From Wall Street to Ed Tech: The Way to College Podcast with Sam Bernstein

Hi, this is Dr. O'Sullivan. Hi, this is Dr. O'Sullivan with another episode, The Way to College podcast. And, you know, I love the podcast because one, it's an opportunity, a platform for folks to share their stories, to share their educational journeys, but also their professional journeys. I think one of the fascinating things for me is learning about the work that folks are doing, how they got there and what they're doing in that work. Right. And so today I have a very special guest and as his customer with all of my guests, what I like to do is I like to allow them introduce themselves. So, so Sam, why don't you introduce yourself to our listeners out there? Absolutely. First off, thanks so much for having me on. You know, Sam Bernstein, one of the two co-founders of Loper, which is a free mobile app for high school students, guiding them to the right next step. And to take a, you know, a step back myself and my own journey, you know, very fortunate went to a Grimton Bay area, went to a nice private Jesuit high school, St. Nisha's College Prep in San Francisco. And, you know, in many ways, when I look back at my own process, I was set up in a position where it would have been really, really hard to fail. And that comes from the fact, you know, I had two parents who went to college before me, an older brother who went through the process. You know, and I went to a college prep high school, which, you know, I had a great experience there, but they do a great job of making sure you're not missing any milestones on your way from showing up as a clear-eyed freshman in high school to navigating. Okay, how do we stay on top of it with grades? How do we start to go through the college process? And from there, I actually, you know, stuck with the Jesuits. I went to Georgetown University out in Washington, DC. Love the school. You know, school where there were always some older students from my high school who went there and really fit what I was looking for. But as I look back, I had such an unproductive approach to finding what was next right after high school, where I was that student who was like, okay, let me go look at what some ranking site tells me are the best schools in the country and start to go down the list. And which ones do I want to apply to? And, you know, Georgetown wasn't the first school that was on my list. It doesn't show up at the very top of any of those rankings. It does, you know, show up pretty highly up there. And, you know, in hindsight, I think as I was wrapping up my time there, I really realized, like, wow, I had friends who went, you know, went to Ivy League institutions. I look back and like, oh, I actually wouldn't have liked a lot of these schools that as a junior or senior in high school, I told myself was my dream to show up to. Like, it wouldn't have been enjoyable. What didn't really meet anything that I wanted. And I think fortune, I met a lot of my best friends. I actually met my co-founder of Lope for the very first day of freshman year, which is a fun story that we like to tell and the value of education. But myself was something, you know, really leaving Georgetown. I look back and say, oh, this really worked out well for me. It didn't work out because I had a very healthy and productive approach, but so much as, you know, I had a great support system around me and was frankly very lucky. And just the schools I got into and chose, you know, what I thought was the best school of the list turned out to be a really good fit for me. After college, I, you know, I like to tease myself like a good Georgetown grad. I went and worked in finance. So I worked at a hedge fund in New York City called Maverick Capital, worked with a lot of really nice people, smart people. But I can tell you, after a couple of years being there, trading stocks is not something that I want to do for the rest of my life. And, you know, it's kind of a nice, and it's weird saying this, a nice timing for the pandemic personally, in the sense of I was a couple of years out of college, living in New York City, pretty much everyone I knew left the city. And it really gave me a chance to take a step back and say, OK, if I don't want to sit on this trading desk forever, what's important to me? Where do I want to spend time? Where do I want to spend my 20s? And, you know, I think that we saw a really bright spotlight on inequality during that time and in a somewhat different way during the pandemic. And, you know, I'd say racial inequality, socioeconomic inequality. There's nothing like the experience of stepping outside of my New York City apartment and seeing 14th Street empties and seeing Times Square empty. And it's really myself and in some ways a community of homeless that was out on the streets in March and April. And that was a very visceral experience that stuck with me in over the next year. So it really left me thinking, hey, where do I want to spend my time? It's how can we help combat what I think is a defining domestic issue of our time, which is socioeconomic inequality and just kept coming back to education. And I thought back, so I started to look back on my own experience, like, OK, I really had everything set up in place for me. That's just not the case for most students out there. And, you know, whether you look at an actual student to counselor ratio 425 to 1, something like 20 percent of students don't have a guidance counselor. And then as I started to look on the technology side, it's like, wait a second, this is the same exact tools and resources that I had, you know, roughly a decade before this. My older brother had, I think you go back really 10 years before that. So the same resources in place. And it just left me thinking there has to