successful school. But for me, it was kind of a process, I guess, if you will. When I graduated from college, I was interested in being in education. And over the years, I've taught in country school, rural schools. I've also taught in city schools. I've taught every grade from 5th grade through 12th. Been a headmaster, principal, athletic director, and a coach. You know, started out as a social studies teacher. Which gave me a lot of different insights into kids and, you know, and then parents. And then, you know, one of the good things is having that opportunity to see kids grow. And now, you know, a number of my students are, you know, well into their 50s and have matured. And, you know, kids you'd think, well, that kid's never going to grow up and be anything, has turned out to be quite successful. And so I've been very proud of that. So one of the other things I was very proud of, I was a basketball coach for many, many years, boys basketball. Had great success with that and, you know, really enjoyed that. But there was a time when I had to make a choice for my family, whether to stay in, you know, be in school administration or put the time in for being a basketball coach. So that was— it was a good run for me. I had some opportunities to possibly be an assistant coach in college, turned those down, and like I said, went into a different path, if you will. So That's been, you know, I started out as a— when I was in college, I was a laborer helping to put myself through college. I've also been a stockbroker, investment advisor. That was good for me for a while. So, you know, tried to do some things that were varied over the years and tried to, you know, find some success in each and every one of these endeavors.

Sure. Well, it's interesting because our paths are more similar than I knew. You may not know, I started as a social studies teacher, so I taught the 6th 6th grade, uh, when I graduated from Clemson, uh, taught the 6th grade, uh, language arts and social studies. So that was, uh, that was the first year of my life. And of course then made it into, uh, into what I do now. But it's, uh, it is interesting because I, I saw, uh, a young lady that I had— now my students are all in their, I guess now mid to upper 30s because they were— I was 22 and they were 12. So that's how I always— and that's probably the reason I didn't teach any longer than I did, because we were so similar when I was young that discipline was hard. It just wasn't for me. It wasn't— it's not my personality. And the whole don't smile until Christmas, uh, just wasn't— it wasn't a whole lot of fun. But I saw recently on— because of Facebook, I saw that one of the students that I worked with is now running a charity, and I would have never expected that. And I think it's fantastic. So it's always neat to be able to do some of that. So I'm curious, you mentioned trying to find success in all of those different things. You know, one of the funny things about that word is it means different things to different people. When you think about success, what is— how do you define that?

Well, I think it depends, like you were just saying, on the job or on the occupation. In basketball, it was, you know, wins and losses. It was easier to measure. As an investment broker. It was helping people to find a way for them to either save for their retirement or to increase their wealth. And then for schools, it's been more of a, you know, generally the schools that I have worked at are schools that when I first got there have been suffering, or, you know, good academic programs but maybe not high enrollments. So one of my niches has been to increase the enrollment increase the exposure of a good program, but maybe people just don't know about it. And so for that part, I think that's, that would be one of the success stories for, for me here as a head of school, was to grow Trinity Collegiate to make it what it is, because there was great potential there. When I came, it was only, you know, between 69 and 99 students, so it was not very large, with great kids. And great support by parents, but we needed to get larger so that we could expand our academic program. And so that's kind of one of the things I see as success in that field is that much larger enrollment. Our enrollment is over 400 now. We've got 22 AP classes. We've got dual enrollment classes with Coker and with Francis Marion, so we've got good partnerships there. And we've got great teachers, you know, and then which helps us with the students, you know, to have students that really kind of buy in. Our school's a college prep program. If you're going to our school, you were going to go to college based on— at birth, your parents had decided that was what they wanted for you. You know, if you're a barbarian, you can't survive at our school. It's not going to work. So I think that's been my trademark, I guess, if you will, is taking a school and growing it to where it can be successful and where it can have great reputation. You know, this year's been great for us because we've had the most scholarship money we've ever had with the largest academic class. So it's been good.

Well, my son was part of that class, so I'm grateful from that standpoint. And, you know, but it's interesting. So I'm curious, and I've got lots of questions kind of about the school and some of that stuff, because from the outside looking in, it's certainly been growth on a lot of areas, and I want to touch on that. But before that, I'm curious how you ended up in Florida. I mean, how, how here? So you've had various groups. You weren't from here.

