Join Bronson Hill and co-host Nate Hambrick on the Mailbox Money Show with Dana Marie Berg for a powerful conversation on the failures of traditional education and how parents can better nurture their children’s unique gifts, passions, and purpose. Dana shares practical insights from her experience as a nurse, real estate investor, and education advocate on moving beyond outdated systems, watching the child, incorporating tools like Montessori principles and Colby assessments, and preparing kids for real-world success — including financial literacy.
The discussion explores how to support different learning styles, the role of apprenticeships and vocational exposure, using AI as a tool, and why growth requires embracing challenges.
Dana Marie Berg is a labor and delivery nurse, real estate investor, and author of Ignite Their Passion. She is passionate about reforming education to help every child discover their strengths and live in alignment with who they truly are.
This episode is a must-listen for parents, grandparents, and anyone concerned about preparing the next generation for financial freedom and personal fulfillment.
Get my new book: https://bronsonequity.com/fireyourself
Full Transcript:
Bronson Hill: All right, welcome, welcome. Welcome to the Mailbox Money Show. I’m your host, Bronson Hill. Excited to talk to you today about education, how you’re educating your kids, how the educational system has really failed a lot of people financially. Robert Kiyosaki talks a lot about this in his books about, you know, the education system that teaches us to be socialist or communist, rather than actually taking responsibility to learn how we can grow wealth over time.
So I have an amazing guest here, I’m going to introduce her here in just a minute. I also have my amazing co-host of the author of the book, The 18 Laws of Leverage, Nate Hambrick.
How’s it going, Nate?
Nate Hambrick: It’s going well, thanks for having me.
Bronson Hill: Hey, real quick, before we start, Nate, I wanted to ask you, tell me, what do you think is the biggest challenge with the education system when it comes to financial education?
Nate Hambrick: I mean, where to start? So, I think there are a lot of challenges. And for context, I was homeschooled. My parents, they had 10 of us and then enrolled us all in university at 14 or 15 years old.
And even that had its own flaws. If I had to simplify it, I think we’re focused on a lot of things that don’t matter, and not enough of the things that do. And not to say that the public education system or the private education school is completely flawed, I just think that it is 100 years outdated.
So I think there are a lot of things that we can do to improve. We’ve improved our businesses, we figured out technology, AI. I think there’s a lot of things that we need to do to change the education system and update it.
Bronson Hill: Well, I think it’s really true. It really was designed for the Henry Ford era, working in a factory or industrialization. It was really designed to have people go get, you know, be great job seekers, right?
And so not job creators. So Dana Marie Berg is with us today. She’s author of this book, Ignite Their Passion.
It’s an amazing book. Ignite Their Passion: How to Uncover Every Child’s Unique Spark, Strengths, and Purpose so They Can Live in Alignment and Joy. So Dana, great to have you.
Welcome today. And we met at Limitless, which is Ken McElroy’s event. I’m very excited to talk with you.
I read your book. It’s amazing. So needed.
My daughter, I’m always thinking about how I can teach her when it comes to wealth so that she knows how to manage wealth. And I think a lot of people that we work with are very wealthy and they’re like, how do I teach my kids? My kids are teenagers.
They’re in their 20s. They’re not interested in this. How do we get kids talking and interested in financial education?
Dana Marie Berg: Right. Well, first, they need to learn the basics of finances. As Nate talked about, we don’t teach any of that to our kids.
I have four kids I put through public school. There was never a class about finances or budgeting or let alone investing.
Bronson Hill: What do you think that is? Why do you think that? We know that’s such a big deal.
Why isn’t there even a single class on that?
Dana Marie Berg: I don’t know. I think we’ve gotten so stuck in the system of how it is. And that’s just how it’s become.
So Buckminster Fuller said, you’re better off to create a new system than to try to change the old one. And I’m paraphrasing him, of course.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, that’s amazing. So tell us a little bit of your story. Obviously, you have an education background, but you’re also a nurse.
You’ve done travel nursing. You do midterm rentals. You’ve got some real estate yourself.
How did you stumble on this and decide, I’m going to really go in and change education? Because that’s your passion, right? It’s changing education.
