log #0001 -  What is COE?

Before I read you this log, let me tell you about a cobbler. Now, this is the Captain's Log, where once a week I share about the happenings inside the company, COE. And we're going to start off the Captain's Log with the very first story. What is COE? Who are we? What are we about? Let me tell you about this man, Florian Opitz. He used to repair shoes every Sunday for free. And when I asked him, Why do you repair shoes for free? You could be making money on Sunday too. He looked at me as if I asked him, "Why is the ocean salty?" He said something I have since never forgotten. He said, "Because I was the one that taught myself to walk." I thought about that for a minute, what he had meant, and I think it was along the lines of that someone else had taken the time, taken the effort to teach him how to walk. And he felt this obligation to help other children, to help other people who were in need, and help them also be able to walk in the shoes that he repaired. But that sentence, this idea, this concept, is the entire founding, it's the entire foundation for what COD Covenant Education is about. And today, I'm going to read for you our very first captain's log, the document that we wrote, our manifesto, when we decided to tell the world exactly what we are building and why. So there's a man in What's New in Floripa, a cobbler of all things, who repaired shoes for free every Sunday morning. Not out of charity, not out of optics, He did it because he believed that a person who walks well thinks well. And a person who thinks well will eventually stand up for someone who can't. And I wanna stop here for a second because this isn't a parable. This is a real man. He understood that giving isn't charity. It's a chain. That's the core mechanics of what COE does. We don't give because we're rich, because we have plenty of resources. We give because someone out there gave to us first. That's the premise. And the chain only continues as long as we pass it on forward. I asked him once why he didn't charge. He looked at me as though I asked why the sea was salty. "Because," he said, "I wasn't the one who taught me to walk." We are COE. Not an acronym you frame on a wall. Not a brand. We're a covenant. A movement of showing up for others genuinely, repeatedly, without being asked, until the people we show up for are ready to show up for themselves. And then, and this is the part most people miss, until they can take others along with them. Most organizations stop at the first step. They help someone stabilize, they give someone a skill. That's good, that matters, but the Covenant requires a third act. You showed up for someone, they showed up for themselves, and now they show up for someone else. That's not a program. That's a movement. That's how one act of generosity becomes 10,000. There's a principle I carry with me, and I want to be precise. The best way to make your dreams come true is by taking others along with you for the ride. Is that true, Ellie? Now, I'm not offering that as something to embroider on a throw pillow and sell on Etsy. It's an operational principle by which Covenant of Education functions. It is the engine, not a paint job on the car. I've said this in rooms full of skeptics, and the skeptics always think it means one thing: sacrifice your goal to serve others. That's not what it means. What it does mean is that the path to your purpose runs through other— the path to your purpose runs through other people. Not around them, through them. Every time you genuinely invest in someone else's growth, you find yourself one step closer to where you were trying to go. Every single time. Take Ellie as an example. Before she awake, she didn't realize— her words, not mine— that she could direct a film. She produced a documentary in 10 days, learned DaVinci Resolve in a single week, edited a 10-minute production rough cut in 5 days while simultaneously learning the very same platform she was editing on, then turned around and edited and published 30 YouTube videos in 3 weeks. I've met EMTs who didn't quite move as fast as Ellie has. I want you to understand what happened here. Ellie didn't suddenly become capable. She always— what Seewee did was create the conditions, the presence, the structure, the accountability for her to remember what she was already, what was already in her, and who she already was. This isn't about motivation. This is recognition. And it's the most powerful thing I have ever witnessed in my life. So who is COE for? I have two groups of where you might find yourself in. Group A, you already show up for yourself, you've built discipline, you've done the work, but the level of success you know you deserve hasn't materialized. Not yet, at least. We show you how to show up for others in a way that draws you closer to your very own purpose. And then there's Group B. You don't yet show up for yourself. No judgment. We've all been there. I've been there myself. We will show up for you with patience, structure, and relentless presence until you're ready to show up for yourself. I was Group B for a very long time. Most of the people I love were Group B at some point in their life. There's no shame in it. The shame would be in pretending otherwise and not having anyone show up for you when you need it. COE is about making sure nobody has to wait in Group B alone. Not anymore. And now, where siwi all began. This movement started in 2018 in a cramped office in Cambridge, Massachusetts. True story. It was born from a