Where were you originally from? From Virginia, but I've taught everywhere, you know, just because when you're young and somebody says, hey, there's an extra $37 you can make, um, uh, you know, if you teach here. So I taught, um, element— in elementary, 6th grade, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade in Maryland, and then I moved to Pennsylvania and taught the same, pretty much 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. Then I moved to New Jersey because it was a chance to teach at the high school level and also to, you know, to coach a little higher level of basketball. So I taught high school in there. So that's why I said I've taught every grade from 5th down through 12th. So then from there I moved down, back down to Maryland. But I'm from Virginia, but, you know, Maryland was close to home, so it worked out well. And kind of that school was, you know, kind of moved along with my career. And then from Virginia, excuse me, from Maryland, I taught at an inner-city school in D.C. And then from there I came back to Virginia to teach there. So I kind of did a full circle, if you will. But the reason I ended up down here was I was looking for something different. You know, kind of headmasters don't always last real long at schools. I had been at my old school about 10 years.. And then kind of said, okay, maybe it's time, you know, it's time to move along. We've gotten— we achieved what we're trying to do. We're 300+ students. And I thought, well, you know, I'm going to come down. I want to look in South Carolina. Two places that I had been offered positions when I first started, one was in South Carolina, the other one was in on the border of New Mexico and Arizona. At that time, I was a little too far from home, I thought. And so South Carolina always had kind of appealed to me to be a good spot. And Northern Virginia, D.C. area had kind of grown to a point where it's like, okay, this is— you really can't get around like you used to. So this area seemed like a natural winner. I had a couple other offers, one in Kentucky, which was nice, but it just wasn't— didn't feel the same. So I thought, well, I'm going to come to South Carolina, I'm going to see how this works, and then kind of go from there. So it's been a good— it was a good run, if you will. Where it has been a good run because I like the area, I like the people, very friendly. You know, I like the proximity to the beach, to the mountains. It's a good place for my kids to go to school, go to college. So all those things kind of fit together nicely, if you will.

Yeah, that's one of the things that I have found neat about Florence is that you can get a lot of places from here pretty quickly, and it has been a wonderful place, you know, to raise a family. So I definitely agree with that. Speaking of, you know, you've raised your kids here, or they've grown up going to school here, and Florence treated you pretty well because this is where you met my wife Julie.

Yeah, so this has been, this has been a great, great spot for me. Um, and, you know, and it's a place where you can be involved in the community, and that was one of the things that attracted me to it. And you used to be able to do that in DC and Virginia, but I mean, it got so big and so powerful that your voice wasn't really that important, or you didn't really feel like you were making that much of a difference. So since I've been here, I've been involved with the Chamber for 10 years. I've been on Downtown Development, which was very important to me. When I first came here, they said, "Why are you involved in Downtown Development? Your school's in Darlington, but most of your students come from Florence." I said, "Because we need something downtown that I can use that." to help attract teachers to our school. I said, you know, that's important to young professionals, if you will. So that was something I was really interested in, in that early stages of how that was going to work. Because, you know, it's nothing— there's nothing wrong with having a person come in and going out and staying, you know, by 95, by the highway, but it wasn't attractive. You know, you take them out to dinner out there, they can do that wherever they came from. So I wanted to get involved in different things like that. So I've been a member of the PD Land Trust, you know, a lot of different organizations here that I think are important to— that have been instrumental in helping Florence become what it is today, which is much more like what it was, you know, years and years ago. You know, you see pictures of how it was. So it's more lively, more— and I think it helps because it helped to keep— it would help keep kids here as they're growing up. They could find a career here.. And also that they, you know, they could be proud of their hometown. I think that's been good for me, good for my school. It's certainly good for some of the kids that have, you know, gone off to college and come back.

Well, what would you say has been the biggest change in the 12? Is it downtown? I think there's some argument right around town as to— I don't think that anybody would argue that the downtown development's been important. I'm curious because it was interesting. I hadn't even thought about the idea of you know, for you recruiting teachers and what that's been like. And of course I'm curious about that, but I mean, what would you say has been the biggest change since you've been here?