Dana Marie Berg: Well, it seems pretty far from what I actually do. Like you said, I’m a nurse. I’m a labor and delivery nurse for 30 years.
It all started back. My oldest boy was five years old. And I put him in Montessori school, really by accident.
I needed daycare. He was four years old. And I fell in love with it.
Why isn’t this everywhere? They actually teach kids to think and to use their brain. And so from that point on, I’ve had a goal of starting a school.
And of course, it’s just been in the back of my mind. Like, I need to do this. I need to do this.
And finally, finally decided to do that. And I see so many people. I see all these children being born.
And everybody’s like, oh, they can do anything in the world. And then they all fall into the system.
Nate Hambrick: What are some of your pieces of advice? Because and for context, Dana, I’ve got two under two. And I live in Dallas, Texas, which has some of the best schools and some of the worst schools in the same city.
What are some simple action steps that you think someone like myself could take to prep them for that school, to find the right school, and to educate them on their way out?
Dana Marie Berg: Sure. It’s really education is such a loose term in finding the right place. It’s more like watching the children.
I mean, Maria Montessori said, follow the child. Watch and see what they’re interested in, what they do, and help them to thrive, if that makes any sense. You can actually see one child might be, if you’ve got two under two, you might not even know at this point.
But as they grow, they’re more drawn towards something, whether it’s children, animals, drawing, other things. So watch the child. And I would put them in Montessori school very young.
Bronson Hill: You know, I was just going through your book and looking at, reminding myself of some of the chapters. You do a lot around really tailoring things to the child, because every kid is different. You’ve got four.
And my dad always said that. He’s like, I feel like raising kids were so different. And I also treated it as if I were raising Mozart and a bunch of geniuses in different areas.
And so really, how do you steward a kid’s gifts in a way that you’re supportive of them, and you draw out who they are and their gifts?
Dana Marie Berg: So that’s a great question, Bronson. Do the best you can to support them. In whatever their gifts are.
And it’s also more than just their gifts, too. But I was going to say, too, how they learn. I mean, if you have the opportunity, you know, Mozart, you know, being able to provide them with, you know, the piano, the whatever, then do that and get them to the right people who know how to help teach them.
And that’s another huge part of it, is finding people that can teach them. There are so many facets to education that can teach them in the way that they can understand it, as opposed to teaching them. It’s almost like a whole different language if you’re speaking to them and that they don’t really understand.
Like I said, I had four kids. I could help one of them with math. The other ones, it was like Greek.
We just did not communicate, right?
Bronson Hill: Well, I got a question for Nate. Nate, you know, you keep surprising like the most interesting man in the world. He always like, oh, yeah, I have, you know, a state weightlifting champion and whatever state you grew up in.
And, you’re one of 10 kids. What number were you, Nate, in your family?
Nate Hambrick: I was the second oldest of 10.
Bronson Hill: The second oldest of 10.
Nate Hambrick: They’re still alive. I want to make sure that’s current language. They’re still all here.
Bronson Hill: But how did your parents handle that when you had obviously a very wide diversity of different types of kids? Like, do they treat you all the same or do they treat you very differently? And I mean, you’re one of the guys, the guy who looks just being super bright and successful.
So how do they treat you guys?
Nate Hambrick: Yeah, you know, it’s funny. I was chatting with my wife and some of her friends about this day before yesterday. So my mother had a theory that specifically with boys that she needed to start her education later.
And so I got a very late start. I hope all of this is accurate. Obviously, I was very young when this happened.
I don’t think I really started school until I was probably seven years old, which is a lot later than most people with the preschool. They’re starting at four years old or three years old or whatever. But my mother’s theory is that for boys, their brains developed a little bit later.
So give them the chance to be boys. And then when you start them, you can actually just start knocking stuff out really quickly. I don’t know the exact age, but let’s say I started schooling at seven and I just did first grade, second grade, third grade.
And then I just skipped a couple grades and then started college, right? I was able to do that because I was so confident in my abilities. And I remember what that was like, probably at, I don’t have a memory before that, but probably at 11 or 12 or 13 of like, all right, we’re gonna knock out the entire year of math in the next month, month and a half.