be a way to improve this process for students. And, you know, for Loper as a business, what I realized is the higher ed recruitment side of the equation is really stuck in this high volume mass outreach approach that lacks personalization for what is really the first major, I'll say, quasi independent decision you're making as a high school. And what we view as one of these two massive steps in your pre professional transition. What do I do after high school and where do I work for my first job? And students just don't have the resources and other resources that I had. And the technology just did not feel on par with what's available in the 2020s. And really over the last couple of years, the company just continues to excite me more and more. It's not the technology. You can just snap your fingers and fix this for students, but can really empower them and provide a more personalized pathway from high school. And do that right next step for you. And I really focus on that personalization in the you aspect there because it really is different for every student in what aligns with their interests and what level support they need. It really matters on that one to one level. Oh, man. Thank you. Thank you for all of that. Thank you for walking us through that. And I'm excited to learn more about Loper, Sam, just because. You know. This is work that your work and what you've described is something that is really hits close to home, something very personal for me. What I want to do before we get there, though, is because you walked us through your educational journey very quickly and talked about growing up in the Bay Area, you know, going to Jesuit High School and then both of your parents being college educated. And may I ask, you know, young Sam getting into high school, what were your aspirations at that time? Because I know you said, you know, when we're going to go to a good school, aspire to go to good school. I don't know if if if you wanted to work on Wall Street, if you wanted to pick stocks, but, you know, as you're entering high school, what were your aspirations at that point? Yeah, it's it's a great question because I think that it's one of those pieces that it's very easy to learn. It's very easy to look back and say, this is what my freshman year self thought with the benefit of hindsight and maybe some molding of where I am today. And in looking back, I think that there is the honest answer. I really didn't know what I wanted when I came into high school. I really didn't know. I thought that I knew certain things like Wall Street wasn't necessarily a specific interest. But I remember, you know, my best friend growing up, he has twin older brothers who were 10 years older than us. And one of them went and worked in investment banking. One of them worked at trading desk. I was like, oh, he's making a ton of money in this thing called investment banking. Maybe I want to go into finance, maybe investment making. I had no idea what it was at the time. I didn't have any idea of what it was, you know, when I was halfway through college and I was interviewing for jobs, or I was telling people as my passion to go do this. It's like, wait, I barely know what I'm actually applying for. And so I think there were a couple of different pieces there. I was, you know, at times like, oh, that this sounds really interesting to me. I think there was a high correlation to what sounded interesting to me and what I thought would pay me a lot of money, which, you know, was a priority that I think isn't necessarily a wrong priority to have. But I think is just one that it's really easy to almost have that measuring stick of income of, oh, higher income means something that I should be aspiring for. So there was a lot of that. But at different points in high school, and one of the things that maybe not freshman year, but I was really interested in politics. And I still think have a deep interest for really all aspects of politics, post-domestic and international relations, or the things that drove me to Georgetown. But I'll say I showed up in college and realized very quickly, wait a second, I do not want to work in politics at all. That is not for me. Turns out that is a very messy, messy industry to be in. So there was, I think I came and I didn't really know what I wanted. And I would just keep kind of clinging to different things that I thought were good for me and would bounce around in those interests. But there wasn't ever anything. It's almost like a blessing and a curse. I didn't show up and say, I want to be a doctor or I want to be a lawyer. And some of those career passwords like great, if you know you want to do this, there's really a set up next five, 10 years. It's kind of like I want to do something that I thought mattered. And oftentimes that had income as a measuring stick. And I think I grew older, matured and also ended up going to a field where you do earn a lot of money. And I realized, OK, that's actually not the singular guiding post that really matters to me or that I think people should have. But it's a really easy one to cling to. It sounds like I think most kids, I think we can agree, right? Most high school kids are probably operating in that space. That's a similar space, right? Where we have some ideas about jobs. We have this a perception of income and obviously we want to make a little more in and sometimes it's relative to our own parents or upbringing, right? But there is this this idea that the more we make, maybe the happier that we'll be or we'll achieve some sort of status, right? What is it that because you've said both of your parents were educated, educated? What is it that your parents did? And was there ever any pressure from mom and dad to do anything in particular? So this is where when I say that I am very