I said the downtown development, very, you know, for, for, for in living, in living here. For me, um, excuse me, our school's growth has been tremendous. You know, we went, like I said, from 99 to 400, uh, over 400. So, um, and part of that is You know, I also wanted to be at a place where we could attract kids of many different nationalities. You know, we have very much a global outreach program, and we have— this year we graduated kids from 10 different countries. You know, that's not usual for most high schools around— very unusual, really, for many, many high schools. But we have kids from, you know, we have kids from Lithuania, we have kids from China, Vietnam, Korea, Ireland, you know, just to name a few friends. Just to name a few. And we've been growing that program. So one of the things that's important for me here was, you know, we wanted to be a school where— when I first came here, they said, you know, why is our enrollment— I said, well, you look like a white flight school, but you're not a white flight school. So I said, you need to change some things here. So one of the things we've been very, you know, really trying to emphasize over the years is being a diversified school, having diversity as part of our program or part of our mission. And that's helped to grow our school. You know, like I said, we want to reach out to as many different populations. Some people say, "Well, how, you know, maybe people can't afford it." I say, "Well, we want to be real active with tuition assistance and financial aid, kind of like the colleges." You know, we want to help kids to develop, and then we also recognize, like colleges, that as time goes on, they're going to give back to their school. So it's not like a lost leader. It's a good investment. You're investing in the kids, which is going to invest in your school down the road. So that's been, that's been very helpful for us. And so that part has helped to grow the school, helped to make the school more vibrant, given us much more opportunities for different courses. But you know, that takes time, you know, because you know, when you're trying to get a student to come from Dillon, it's tough enough. When you try to get a kid coming from Asia, it's even tougher because most kids don't know— in Asia— aren't familiar with South Carolina and all the good things that are here. So over the years I've made like, you know, 10 trips to Asia to recruit students, and that's going very, very well. You know, like I said, it's been good for us.

I'm curious, how do you recruit a kid from Lithuania? I mean, that's a—

That was through friends of mine, people I know that said they were, you know, and that was when COVID was starting. So I mean, that was— it actually helped us. I shouldn't say helped us, but it actually, it did help us in the sense that kids in Europe were looking to say, okay, I'm going to go someplace where it's not going to be locked down, I want to be able to still go to school. Um, and South Carolina was very good in that area, and we were very careful. You know, we have a lot of protocols that were there for, for COVID. Um, and just for parents' sake, because, you know, you come to the United States, you could get vaccinated. You know, there are places around the world you could— you didn't have that option. Um, you know, where our kids could get back, we had vaccinations right at the school. So, so all those things kind of played into being able to attract kids. And if you get kids from one country, you can kind of piggyback that off to some other country and say, well, you know, we've got kids from here, and that's further away than you are. And so that actually helped us too in that arena.

That's fascinating. Again, I think that is— and one of the reasons I like having these conversations is because I don't think that people would know that. I just, again, I wouldn't. How do you— because I, again, just sitting through graduation a few months ago and seeing all the different kids from different places, you wonder how in the world they, you know, they wind up where they, where they are. Now, you guys have been incredibly successful in the academics, the, the, you know, the number of scholarships, the graduates, all the different schools. I think you guys do a really good job highlighting that, and the enrollment has grown. But in addition to that Another thing I gotta imagine that you're proud of is the athletics program.