It wasn’t a big deal, right? Because I felt so confident. And I remember thinking of all of my friends because most of them were either in private or public school, they would have to practice the same exact problems week in, week out, week in, week out.
It’s like, it doesn’t take you 12 weeks to learn a simple math equation. You can learn that in a couple days, right? And so that was her theory.
And so it worked out pretty well. Almost all of us started taking college credits or dual credit at 14 years old, give or take. And so I think it worked out as imperfect.
It wasn’t the perfect system, but I think it definitely worked out for us.
Bronson Hill: It actually reminds me. So there’s this study, you may know it better Dana or Nate, but there’s this study they did where they took or this example they did where they took kids that were like low performing kids and they told all the teachers the next year that these are the high performing kids, right? So they actually created an expectation from the teacher that these kids are gifted.
These are the high performing kids. And what happened is all of those kids like performed by the end of the year, they were performing above or all the other kids in the classroom were. So it’s interesting how our expectations as parents or expectations as teachers, they really kind of affect how kids perform.
I don’t think it’s just for kids when they’re young. I think it’s for kids as they’re young adults and as they become adults. So Dana, talk about that.
What comes up for you when I share that? Like how is that something you’re seeing when it comes to effectively educating kids?
Dana Marie Berg: Yeah, that’s so true. We put kids in a box or like I was in remedial reading and things like that. So they were like, oh, you’re labeled, you’re always going to be behind.
And if you’re in the same school and all the teachers communicate, it’s just a labeling process. And unfortunately within that too, they’re trying to get everybody to meet the same standards, the same exact way, the same standards. So it’s not a benefit to any child to do that to them.
Nate Hambrick: When do you start like, when do you drop rich dad, poor dad in their lap? What’s the point at which you’re like, all right, it’s time to learn about finance.
Dana Marie Berg: The kids’ version of the game, right? Cash flow for kids.
Nate Hambrick: I do own that.
Bronson Hill: I’m sorry, right over there. If you see it, I’m in the corner.
Dana Marie Berg: Yeah, I love it.
Nate Hambrick: You’ve got both versions.
Dana Marie Berg: Yeah, as early as you can, teach them about even simple things. I mean, I don’t know if you give them an allowance or if they do something, I don’t necessarily believe in allowance, but if they do something and you pay them for it, say, okay, now you got to pay your taxes. You need to give me a dollar back or whatever, at least start integrating some things, I would say.
Bronson Hill: Yeah. So what can we do? I have some friends where this is the case, and I see the people in the wealth forum, this investor community, and a common theme is I’ve got kids.
A lot of people have kids that are grown, they’re in their 20s, they’re in their 30s, and their kids are not interested. You know, people, their net worth, their high net worth, you know, 10, 20, 30 million, but their kids are just not as interested. So how do you, is there a way you get your kids interested in finance or is that kind of too late or you should have bribed them to read your step forward ad a few years ago?
Dana Marie Berg: Right. I think at that point, it’s a bit harder, having kids in their 20s, early 20s. Yeah, it’s a little harder or just if they’re, I mean, if they’re coming from families that are giving them money or supporting them, I’d cut it off and say, okay, you got to pay rent now.
You’ve got to pay rent. This is what life’s about and have them so they actually start appreciating it and using it correctly.
Nate Hambrick: I think it’s also helpful. I had a quick story there and then I’ll pass it back to you, Bronson. It’s also helpful when you have multiple kids because when one of them doesn’t appreciate it, they’re going to figure out some point that it’s important.
I have kind of an interesting situation because I have nine brothers and sisters, but I’d say for a while there, a bunch of my siblings are like, money is not important. Don’t focus on that like love and this is important, which is true. I would say that’s much more important than the financial aspect.
But if you completely ignore the finances, then you’re in a tight spot. So what I’ve noticed with my siblings is the ones that preach the hardest about not caring about money, not caring about their jobs, eventually they realize, oh, this is a problem. And then they look at their siblings who did focus on that and they’re like, oh, I should probably figure this out.