lucky with the path I had, I actually think where I am most lucky is, you know, I have two great parents, but I have two parents who really just wanted to support me. And I think I saw this with my older brother and I'll bring this up sometimes in that I was someone where school came easy for me. Test taking was easy. It was natural classes. I never really had to spend as much time doing homework because they said I was going to have to. But, you know, my older brother's dyslexic school is not his thing. But I always grew up in a household where it wasn't like, oh, Sam, you got an A on this test, Jacob, you got a B on this test. Sam, you're better than Jacob because it was not at all bad. It was just like, try hard, do your best. And my brother's the best people's person I knew. And it's still no today. And it's OK. Jacob's going to be really, really successful whenever he chooses to do it as a zero correlation to the grades he's getting in high school right now and into college as well. He went to Marquette University out in Milwaukee and my parents were pumped for him. There's like, I think it's a great spot for you. He had a great time at a bunch of his best friends. He's doing incredibly well now. And I think that really stuck with me where my parents were never pushing me and they sat down like, look, you're only looking and applying to different schools in Jacob. You may be on a different early career path than him. That's great. Like, just do do what you want to do. And I think they never pushed me down a specific path. I think in a weird way that I was always a kid who put more pressure on myself than anyone else. And I think it almost led to me self selecting and like, I need to go to the very best school because it's I'm pushing myself to that more so than my parents. But it was awesome that I was getting college acceptance is like, OK, you get different scholarships. You go here or there. I remember them sitting down in the couch just like, Sam, like you are in a position where you don't have to just go to the school where you have the single best financial aid package. You don't have to go to a school. We're not going to make you stay close to us in California. You're always welcome to come back. You always have that option who really knows where things are going to go. But we just want to support you in this process. And like, it was awesome for me as a high school student to have that and to have that from from folks who had gone through it. And, you know, they would find out examples to me of like, hey, this person who you know, who's doing that, you know, what college I went to. It's insert state, state, random state school in California. It's like, hey, they didn't go to an Ivy League school. It's not going to matter. My mom is one of the biggest people on like, where you go doesn't matter so much as what you make of that opportunity. And I really don't. I just don't think that I was appreciative that they weren't, you know, down my throat. Like, you need to do this X, Y, Z. But I don't think I really fully appreciated what that meant in the message they were trying to instill to me until there was a little bit more hindsight. And it's like, wow, that was like very, very special and important that they gave me that space to grow and kind of figure it out on my own and almost like make make some mistakes or have the wrong thought thought process going through the college applications and figure out early career and allow me almost like figure it out with my own experience and come back to be like, oh, wait, yeah, they're totally right on what they said. And it just took me going through this lived experience to figure it out. I love that. And I can definitely relate. I think I was fortunate in my parents for the same way. And so there was never really any pressure about where to go or what to do. And and I think like you, I put a lot of pressure on myself. So I wanted to go to a big name school and I wanted to do these things. Right. And it's it's constant. It's a constant battle. I think with myself, I don't know if you feel this way, but it's certainly with myself. But I feel like it's also allowed me to pursue. I think a lot of things that have kind of fallen outside of those traditional sort of occupations. And and and so I absolutely like you. I think I feel like I've been incredibly blessed. So thank you. Thank you for for sharing that. Thank you. You know, and you're sharing your relationship with your parents. So, you know, you leave Georgetown, you attend Georgetown, leave Georgetown. And is it immediately after Georgetown that you're working on Wall Street? It's immediately after funnily enough, I right, I interned at Maverick while my junior going in senior years through Georgetown connection. And, you know, I actually didn't think I was going back there full time, but had it, you know, really great experience that summer. They were really clear. Hey, we're not hiring anyone entry level. And it was kind of the awesome internship to me going back to the early answer on not knowing what to do with investment banking. I remember my first boss like before the summer internship, I told him, like, I actually don't really know if I want to work in finance. I'll be honest with you. I like I don't actually know what these jobs are doing that I'm telling these other interviewers, hey, this is what I really want to do. And passionately, I'm still in college. I've never worked a full time job before. And he was appreciative of that honesty and also said, hey, great, we're going to give you a chance to learn as much as you want this summer and get exposure. And I'd actually thought that I was going to go work in, you know, another field, Georgetown pushes people into consulting. And, you know, I remember I was going through