Absolutely. One of the things that I, you know, when I first came here, they said, well, how can we make this— how do we grow the school? I said, well, we need to have a stronger academic— well, we have a strong academic program, we need to increase it. And we're going to be a capstone program starting this year, which is very, very unusual because it's a high academic diploma. For graduation. There's only like 2,500 schools in the whole country— not country, the whole world— that are capstone programs. So we've been building that every year. But in the same— in the addition, the idea was we want to be a school that is known for excellence in everything we do. So if we have a debate team, we have one that would try to win the state championship in debate. And the same thing with our athletic programs. We want our athletic programs to be the best they can. And see, that's not— that's a little unusual down here. Private schools don't dominate. When you're in Virginia or Maryland and some other places, private schools dominate. I mean, there's— that hasn't even— you know, that's not even a question. When I was a coach, if I played a public school, we would win every game by 25 points. I mean, I could tell you what the score was going to be because I could make the score that before we even played the game. That hasn't been the credo here, but we've kind of made some of that occur. You know, I mean, our golf team has been state championship 3 out of 4 years. Our volleyball teams has gotten significantly better. Our tennis team is very good. Basketball and football, um, baseball, you know, they've all grown together. And I think that's one of the things you don't want to have just one. I mean, you can have just one good team, um, you know, but I think in a high school level, we want to have all good teams and kind of get— and that depends a lot really on the best, you know, you get the good coach, you get the best coach, um, that's going to really help to attract kids to our school And also build the best program. Same thing with math. You get a great math teacher, you're going to get better math scores. So that's kind of been what we've been trying to do, is build the athletic program, build the academic program, build the clubs, and, and, you know, the other, the other teams, the math team. And, and, you know, and part of, like, you know, when you were saying you were sitting there, is one of the things by having kids that are from other parts of the world is they actually help us for our college recruitment. Because they're not necessarily looking just in South Carolina. You know, we've got kids that are going to Purdue. You know, that wouldn't be a normal thing. We have a boy that's going to sign with University of Chicago today. That's not, you know, normal. You know, we've had kids that are going to University of Washington. We've had kids that are at UCLA. So one of the things that's, you know, many kids up in Boston, you know, a lot of kids here in the state, because the way it's set up for finances, it, you know, it pays if you're a a local student to go to the schools. You know, they've done a good job of helping keep kids home. But, you know, the other kids, that's not necessarily important to them. So it's given us a larger profile, if you will. And it's helped some of the other kids who maybe would have looked at here have kind of looked at other areas too. You know, we have an international student that's going to Purdue. We have a local student that's going to Purdue. That wouldn't have happened 10 years ago. That would be unusual for us.

Yeah, I think that you're right because again, from the parent side, uh, you know, in talking most recently with Hampton over the summer, yeah, he, he could rattle off all the different places that he knew people who were going to be going. And, and normally, again, my, at least for the first two, my, yeah, their choice has been, you know, number one was Clemson, number two was Clemson Bridge Program, number three was I don't know what I'm gonna do if I don't get into Clemson. And so for them, and to some extent, right, I brainwashed them that way from, from early on. But it's, it's fascinating to hear them talking about kids going to George Washington. I know that there are some, a couple I think, going to University of Georgia. And, and again, some of these, and I'm trying to think, uh, George Washington and some of these places that normally I just don't think at least in my circles, a lot of people spend a lot of time talking about those places. So I just think that even to your point, the exposure of, of the kids who even still end up staying kind of around home or in-state, they pay attention to a lot of things that otherwise— because somebody else is going there, right?

You know, well, our college counselor, uh, Mrs. Eiseman, she does a great job in Helping kids to understand you have choices. There's a wide open world there, and so you want to look at some of those. And also, excuse me, I don't want to say play one against the other, but if there's a scholarship opportunity, we can say to one school, well, you know, this school has offered us this amount, but this child would really like to go to your school. Can you do any better in your financial package? And that's not a bad thing. I mean, it's something we don't mind doing, picking up the phone and promoting our students.

Um, so you guys help with that? You, you guys get out— and again, I, I can only— my, my experience, again, because my guys were going to go to Clemson, we kind of knew how that was going to go. But I can relate it back to when I was in high school. I was recruited by a few of the smaller schools to play football, and you would get offers and they were combinations of things. One of the things I didn't know was that you guys actually kind of negotiation might not be exactly the right word, but you— I didn't know that y'all got involved on behalf of the students.