question, and that question was: What if people from all walks of life had access to an institution that gave them real-world knowledge, real skills, and a measurably better quality of life? Life. It was refined in 2022 on a mountain in Oregon in the dead of winter through a vision that changed everything for me. A vision of my brother who had taken his life 4 years prior, 2014. A vision that relieved me of years of pain and showed me what my mission was: the start of a movement of showing up for others in a way that makes their effort visible and their potential undeniable because they reawaken the power within themselves. I've told that story in public quite a few times, but it belongs right here in this vlog because it's the truth. CU was not built from ambition. It was built from grief and from love and from the absolute certainty that if someone had shown up for my brother the way I now show up for others, he might still be here today. I carry that with me every single day, and although there's no way to bring him back, I intend to carry it forward for as long as I'm able to through this year. That's my dedication, that's my promise, that's the covenant. Our most granular measure of success is called the atom. The atom from which all future success and impact follows. Is this: the moment someone sees in themselves a newfound power or ability they had not seen before or believed they could possess, that single atom of realization, that is our proof of concept. That is our currency. I learned about this concept from a book by Robert Schoenfeld called Busting Loose from the Money Game. And he talks about this idea of how we were ported down here on this Earth as these all-powerful beings, godlike beings, and total retrograde amnesia without a glimpse or understanding of who we once were. And the entire game, the money game, the game that we're ported into, is constantly reminding ourselves, proving to ourselves how capable we truly are. Who you truly are. Think of a baby that's born, totally useless, can't function, can't live without help, soiled some diapers, can't babble. My Sophie, she's 6 months old, she's exactly that. And in essence, she is essentially a god that's been ported down here with unlimited potential, but she can't realize that yet, she can't remember that. But with time, with encouragement, with patience, with love and dedication, Slowly this human starts to learn new skills, starts to remember how powerful they are. And the only limit, the only time this stops, is when you stop believing that you are this all-powerful being and you put that cap on yourself. These atoms that we record, they're specifically these moments, these measurements of success, of realization that, wow, I truly am an all-powerful being. You realize your power. We do this through 3 ways: clarity, realizing your purpose more; capability, realizing things you didn't think were possible before, like Ellie's directing the film; or contribution, being able to help others either through donations to the organization like ours or by helping the next teen or the next person get more clarity in their purpose, and go through the cycle. We don't measure success in revenue. We don't measure it in likes, reach, or enrollment numbers. We measure it in that one instant— you've seen it maybe in yourself, maybe in someone else— where something shifts, where the story a person has been telling themselves about what they're capable of just cracks open. And something new comes through. That crack is everything. That epiphany is COE. Our very first step is to share the Seven Teachings with as many people as possible. The Seven Teachings is a system I created that when followed brings ongoing success and happiness to the practitioner. Not as a promise, as a pattern. The Seven Teachings are: Positive Mental Attitude, Purity of Thought, Vision, Courage, Charisma, Sanctuary, and Rhythm. Those are the 7 teachings which are responsible for ongoing happiness, success, and clarity in your purpose in life. Each one is a complete teaching on its own. Together they are a map— not a shortcut, not a hack, but a genuine repeatable path toward a life you recognize as yours. We distribute them through cards, through cohorts, and through one-on-one guidance, and I'll be going deep on each of them in future logs. And after that, we intend to announce a Purpose Prize of $1 million. Awarded to the school, youth organization, or community program that succeeds in producing the most measurable improvement in team purpose clarity within 18 months of using the 7 Teachings program methodology. $1 million! Because when you're serious about a thing, when it isn't theater, it isn't a brand exercise, you put weight behind it. The Purpose Prize is our way of saying we believe in the system enough to stake something real on it. We want to find the people in the world doing the most genuine, measurable work for teens and make sure they're never underfunded again. The cobbler in the end, after everything said and done, is right. Someone taught you to walk, and now there's a kid out there reaching up with empty hands, nothing in their pockets, waiting for you to return the favor. You've been shown things, you've been loved, taught, carried. Maybe not perfectly, maybe not always, but by someone. Someone showed up for you. That's not an abstraction, that's a fact. And the question isn't whether to return it, the question is What form does it take for you in your life right now? That's what we're here to figure out together.