New York City traveling. He's like, hey, come by the office. I want to talk to you. And it was March of my seniors. Like, look, there's a spot that opened up. We want to hire someone younger. We'd love for you to start in July. And, you know, really made that decision more so trusting the people I was working with and just my experience there. Hey, I'm not sure what I want to do five years from now, but I think there's a big degree of just figuring out what it's like to work and, you know, be, I'll call it a fledgling adult and step it into the working world. And that was that was really what the experience was right after college. Went and worked at Maverick. And I always tell this to students who asked me for her advice. I just think the most important thing, first 12 to 24 months is work for someone who has your best interests in heart and just make this adjustment into I'll use nine to five, not that I was necessarily working a little more than a nine to five. But work that nine to five, see what it feels like. See what actually, because you're never going to, I think, be in love with what you're doing from the very first day. I think it takes time for that to grow no matter what you're doing. Even if you step into something that turns into your passion for me, I realize, OK, this actually isn't something that I want to spend decades on after this. But I was so, so appreciative of that experience. When did you know? I don't want to be doing this one. Was there a moment? Was it a series of moments? There it was a series of moments. It really was during the pandemic where I wasn't sure I thought maybe it's just that I don't want to be in this specific trading role. And maybe there are other opportunities I want to grow into or hey, maybe it's just like in a year or two, I know that there will be more opportunities within trading where maybe I have a little more autonomy. Maybe it's that I should be joining a different firm that's going to give me more control and kind of taking that career progression. I'm taking that career progression. But there's a series of moments during the pandemic. Funnily enough, I and the person side, all my friends left really except there was a group of three friends who are still there in New York City. And they include I think two of the more cynical people I know in this world. And they would just constantly prod me of like, you can't say you can't work at a hedge fund. You can't be a good person and work there. And they really more devil's advocate side. I didn't agree with everything they said, but they just kept prodding me, kept prodding me. It was just forced me to ask the question that then I was asking myself day to day of like, where do I want to spend my time? And I don't think there's anything wrong working working at hedge fund where really the objective is to earn more capital for your investors. And we have LPs who are school endowments, who are hospitals. And, you know, it's really, I think, honorable to be growing, growing their capital base. They're like, OK, is this like really giving me some sense of fulfillment? And the answer I kept coming back to is no. And, you know, there was a podcast that I listened to. It's called How I Built This, very popular podcast. There's a founder of Impossible Foods, Pat Brown. I was listening to his episode and the way he was a professor at Stanford, I believe it was at Stanford, was a professor staying sabbatical. And he asked himself a question of what's the biggest problem in the world that I can work on solving. And for him, that was addressing climate change through combating factory farming with meat alternative. And I clearly do not have a PhD in anything that will allow me to address that sort of question. But that framework was like as I was having this conversation, my friends were just continually prod me, prod me of, oh, you work in finance, I'll collect the big checks. Is what you want to do. You're just money motivated. That's all you care about. All you care about. And just realizing, OK, what's the biggest problem in the world that I think I can work on solving? And that's where it just comes back. I'm like, I'm staring at inequality in my face every day and just like a truly a more visceral way than any anything I'd ever seen in the states before. And I just kept coming back to education. I think that, you know, the other moments that happened there was looking and kind of doing deep research in my own time. Like, wow, you have what I think is still early innings of this shift in higher education, where the we're challenging the value of a traditional four year college. And, you know, I don't think four year college are going away, but I do think alternatives will continue to become more viable and more accessible. And I think a shift from in-person learning to forced online learning. It's like, wait, if we can have innovation and content delivery, what about operations? What about how we think about supporting students in that pathway from high school to college or high school to what's next? What about student recruitment? And it's like, OK, for I grew up in a family that always valued education. And, you know, I guess why I didn't bring up up with my parents is while they were very supportive, they made sure I got the message that your education is going to be the single biggest gift that we give you. And I've really internalized that and still believe that today. So, OK, where do those things meet? It's that jump for me from high school to what's next. I think early learning years are very, very important. But I also quickly realized I have absolutely no understanding of early childhood psychology or anything that goes in there. So that's not a place I can make impact. And it's starting to look at, OK, I just think this system