We can promote a student, um, you know, because there's, there's a limit to what some parents can pay or not pay. Um, so, you know, we, we try to help that, um, along where we can. But like I said, it, you know, our— the number of kids we get into Clemson is, is fantastic. I mean, Clemson is a very difficult school to get into. As my daughter said, she goes, "It's a good thing I went when I did, because I'm not sure I can get in anymore." And so that part, you know, has been very good. And so we've been very competitive with the state schools, but also by having kids going all over the place, it helps in that arena too.

Yeah, I would think so. One of the things it sounds like that, again, wouldn't have known but interests me, I want to ask you about, is that in addition to growing the school and kind of your strategy for that, it sounds to me like, and you You mentioned it both with the teachers and then again with the coaches is that it sounds to me like you've got a talent or at least an understanding, something that you must pay a lot of attention to is what I would kind of call talent management and the recruiting on that side. What's your philosophy on that?

Well, I mean, we recognize that we're going to, you know, we know we can only pay so much money. You know, we're not going to be able to draw somebody away from Harvard or Columbia and say, hey, you're going to teach here. You know, so we recognize that we've got to work a little harder at finding teachers and then keeping them. You know, the hardest part right now is keeping young teachers because they have that ability to like, you know, I'm going to work here, now I want to work over there, and I appreciate that. So, you know, what we want to do is we want to have a mix of teachers, if you will. We want to have teachers that are going to retire in the next couple of years, we're going to have some that aren't going to retire for 40 years, and try to get it, you know, all the way through. All the way through that arena. So I think that's been, you know, we use our own, you know, try to get local teachers, we try to get teachers from other countries from time to time, we try to get teachers from other areas. So we try to get a blend, if you will, that the kids will feel, and part of that is so that the kids will feel somebody they can identify with, you know, that they can have somebody they can talk to or help them in their studies. And by doing that, I think that gives us even more opportunities because is, you know, we're able to say to somebody who came from, you know, far away, "Hey, we've got other people who are from Chicago," or, "We've got people who are from, you know, Florida." And so that kind of gives us that good mix that you don't feel like when you're a young teacher particularly, you don't feel like, "I'm gonna be the only person here. I'm not gonna know anybody. Everybody else knows somebody and I don't." Well, you know, no, you're not. You're not the only person. And so we've been fortunate because You know, we're able to grow every year that we've been adding teachers as our enrollment has expanded. So that actually makes it even better that somebody doesn't feel like, well, I've been here for 4 years, I'm not the new person anymore, I've been here for a while.

Well, and you and Jared have done a good job with the coaches too, because I've noticed— I mean, yeah, one of the more notable ones, at least for me because my guys all played baseball, was Derek Urquhart. And the involvement that you guys have gotten into, and again, I assume it's kind of partnership between you and Jared, or maybe Jared at your direction, you know, that going out and getting the best coaches in the area, I think, has been, again, for me as somebody who you just notice, I guess, for me, I notice things like that because I feel like it is a commitment to excellence when you go out and you, you say, hey, this is an area where we want to improve. Who's the best person?

Who's the best person? And how do we attract— how do we get them to be here? How do we get them to to be part of the program and kind of then drink the Kool-Aid, if you will, and become true believers in what we're doing. And so that's been— it was very difficult at the beginning because nobody wants to go and coach someplace and be 2-20. Like I said, you don't want to be everybody's homecoming game. That doesn't work. You're not going to stay in coaching long. You're going to get too frustrated.. So as we've gotten better, it's been— we've really been able to attract better coaches, or I don't have to say better coaches, higher caliber coaches in all the sports because somebody says, "Hey, that person has a really good program there. I can have a really good program." And so that's worked very well for us because, you know, as I said, if you look back a couple of years, you know, our teams were just okay. Our teams now are strong, you know, pretty much throughout. And as I said, and that continues. Our Our— now, Grant, we've just kind of really targeted softball in the last year or so, but I mean, our JV softball team had a great season. You know, they played— you know, they were like champions. So that building block is there for them to move up now as we go. But I mean, that took a while for us to do that because, you know, we had to attract the right people to get the right, you know, get the right program, get the right facility going. You know, and that— so that's all there now. We have a better chance now for that.

