Program details
Some refer to Kadoka Academy as Adulting 101, a creative camp for builders, or a platform to discuss all those things we wish we learned when we were in school.
Through this year-long program, the academy aims to equip students with essential life skills, critical thinking abilities, and a holistic understanding of various aspects of life.
By nurturing their intellectual curiosity, ethical values, and communication prowess, we strive to empower students to become well-rounded individuals capable of making a positive impact in their communities and beyond.
We believe:
- The most important things in life are not taught in the classroom
- There are diverse forms of intelligence, of which school is a poor measure
- Creativity is a muscle that can be exercised and developed
- The problems in our society cannot be solved by the same level of consciousness that created them
- History proves divergent thinking adds the most value to society yet our education system discourages it
- It is the responsibility of a committed learner to not depend solely on the school curriculum and teachers for education
- School was originally designed for a world that no longer exists
- If you can be taught how to do something, you can be easily replaced (no job security)
- Who you know (and how to navigate hierarchical power structures) is more important than what you know
- Students have more talent than they are currently displaying and the environment in which they are immersed can encourage or discourage their own greatness
- The value of a college degree is dropping precipitously while the cost is increasing
- Good teachers are scarce and valuable (teaching is no longer a desirable career)
This program is designed for high school students.
Who is it for?
It is for parents that want their children to:
- Start adulthood with many advantages that are hard to find elsewhere
- Have better odds of flourishing throughout adulthood
It is for students that are open to:
- Doing hard things
- Self-examination
- Diverse experiences
- Experimenting
- Taking action
- Personal growth
- One on one coaching
- Getting out of their comfort zone
- Challenging themselves and others
Who is it NOT for?
- Credential seekers
- Check the box learners
- Memorizers
- Those easily offended by diverse perspectives
- Those not interested in change, striving or being challenged
Kadoka Academy is held at Thrive in downtown St. Petersburg
136 4th St N Ste 201, St. Petersburg, FL 33701
The benefits of this location include:
- Professional environment:
Students experience a professional workplace setting in downtown St. Petersburg. - Networking opportunities:
Students can connect with professionals from diverse industries and build valuable relationships. - Cutting-edge facilities:
Access to state-of-the-art amenities including podcast studios, conference rooms, brainstorming rooms, meditation rooms, etc. - Inspiring atmosphere:
The vibrant surroundings stimulate creativity and foster a culture of innovation. - Real-world application:
Students gain practical experience and apply their knowledge in authentic, professional scenarios. - Community engagement:
Convenient access to local organizations and initiatives promotes civic involvement. - Career exposure:
Students have firsthand exposure to various career paths and industries. - Personal growth:
The co-working space cultivates professionalism, adaptability, and a strong work ethic.
Tuition for the program goes directly into employee salaries and operating costs.
Tuition:
- $299/month
- The tuition is due in full by the start date
Duration:
- The program is 10 months, from September 2023 to June 2024
- 3 hour sessions every Saturday morning
Financial Aid:
Our commitment is to support ambitious students regardless of their financial situation. Accepted students must apply for financial support and demonstrate their financial need to ensure support is going to the people who need it most. Please don’t let your financial situation stop you from applying.
Below are important dates to remember:
Program Dates
The program will run from September 2023 to June 2024.
Application Deadline
August 31, 2023
Regular Application Deadline
We evaluate applications on a rolling cycle until August. This means that if you submit your application tomorrow, we will review it and get back to you within 14 days. Once the program is full, we will no longer accept applications.
Session schedule
- How to get rich without being lucky
- Personal finance 101
- time value of money
- compound interest
- saving and investment strategies
- Positive vs zero sum games
- Budgeting, taxes, and retirement accounts
- Money traps: common mistakes of those that went broke
- Borrowing and loans (when it makes sense and when it doesnt)
- Home ownership, mortgages (why is it called the death pledge?) vs leasing
- Interest rates, inflation, banking, how a capitalist society works (the pros and cons), and why business owners are always the wealthiest class in any society
- Dispelling the labor perception bias: how inputs, effort, and time are not related to compensation [case study: CitiGroup logo]
- Leverage: why all highly compensated work is creative in nature
Influences: Tony Robbins, Dave Ramsey, Bob Brinker, The Minimalists, Colin Wright, Ralph Potts
Books: Mastering the Game of Money, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, The Minimalists, Tribe of Mentors, Random Walk Down Wall Street
- How to get in the best universities
- If money and status is the goal, which is the best route?