and this process is in many ways broken, I would say in some ways just like convoluted and too confusing for students. And so there's a lot of little conversations and little moments that jump to it. And maybe there's one at the very end that really tipped the scale for me is as, you know, in the fall of 2020, as everyone returned to New York City, it was my friends coming back to the city, you know, starting to have work outings again and just realizing that what I was prioritizing and where my head was at and where I was spending my free time, like, oh, this is radically different than what my friends are talking and caring about. And that's OK. It just meant that I found something that I really, really wanted to invest my time and energy in. And it's probably time for me to make a shift. And I think changing your job is such a central piece of your life. And it reached a point where it's like, I can't keep spending all my time thinking about something else and tell Maverick, who I'm incredibly grateful for everyone at that firm and be telling them, hey, I'm fully invested in my job there, because the answer just started to reach a point where that wasn't true. Sam, thank you. Thank you for for sort of walking us through those moments. And and so I'm fascinated about what was what's next. You you mentioned earlier you said you had access to tools that you saw 10 years before sort of anybody else had. So maybe to walk us through or tell us about the tools that you had access to, given your sort of where you your position. And then tell us about Loper and the ways that Loper does for students. Yeah. And I guess to clarify on that, it was really that I look back in the tools that I was using and I'll pick on Naviance here, kind of your basic college and career readiness software where it was. I was using that 10 years before and I think I probably logged on twice. I was like, OK, wait, this isn't helpful in any way for me. This feels like an early 2000s website that I'm being shown. And I was like, wait, students are using the same thing here and it hasn't really updated and hasn't gotten cleaner, hasn't gotten fresher. So I think even in that sort of a little bit of a light bulb moment for me, like, wait, I went to this amazingly well resourced high school and the actual technology that I had access to still felt outdated to me at the time and certainly feels outdated as we fast forward into the early 20s. Like, oh, wait, if that's the case for students in S.I., what about everyone else that's out there? What about a larger public school where you can't fall back on having access to a college counselor whenever you want to walk into their office and there's one counselor for 2000 students and you maybe get 10 or 15 minutes. So that was really what stuck with me there. And in terms of that transitional opor, when I when I looked at what students had access to, one of the pieces I saw as initial gap, which, you know, is changing and evolving, but there wasn't much I was trying to reach students on mobile. And for better or worse, you got high school students who are spending a lot of time on their phones right now. I think you grow up with a smartphone in your hand. It's very different in terms of your expectation for content, content curation, personalization, where, you know, I'm not saying Lopers in any ways, replacing TikTok, Instagram, these great social media feeds. But when I think about what they do and one of their great use cases, like, wow, every time I open that app, it knows what I'm interested in, knows what I'm cares about. It shows me content based off of that. And there was nothing like that for what I'll say college and career discovery. So in terms of what Loper looks like, it at one point looked a lot more like a dating app in terms of swiping right and left. Once you're interested in, we still have that or matching experience. But now it's more of a feed based social media style where users after creating account with a chat based style on boarding, where we're really trying to just capture where are you in your process, who at a high level, who are you, what are you interested in, then we can help prioritize content in that feed where users are reacting to what we call prompts. And as they react on this content, some of its general introspection, some of its multiple choice, some of its mini games, there's video content in there. Some of its content coming from colleges themselves. As you react all that, that powers are matching algorithm. And that's where that dating app analogy still holds true. Whereas you react to what you're interested in, we deliver you matches. We can actually tell you, hey, here's why we match you with this pathway. It's predominantly for your colleges today, but starting to expand into two year colleges, trade schools, apprenticeship offerings, an area we're really excited to grow into. And as you match with those schools, you can react them, save them to a list, do more research on those schools within the mobile app. And then, you know, an area where that we're really excited to be rolling out right now after beta last year is actually then a web based extension. And I think it's where mobile fall short is the actual logistics of the process. We want to make it really easy. So in five to 10 minutes, we can learn about what you're interested in, help you build that personalized list. Now, let's say for our seniors in high school, right now, juniors venturing senior year in the fall, you actually have to manage the logistics of the process and start to apply. We want to build a personalized plan for you and then actually give you that launching point where you can see all the application requirements in one place and then start to track and go through that process. It feels like there wasn't