Yeah, I just think it's interesting to hear, uh, we talk about all these things in business, but I don't think that it's easy to recognize for people not in education, particularly in your case in private education, where you're having to deal with the fundraising side of things to be able to— I mean, you know, because the money's got to come from somewhere, and we both know it's not all from tuition, right? And so it's just an interesting, I guess, point of view to hear somebody talk about what I would consider to be traditional business things like talent management, recruiting, building a good product, and applying that to the education field, which obviously, you know, you have, you've done that. That's, again, it's an interesting insight for me as somebody who's had kids there for or young men, I should probably say, for what seems like, you know, forever. 6 or 8 years now so far, uh, and, uh, and a few more to go. So it's, again, it's just a different kind of point of view, and it's obvious to me. Now talk to me just a minute about the fundraising. So again, tuition, a lot— for a lot of people, uh, you know, tuition can seem like a— I consider it to be an investment, not an expense. I think that, yeah, especially now as I'm listening to you, when I look at the— yeah, again, the investment made in the tuition, when you compare it to, again, the idea that if I was gonna go to University of Chicago, somebody on my behalf is reaching out. I mean, I think that it would be pretty easy for particularly for somebody looking to go out of state, but I'm sure for in-state, but just being able to get to go to the college that you wanted to go to. College of your choosing. It is a— there's a big benefit, I think, in that, but also having somebody advocate on your behalf. It seems to me like I could make the argument that there's a financial return on investment just for being part of a place like Trinity. What is the— I mean, what's it like trying to fund Well, I mean, it's—

I don't call it difficult, but I mean, it takes time and effort. You know, our school is basically between $8,000 and $9,000, which, you know, if you were— if we had this school in DC, you'd be paying $40-some thousand or $30,000. I mean, I, you know, that would not be unheard of. And if you were in New York, you'd be paying, you know, almost double that. So there's a certain aspect of this that, you know, sometimes people locally maybe don't always understand what it costs. So we're, we're asking parents to spend a certain amount of money, and then, you know, we have to raise really the rest. So we have a number of events. We got, we got the Beach Blast that's coming up, which is a fun event. It's a, it's an event where, you know, we ask people to sponsor it. It's a gathering. It's kind of for, you know, parents and friends of the school, alumni, to get together and kind of celebrate the beginning of the school year. You know, we've had the masquerade ball, we've had the different— our gala, which is our big one. You know, we have certain things our students, we ask them to do. Like for basketball, they did a shoot-a-thon. For football, they were selling raffle tickets. So we sold barbecue. So we try to do a lot of different things throughout the school year. But then really what some of it comes down to, me actually going out asking people for money. I've got some people that have been very generous to me who have, you know, some in Virginia, some here. Who have been very, very, um, really, really very, very, really had deep pockets and really kind of made things, you know, much easier for kids. And most of those people want to give the money to help children who can't afford to go to the school. And I've got a couple people from Virginia who, who they started out with very humble means. Now they're, you know, they're well into their 70s and 80s, and, and they've been great, you know, very, very successful.. And they've contributed large amounts of money to our school for kids to be able to go there who can't afford to go there. Um, you know, and that's because they started out there. Somebody helped them when they were, when they were young. Um, so that's been very, very good. Um, and then we do, as I said, these fundraisers. We do different, you know, development, development, annual giving, all the different things, um, that, that kind of focus. Okay, these are things we're doing to help your child, whether it's in the academic field or athletic field. I mean, I know we're going to be doing— we're going to be reaching out to parents soon about certain things for our athletic department that, you know, we don't want to fall behind. You know, we don't have to have the newest and greatest every single time, but we have to be able to keep current with what's out there. So a lot of that has been, you know, myself going and talking, begging, pleading, twisting arms, you know, to to have people help the school. But it's important, and it's a tax write-off. It's a good tax write-off. And so, and I think people feel good when they can say, hey, I helped a child. I did something that, you know, kind of, it's kind of like when you help your church. Similar to that. I'm helping somebody that needs it. You know, you don't have to do it, but it's important to do.

Sure, and it makes you feel good.

Yeah.