I’ve noticed a bunch of my siblings have really caught wind of that and have caught up because they have siblings that are winning in that realm. But I guess for you, Bronson, I wanted to ask you because we’re constantly educating ourselves. What are some of your favorite business books that you haven’t told me about that I should probably add to my reading list?
Bronson Hill: Well, I just thought what you said. I think it’s so good. The idea of the state’s best leaves clues, right?
So, and you’re great at this, Nate, and Danny as well. We’re all constant looking. We met at an event where it’s an educational event, right?
To go learn and go to other people. And it’s just amazing if you’re just open to learning and the knowledge. And I want to be an old person who’s 80 years old or 90 and I’m curious.
So I’ve got a good friend who’s 87 years old, who’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And he is the most curious guy he’s amazing. He’s just, I don’t want to be that guy.
He’s grateful. He is that kind of guy. So your question is what books I guess could kind of help lead to that or what books have I read that could be powerful.
I’ll have to think about that a little bit and think of what books I got to go check my list here and I’ll get back to you on that. So like, give me a pause and I’ll check my list here. But, Dana, why don’t you talk a little bit about, I know education is changing and it’s changing very fast.
And for a while, when you specifically talk about AI, because AI was seen as like this enemy to like, oh, you know, kids can now write their papers with AI, whatever. Some schools are actually turning around saying, no, we actually want to teach kids to use AI because it’s become this big tool that can be used for a lot of things. And eventually it’s like, do we even have to know how to do anything?
I mean, it used to be a concern that we wouldn’t let kids use calculators when I was a kid. Oh, you can’t use a calculator in class because what if you didn’t have a calculator, calculated broken, or it’s not available? Well, now I mean, you can have, you know, chat GPT can do a lot.
So what do you see kind of the healthy role of AI within education? And what does that look like?
Dana Marie Berg: There’s a tool just like anything else. And I think it’s very helpful as far as like research and learning because think of, I mean, when I was a kid, it was encyclopedias for heaven’s sakes and you had to go to the library to look something up. And of course, it’s already old information.
So, you know, AI is there’s so much information just like anything else, so it can be abused. If you can’t even count your own money, maybe you shouldn’t be using the calculator, you know, still learn how to do things. But use it as a research tool.
And I’m not against it, obviously. I mean, there’s always changes inevitable growth is a choice, right?
Bronson Hill: Yeah, yeah, it is interesting. It’s interesting to see it used to be that, you know, 200 years ago, it was like, you know, if you were a young man and your dad was a, you know, shoemaker or something, you became a shoemaker, right? That’s kind of what you did.
And so, and, you know, pretty much agriculture back then and now it’s information who’d gone from the information age to like the information overload age of just using information more effectively. Maybe you were asking what books, what I recommend. There’s a couple of books I’d recommend for everyone.
And hopefully this is, but there’s kind of the same vein, but there’s one called Do Hard Things, which is basically the idea that we grow when we’re under tension. And I’ve had this thought lately about, you know, like, like life is full of many, many challenges. You can take this from like a perspective just, you know, this thing happened, your car breaks down, the tree falls over, the neighbor needs this, you got a doctor’s thinking, things come up, they’re just full of challenges.
But that, and you can say from a spiritual perspective too, this happens all the time. And I just look at it like it’s not, like some people will say from a spiritual perspective, oh, this is the devil attacking me, or this is just life’s against me or things like this. But what if you look at it like you’re at the gym and all of this is just resistance training to make you stronger, right?
You’re at the weights, you only get stronger when you lift, right? You have that resistance. So I just kind of looked at it like life’s going to be hard and like I want it to be hard so I want to get strong.
So that book, Do Hard Things, the author’s name is Magnus, is a good one. There’s no one called The Comfort Crisis. And it basically just says like, if we don’t have resistance in our life, we’re going to end up like Wally, these beasts, or these beings that in the future that are entertained all the time but aren’t anybody helping us.
How do you provide, like what’s the leverage you do? You’re like the king of leverage here. How do you leverage challenges to grow?
Nate Hambrick: Yeah, well that is the thing is we only get stronger when we are challenged. And so for me, I think constantly having one thing that I’m working on has been really important. My new thing is figuring out how to use Claude Cowork to outsource all of my counting and all of that.