quite that connective tissue from initial, you know, building a list, actual application and streamline that process for students. So we're starting to invest more in there. But where we really leaned in was how can we go from that students? Like, I don't really know anything about college or anything I'm interested in. Just make it really easy and accessible for them to start exploring. And what we view as a very stress free way and then actually get that gratification of here's a match here, something I'm interested in. And this product in Loper is telling me, here's why we think it's a good fit. That we just didn't see out there was very much generalized content. For me, it was what are those top 25 schools in the country, according to an arbitrary list. But oftentimes it's just, hey, I want to school a large school in the Midwest and show me 75 matches and then it's on you to figure out if it's actually interesting for you. We want to do that work and get closer to that. I'll say like magical moment of like, wow, this blank college sounds amazing. Because then getting to that first step is what's so hard for high school students when it just feels like the weight of the world's on you and it's too stressful and you don't know where to start. And then you get a big group of students who wait until the last possible minute. And unfortunately, you're just so much more likely to end up making what can be a very consequential decision that is more of a snap decision has downstream impacts for you, whether it's taking out too much student debt, whether it's going to school and needing to transfer and having credit loss due to transfer. And whether you decide, hey, this isn't right for me and, you know, I'm not going to be doing anything after high school and I'm just entering the workforce. And it's OK, but we want to at least give students the ability to explore what those options are. I want I love it. You know, I mean, I think I love the dating app idea. But I think also being able to curate, right? Students based on interest and what they're looking at. So it sounds like I mean, you mentioned TikTok, you mentioned Instagram. Some of these are the social media sites. It sounds like what it does is it really curates and kind of filters out a lot of a lot of the other noise so that it is it is truly focused on college career readiness for sort of just post high school. Right. Yeah. What comes next? So if if students how does this work? Students just download the app or is it is it does the school have a contract with you? Or how does this work? Yeah, so free mobile app for students. All you just need to go to the app store, the Google Play Store and go ahead and download the app. And, you know, if you're interested in learning more, you always check out our website. We've got kind of more information on the product as well as, you know, for counselors in the school side. We don't have any dedicated counselor facing software, but we do have a group of counselors who really encourages use of Loper for that early early exploration. I think that's the big use case on the school side that we see where it's Hey, how do you actually get students to start to engage with the process? And when I talk with counselors, it's you think about that first meeting that a high school counselor might have with a student. In some cases, it's the only meeting and it can be pulling teeth to talk to a 16, 17 year old of what are your interests and what do you want to do? And then they freeze because they haven't really thought about it. They're stressed and use Loper is a starting point. And, you know, we actually auto generate PDFs based on a student's interests and what their school list is. They can text email any form of messaging platforms and that to a parent or counselor. So if counselors who use that PDF and say, OK, great, now I've kind of got this quick checklist. I've taken two minutes and then it's a starting point for the conversation. So that's where we see the use in schools very often is just using Loper to kickstart this conversation. Hopefully get students more excited on the process. But we want to design a product that, you know, you can use whether or not you have access to a high school counselor, whether or not you're no matter where you are in the US, you can be a rural school, urban school and have a personalized experience for you. So it's as easy as just going on the app store, downloading, searching Loper, downloading and checking it out yourself. I love that. I love that. To date, any idea how many students are using Loper? We have had now more than 200,000 students create accounts. So, you know, that's really in the last two and a half years where we've seen the growth. So that's been really fun for us. You know, it's kind of this classic startup. I'll say challenge is that I end up seeing 200,000. You know, tell me two years ago, 200,000 students are like, Oh, my gosh, it's the most in the world. Now I'm like, well, how do we get to 300, 400, 500,000? So it's always, you know, you're caught on that treadmill in one way or another. But it's really, really proud. You know, students for all 50 states have used the app. And I think for me, it's the 200,000 numbers really special. But, you know, 4.8 stars in the app store, something I have learned the hard way is not very easy to get to. So we're proud of that. But it's the individual stories that we'll get from students at different points. We've had a student advisory board and an ambassador program. And just getting that feedback from a high schooler of I never knew that I could say I was interested in blank and it would matter with how I approached this process or I'd never heard of blank school. And I absolutely love it. It's top of my list. And I want to apply there. I learned