And again, I think one of the One of the things that I'm learning just in the conversation is that it helps in a lot of different ways in helping one child. What I've drawn kind of from this conversation is the interconnectedness of all of these things. Helping one child helps the diversity, which helps recruit another teacher, which improves the quality of the class offerings. Which makes it attractive to another local child who wants to specialize in something, which allows you to go out and recruit a great coach to build a dynasty in football, basketball, baseball, softball, golf, and, and all those different things. And, and so it's interesting again, and how some of the sports teams getting a lot of recognition in, let's say, the local press then turns around and, and really highlights the school for people to pay attention. My niece is coming this coming year, and she's actually transferring from, uh, from Williams, from kind of the precursor to the IB program. And again, that was a— my brother and sister-in-law are both college professors, and that was really important to them. And so for them, it was reaffirming for me to see them take a look at that program, because my older niece had already been through 2 years of it. She's actually going to the Governor's School for, uh, for the arts in Greenville this summer. But then the younger one is coming to Trinity, and that's after having, yeah, been through part of the academic rigor. And, and so for me, them evaluating that again is part of having come out to the football game, seeing it. It's just a regular reminder, so it really is all interconnected.

And it kind of reaffirms for you and for other people there, oh, there's a lot of merit in this. And the one thing, you know, and I don't want to be critical of any other school's program or anything, but I mean, IB works very, very well in Germany, but we're not in Germany. So what we do is, you know, like I said, we really kind of promote the AP program, and I think that helps us because those are college credits you're getting. You know, if you get a 3, 4, or 5, colleges can and use that, use that, say, hey, you don't have to take Spanish, you know, freshman Spanish, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna, you're gonna opt out of that because you did so well. And the other thing too, I think it's very important, people sometimes accuse us, nobody goes to our school for free. That's not, that's not the case, you know, everybody's got to pay. And I think parents have to have a commitment regardless of what their financial status is, is they've got to feel, you know, they've got to have some skin in the game, if you will. They've got to feel like Hey, this— not that it has to hurt, but it needs to, you know, it needs to hurt a little bit in the sense that you want this to be an investment. Like you said, it's an investment in your future, whether it's an investment in your child's future or, you know, in your business, investment in somebody's retirement. It's a little bit of the same thing. And so that's one of the things that we promoted, is the idea like, you know, if you really do well at our school, you can go to college for free. If you do pretty well, you know, up there in the top group, you're going to get a chance to get money off your tuition and, you know, ruin boarding college. And then if you come to our school and you do okay, you're going to get accepted to some pretty nice schools. So I think part of that is, you know, the idea of parents recognizing that this can help their child on their next, you know, to their next level.

Yeah, well, and to that end, you know, just doing the math, right, on 22 AP classes if you only took a few. And my 9th grader took AP Computer Science. So, I mean, you know, when I hear 22, it's kind of like, yeah, but I can't really take that many. That's not true because you can get— not to say you'll get all of them, but at what it costs for a college credit hour these days, you could easily, for a student who is interested in and applying themselves, in those AP classes, you could easily pay for a lot of, you know, what would otherwise be tuition. You could knock out a lot of that, you know, and recoup your financial investment just in the AP credits that you could get.

What I always caution parents though, if you have a child that's really, really good, you need to start putting money aside because they're probably going to get their master's or doctorate because 'cause if they're that far in advance, they said, "Oh, I hadn't thought of that." Yeah, well, you were gonna pay for X number of years anyway, now I'm just gonna go on.

But again, what a first-class problem to have. And I think that just for any of them, it's just a big leg up. Well, Ed, I appreciate you spending a little bit of time with me. Kind of the final question that I have, just 'cause again, as much as anything, I wanna learn a little bit about you, is if you were to, so if you could look at the world of fictional characters. It could be a superhero, cartoon, book character. If you could pick one character that you think best represents Ed Hoffman, okay, who would it be and why?