I’ve learned so much over the last week that is saving me so much time that’s helping me be more effective. But I would say just like yourself and I’m sure like you Dana, I am a lifelong learner. I read a ton of books.
My newest one is my good friend Eric Jorgensen just published The Book of Elon. If you haven’t read The Book of Elon, it is super practical and super helpful. So shameless plug for that book.
But constantly reading and then I think I’m really, really focused on improving something in my life partially because if I don’t, I will legitimately go crazy. I think if I retired and sat on log, I would just go crazy instantly. But if you constantly work on one thing every single day or every single week, it’s amazing how many things you can get really, really, really good at.
Bronson Hill: Exponential effects. So Dana talk about that a little bit. I mean, you’ve done a lot of real estate investing.
You know, I believe you’re saying you want to reform education. What is like reforming education look like for you? Like what’s that next few years, next five years?
You’ve got something in your book that were really inspiring to me personally and I’m excited for your launching. But what is it? Can you just share with everybody?
Hey, this is what I think is really needed and this is the vehicle to get there.
Dana Marie Berg: Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, I mean, everybody talks about find your passion, do this, do that. You know what I mean?
And then everybody’s like, I don’t know. I don’t know. I didn’t know what I love to do.
But starting the school is really about from the get go helping children to recognize it because they really do. You can see, like I said before, what they gravitate towards, what what they’re drawn to. So the school is really Montessori based.
Maria Montessori really was spot on. Watch the child and and you know, you teach him how to think. OK, and and and teach them how to learn and you can watch how they learn so you can learn from it.
Beyond that, as children get older, I’m incorporating Colby. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Colby type of assessment.
Bronson Hill: Colby Colby is my favorite. We don’t hire anybody. It’s a great task.
Dana Marie Berg: Love Colby, you know, because not everybody’s met. You know, you put a group of kids together to do a project and you just randomly assign each one of them to do something. Well, some of them are going to be good at brainstorming and some of them are more detail oriented, just like Geno’s book, you know about visionaries and and not instigators, implementers, right?
It’s the same type of thing just on a simpler level and you can actually test kids when they’re younger, how they innately do things, how they act when they need to make decisions and go into action. So incorporating Colby into the school as well, not just with the kids, but with all the teachers. Once you when you understand how other people work as well, it’s great for relationships too, you know, but I’ve done it with my children.
I can help. I understand them more so I can better communicate as well as teach them. So the children, the teachers and then incorporating a lot more of vocational, you know, if they love something, let’s connect them with somebody who actually doesn’t do a lot of apprenticeships and things like that.
Nate Hambrick: Like give us an example of that. What does it look like for your kids or other kids you teach? How do you find them in apprenticeship?
What kinds of apprenticeships have you find them like? Give us some practical stories there.
Dana Marie Berg: Yeah, no, absolutely. Within the school is simply, you know, even just starting with the basics of what, you know, we’re going to teach them even with gardening and how to plant and how to actually feed yourself. What if a child loves being in the garden and they just thrive in there.
You can teach them math in the garden, right? With seeds and rows and spacing and all that stuff, you can teach them, you know, to write out a layout of what to do with it, right? So if they’re thriving somewhere, let them grow there, right?
Garden, whether it’s there or in the kitchen, things like that because we’ll actually have a nutritionist and as well as a chef to teach them the basics. So kind of going back to the school, we’re going to teach them the basic core things of life as well. How to sustain yourself, how to know yourself, relationships, communications.
But also as they get older, you know, what if they’re really interested in law? And I don’t know, they watched a law show and they’re like, I really want to know, just connecting with the community. It’s just it’s not hard to be connected.
And just from, you know, the Chamber of Commerce or whatever, a lot of people are happy to volunteer and absolutely I would take someone on. Let them follow me for a day.
Bronson Hill: One thing that one theme that’s coming up from this episode for me is that every kid is different. I know you’re from a large family and you’ve got four kids. I come from around there for everybody’s different.