- Which university is best for you?
- Does it matter where you go?
- Different perspectives and stories
- How to maximize return on investment and get the most out of college career
- Big fish in small pond or lost in a sea of over achievers and its role in confidence and joy in the workplace
- Financing (student loans vs parents vs work vs scholarships)
Influences: Peter Thiel, Anya, Seth Godin, Micheal Ellsberg, Kyle Eschenroeder, Surenda Mitra
Books: The Last Safe Investment, Education of Millionaires
- How to get positive attention to stand out in a loud, distracted world [translation for Tiger Moms: how to get into an elite university]
- Why and how effective communicators have unfair advantages in all areas of life
- Communication in professional settings [what to put in writing, what not to put in writing, follow up times, how to stand out among peers, how to clarify, how to listen and confirm understanding of expectations/timing]
- Confidence building exercises and nonverbal communication in professional and romantic situations
- Science and technology of persuasion
- Amazing and tragic case studies of those that got it wrong
- Common grammar and punctuation errors
- Writing and presentation skills
Influences: Joe Navarro, Susan Cain, Neil Strauss, Seth Godin, Ryan Holiday
Books: What EveryBODY is Saying, Talk Like TED, Purple Cow, Trust Me I’m Lying, Linchpin
- Long term games with long term people: how to have relationships that work
- The proven techniques to increase the time and space between stimulus and response, a common marker for maturity
- Surprising variables modern science has identified as predictive of high quality of life
- Maps and models of consciousness
- How to deal with difficult people, circumstances, and inevitable trajedy
- Top 10 ways men and women screw up their life
Influences: Daniel Gilbert, Jonathan Haidt, Ken Wilber, Laura Schlessinger, Richard Schwartz, James Fowler, Mr. Rogers, M. Scott Peck
Books: The Obstacle is the Way, The Ego is the Enemy, Social Intelligence, No Bad Parts, The Road Less Traveled
- Habits to guarantee you’ll be in the top 1% globally
- Lifelong learning, skill stacking, how personal and career trajectories are influenced by differences in attitude towards independent learning
- Lines of development, multiple intelligences, and the lessons from developmental psychology as taught by Jean Piaget, Clare Graves, Ken Wilber
- Taking responsibility for one’s growth independent of teachers or curriculum and real world examples of the most respected firms globally
- Exercises to flex and train neuropathways
Influences: Montaigne, Plato, Howard Gardner, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Cato, Epictetus, Seneca, Alain de Botton, Sir Ken Robinson, Buckminster Fuller, Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Mark Twain, John Dewey, Sam Chaltain, Warren Buffet, Nicholas Nassim Taleb, Dr. M. Scott Peck, Swami Vivekananda, J. Krishnamurti, Gerald Heard, Alan Watts, Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, Earl Nightingale
Books: The Consolations of Philosophy, Letters to a Young Stoic, How to Fail at Everything and Still Win Big, The Average is Over, Acres of Diamonds, How Proust Can Change Your Life
- Correlation vs causation
- Spurrius correlation and specious anomalies
- Is science absolute?
- In which areas is our understanding evolving and where is it not?
- What is objective truth and what is relative?
- Empiracal generalization
- Hawthorne Effect
- How to identify biases in news and media and personal prejudices
- Consequences for a public that does not understand statistics and how it leads to populist policy decisions [case studies on classic misinterpretation of statistics re: autonomous vehicles, aviation, agricultural water usage]
- Robert Cialdini: exposure → favorable bias → group think
- What is True? [case study of med school students on reddit]
- Case studies of experts getting it wrong and authorities giving horrible advice/causing problems
Influences: Richard Feynman, Nassim Taleb, Tyler Cowen, Robert Cialdini, Dan Ariely
Books: Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, Predictably Irrational, Pre-Suasion, Influence
- What does the latest research tell us about the link between money and happiness?