That's a really good question. Um, I would think for me that, you know, who I would identify with, and probably came from when I was a little kid, uh, would be Popeye. Um, simply for the, you know, the quote there is I am what I am, and that's all that I am, okay? You know, not more, not less. But also kind of never giving up. And I got that, you know, when I was a kid, I was not the best student. I, you know, I didn't apply myself. You know, I like to tell a story where, you know, my mom had to take me into school and talk to the principal and the teachers, and they said, you know, Eddie's— little Eddie, he's not applying himself. He needs to do more. He needs, you know, and so, you know, I heard that and said, okay, that's probably a good thing to do. And then, you know, go home and pretend I was studying, fall asleep, or whatever I was doing at the time, because I was, you know, very active with sports and things like that. And then my mom said, because I have a brother Tim, and she said to the principal, what about Timmy? And the principal said, well, Timmy's a very nice boy. Now, Tewi's gone on to be very successful in his career, but nonetheless, I needed to recognize that it wasn't all over. It wasn't, you know, that you're never really finished, if you will. And kind of how Popeye would be the one that would be like, okay, you know, things look gloomy. I'm not, you know, things aren't working out the way they're supposed to, but I gotta keep, I gotta dig in. Now, I don't really, you know, I'm not I'm not a big fan of spinach. I'll eat it, but it has to be something inside you that says, okay, we're gonna achieve, we're gonna do this regardless of what it is. And that's kind of how some people when I first came said, the school's gonna go under. I said, the school's not gonna go under. Why would it go under? Now part of that was cockiness on my part, but I also had done it at 2 other places or 3 other places. So it wasn't unheard of for me to say, no, no, here's what we're gonna do. Here's the plan. If you will. And if we follow the plan, we'll be successful. We'll, you know, this will work out. But that came from experience and to recognize, like I said, kind of that same credo is that, you know, we're not finished here. We're gonna dig down and we're gonna make ourselves successful. You know, we're gonna win. And some of that came from coaching and playing sports as a kid is that, you know, regardless of what the score was, the game wasn't over. And so that's kind of how I looked at it, I guess. The game's not over yet, or the, you know, I gotta beat up Brutus or whoever I gotta beat up to get out of the pool.

Well, I'm strong to the finish because I eats me spinach, right? And I think that's a good lesson for anybody to learn, whether it's, again, your sports teams or your students, is that, you know, it's one of the few things I ever tried to routinely say when I coached the, the younger guys in ball was, it's not how you start, it's how you finish. And so I think that Popeye is a great one to remind people to finish strong.

And I think, you know, it just— just to add to that is, is, is the sense that, you know, sometimes parents can get frustrated because they want their kids to do well. I said, you know, at 12, 13, 14, 15, what were you like? Um, you know, sometimes that's a good reminder for them is that, you know, particularly for boys. You know, it's that— look, it's not a finished product. It's, you know, it's a work in progress, if you will. It's kind of like a piece of art, you know, where it's a painting that we're working on, but we're not finished. And, you know, for often, if somebody says, well, you know, why do we have schools? I said, because it's a good place— it's a good place to— I don't say herd kids, but for kids to go and to learn and to develop those skills, whatever they might be, and to kind of find and test and to test what they want to do. So I think that's important that, you know, we have that and we don't judge the kids like, this kid's, you know, 13 and, you know, we might as well give up on something. Now, we can't give up on kids. You know, there's too much for them to, uh, to experience and to learn and to grow.

Yeah, well, and there's a lot of learning that doesn't occur from books, whether that's in high school or college. Of course, there's plenty of debate about you know, 4-year education versus 2 versus none. Is it still relevant? And I personally think that's a real individualized decision, but, but for me, I kind of have looked at the 4-year college experience with my guys as it's a transition period to the rest of your life. And so there are things that you need to learn about life that don't have anything to do with whatever your course of study is. And so it's a It's a bigger picture kind of education. And I think that starts, again, at least for mine, it started, you know, at Trinity, being able to begin that, you know, you talk about the college preparatory process and it started with learning to get to school on time and ABC days, being different, you know, having different classes, different days. And I do think that for my guys, it, you know, it did, it helped. Thank you for, uh, being strong to the finish. It was great to have you, and I look forward to doing it again.

All right, thank you very much for allowing me to be here.