And so those personalities have something huge fan and here’s a little hack for anybody kind of a takeaway here is do all your personality tests, meaning like the Myers Briggs, the Enneagram, the StrengthsFinder, the Berkus Assessment, I mean, the Big Five, all of those things. I think StrengthsFinder is an awesome one too. Colby and StrengthsFinder, my favorite work ones.
But then like, take them all and put them in a chat on ChatGPT and let it be part of like your own channels like to evaluate things, right? And even for your kids, you can do that, right? Figure out what makes them your love languages, all the things because it’s just helpful to know like what gives you life.
And so when you have new opportunities, new things that come up, you can kind of put it through the filter and it just, you know, you don’t communicate already the same way, right? You don’t communicate like kids the same way because we’re all different. Any other thoughts on that?
Dana Marie Berg: I absolutely agree. And I think when you asked about AI earlier, what a great way to figure things out instead of be like, well, I’m kind of like this, I’m kind of like that, but now you’re right, you throw those in there and it’s going to spit it out with all the knowledge of the world and say, hey, these things would be be good for you, helpful for you, or might be a good road to go down.
Bronson Hill: So I love it. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Dana, for being here.
I’m excited to continue to hear what you’re up to and I encourage people to reach out and follow. And obviously you have your school, which is going to be in Oregon. I think you’re open to start in Oregon and not be able to connect with that.
But also, I think as a thought leader in the education space, we need more people that love real assets that are fans of alternatives that are teaching kids and doing this from a younger age. I think we all that are committed to doing real estate and other alternative assets, wish we had learned it sooner, right? And so here’s a way, how can we do that?
So how can people reach out and connect with you and find out what you’re doing?
Dana Marie Berg: Yeah, thanks, Bronson. Rayvana.com is my website and there’s a free download there for understanding some of the things about children. It’s just a real basic, but then you can also sign up there.
Bronson Hill: I love that. We’ll put that in the show notes for the listeners as well. So thank you for being here and sit tight for just a minute.
Nate and I are just going to kind of debrief on the episode, our big takeaways. Nate, a lot of good things here. Tell me what was your big takeaway and what were you left with out of this conversation?
Nate Hambrick: Yeah, so a couple of things. So one, the Maria Montessori quote, watch the child. I’m going to keep that logged up in the old noggin for my two kids because I have started doing that, but I think it’s great to put it in concise language.
So I’m grateful for that quote. And then she said something else that really stuck with me that change is inevitable. Growth is a choice, right?
In so many different areas, we can identify other people who are resisting change, right? They’re like, no, they’re trying to fight it. And it’s easy to give ourselves the hard pass.
But the reality is, is we all resist growth. And so looking inwards and trying to identify a couple areas where I’m resisting that myself, I think will be really helpful. How about you, Bronson?
Bronson Hill: Just the emphasis on education, right? That we’re all, you know, school is not necessarily the best way to get educated. I mean, you can learn certain things.
It can be valuable in certain ways, certain trades, but things are changing so quickly. And I think five years is going to be unrecognizable in many different fields in education and, you know, medical or other areas. And it’s just so important that we continue to always keep learning.
I think with our kids, it’s the critical thinking and it’s really being willing to, you know, look at what has worked and what hasn’t worked. And so obviously, the idea of Montessori or just watching the kid or other type of plans can be really, really valuable. So anyway, I want to thank all our audience for being here today.
So anyway, I just want to thank everybody for being here. I think it was a great episode to talk about education. If you have other thoughts on education or people you want us to interview, we’d love to continue to interview on alternative education and how to make the education system better.
And one thought is, hey, if it doesn’t work, just do homeschooling or fare yourself. It’s like we can make it better. We can find ways to do it better.
Yeah. So if you have kids, you have grandkids, even if you have grown kids, it’s something they’re going to deal with. And so it’s so important that we do take ownership of how we’re educating each other.
So if you haven’t joined our investment club, you can check it out at the link below, brownsenicu.com. We’re doing some amazing investment deals. And so I’d love to be even educational to sit through some of these to learn what’s out there.
If you’re a traditional stock there or other real estate investor with some amazing deals for tax benefits, cash flow, or appreciation. But I appreciate you joining us for this episode of the Mailbox Money Show. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode.
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