- Case studies of the rich and famous
- The three scientifically proven ways to enhance baseline
- Hedonistic treadmill and common happiness traps
- The lessons from Harvard’s most extensive longitudinal study and the Framingham Heart Study
- Satisfiers vs maximizers and role of expectations, including the secret to a good life: being easy to please
Influences: Jonathan Haidt, Shawn Anchor, Daniel Goleman, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Martin Seligman, Sam Harris
Books: Happiness Hypothesis, Happiness Advantage, Stumbling Upon Happiness, Flow
- Role of innovation in standards of living, GDP growth, and moving humanity forward
- How to think like an owner and entrepreneur within any organization
- Convergent vs divergent thinking and which adds more value to society
- How to re-train neuropathways after 12 years of formal education that exclusively rewards convergent thinking and punishes creative, divergent thinking
- The top two traits: conscientiousness and energy
- The best predictor of future success is your past success. If you’ve always been taught what to do, you’re going to need to be taught what to do in the workplace, which means the employer can teach others to do that role, which means you’re easily replaceable, which means you cannot command good wages
- Artificial intelligence, geo arbitrage, and why all highly compensation work is and will continue to be creative
- How to demonstrate presence/interest/desire/hunger
- Collaboration, resourcefulness, and non-linear thinking
- Case studies and exercises in creative problem solving
Influences: Tyler Cowen, Naval Ravikant, Jim Collins, Daniel Pink, Peter Thiel, Seth Godin, Howard Gardner, Micheal Ellsberg, Bryan Franklin, Dale Stephens, Sal Kahn
Books: The Average is Over, Linchpin, Education of Millionaires, Think and Grow Rich, The Last Safe Investment, Steal Like an Artist, Atomic Habits, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
- Common deathbed regrets
- The philosophical problem of death
- How to prepare for yourself and others
- How to host conversations with your family on sensitive topics
Influences: Steven Levine, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
Books: On Death and Dying
- How to get clout: building relationships and reputation outside school
- Identifying and developing your own charism and connecting it with your profession
- Resumes are dead: how to stand out in a sea of applicants
- Lookism
- How to discover which career path to pursue
- Leverage: activities for maximum impact
- Skill stacking and systemic thinking vs goal orientation
- Pursue passion or practicality?
Influences: Cal Newport, Tyler Cowen, Seth Godin, Albert Schweitzer
Books: Answering the Call, Deep Work, So Good They Cant Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion, How to Fail at Everything and Still Win Big
- Everyone wants to be fit and healthy but few achieve it…why? What can we do to be top 1%
- Habit forming behaviors, diet, nutrition, athletics
- Longevity science, blue zones, youth, appearance
- Fashion, does it matter? How to dress to increase confidence, influence, respect, and how it impacts outcomes personally and professionally, according to the latest reserach
Influences: Kelly McGonigal, Richard Branson, Dr. Andrew Weil, Dr. Mark Hyman, Swami Rama, Tim Ferriss, Richard Branson, Tony Robbins, Wim Hof, Michael Pollen, Paul Stamets, Andrew Huberman, Peter Attia
Books: UltraPrevention, Relaxation Response, Pantanjali Yoga Aphorisms, 4 Hour Body, Why Zebras Dont Get Ulcers
- Honesty, integrity, and telling the truth: the austerity for the modern age
- How to tell if someone is BS’ing you: critical thinking in the post-truth world w/ case studies from current political discourse and mass media
- What can I do now to increase the odds of flourishing over the long term?
- What is the good life and how do I live it?
- What do wise elders and the wisdom traditions say?
- Perspectives on the meaning of life
- Saints and sages, why are they revered for generations and across cultures?
- What do people want in a partner; how should you behave/present yourself?
- Marriages: what increases odds of success?
- cultural differences, important foundations, ideal traits to screen
- Divorce: how men and women think about divorce, top reasons for it and how to avoid messy relationships via the no drama lama
- How to attract the right partner, level up and access higher class and status
- Exciting and interesting date ideas
Influences: John Gottman, Aziz Anzari, Alain de Bottan, John Gray
Books: Why Marriages Succeed or Fail and How to Make Yours Last, 7 Principles for Making your Marriage Work, Modern Romance, On Love, The School of Life
- How to get clout: building relationships and reputation outside school
- Identifying and developing your own charism and connecting it with your profession
- Resumes are dead: how to stand out in a sea of applicants
- Lookism
- How to discover which career path to pursue
- Leverage: activities for maximum impact
- Skill stacking and systemic thinking vs goal orientation
- Pursue passion or practicality?
Influences: Cal Newport, Tyler Cowen, Seth Godin, Albert Schweitzer
Books: Answering the Call, Deep Work, So Good They Cant Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion, How to Fail at Everything and Still Win Big