about it on Loper. Like those little moments are really, really special for me in a way, actually much more so than that headline number. Because it's it's why I wanted to work in this space and why I get so much fulfillment from it is you can just have unspeakable amounts of impacts when you're talking about individual students and what that can mean for themselves, for their families, really transformative power of education. So we've had some great reach in the country as a whole, hoping to continue to grow. But just knowing like there are students out there who have told us that Loper has completely changed their process and their trajectory has been really, really special. And I'd say affirming and hearing that. Congratulations. Well, and I know how difficult it is to get to that number of the 200,000, but then also the 4.8 stars. It sounds though like Loper is really gives students. Yeah. And it empowers students because I can't tell you Sam, I've been working in in the college space and the college transition space now for this is year 23 for me. Wow. You've got me beat. You've got me beat by a few. Well, but I think I think we see the same thing. I think we see a lot of a lot of young people with kind of a very narrow perspective of what it is that they can do. There are so many careers out there, so many possibilities, so many opportunities. But I think they see they see a limit. They see like I can do maybe these five things. And but have never also never really been given the tools to truly explore. Right. They rely on that conversation. And as you said, it's sometimes like pulling teeth. I mean, this is what I know. This is what I see immediately around me. And so but give me a tool where I can explore and spend some time really thinking about it, looking at it. All of a sudden, I see a lot more doors open for me. Yeah. So congratulations for that, because it sounds like it's a fascinating tool. I'm excited to look at it and play with it a little bit. And so, you know, if I wanted to do that, could I download the. Yeah, absolutely. You know, anyone can download the app and, you know, I'd say is when creating account will ask you if you're a current high school student. You're going to have the exact same experience if you say that you're a parent or a counselor. Or just I think the last option is probably other on there is I need to think back or high school on our on boarding process. Really, I did the mobile app is designed for students, but we recognize we get that question all the time. It's like, well, I'm not a high schooler. Can you use it? And for us to go, absolutely. You know, it's a free mobile app. And anyone can go download and use it. But we wanted to make sure at the start of the journey that, you know, you can express that you you aren't currently a high schooler. But but fear not, you will have that exact same experience as a student. And no, we always love getting feedback on the process. One thing I've learned as well as when you looked at an app. More times than I can count, it's just certain things you feel are really intuitive. You're like, oh, this this is how we've always done it. So it must be the right way. And I cannot tell you just like speaking with current high schoolers or even people like yourself are so familiar with the process. The things that we catch that we've missed because of that really are invaluable to continue to improve the product in the long run. I love that. Sam. Thank you. Thank you for your time today. Thank you for sharing all of this information. Thank you for telling us about Loper and and how your own journey led to this led to the work that you're doing now. You said as we transition out, I always ask my guests, if you had to leave our listeners and our viewers with with one last piece of advice, what advice would you like to leave them with? I only got one here, so I got to make this count. I think my advice here is that it will sound funny, but I sometimes tell myself like time is long and like time is long. And where I say that is it just feels sometimes where you have to do everything all at once. You have to have all the answers. You don't. It's a long process thinking about that journey from high school to post secondary. And there's just you don't really know how things are. And I think sometimes you just like the stress compounds and just remembering like it's a long process. You know, you're not making a decision today that is going to affect your future. You got time to make that decision. You have time to go through this process. You may show up in a college in the first week, think that I oh, I hate it. This is the worst place. Give it a chance. Give it a couple of weeks. Give it a few months. And I think that holds true in early career too. And the point that I made earlier of just I and I think it's just partially because I've spoken to some folks earlier in their career right now. We're really unhappy with their jobs and feeling lack of fulfillment. And that may be true, but I always tell them like give it a little bit longer. Like it's OK. It doesn't have to be the best thing in this moment all the time. So my advice kind of the end is time is long. You know, you don't know where things will be or how they'll feel a week from now, a month from now, a year from now. And if you sit there and keep coming to the same conclusions, like, great, that's your signal. But give it a little bit of time. Give it a little time. See how it shakes out. Sam, I love that. I appreciate the advice. I think it is incredibly timely. Given our conversations and in particular, given some of the conversations I've had with students recently. So thank you. Sam, thank you again for your time. Thank you for your story. Again, congratulations on Loper. I'm excited to get into it and to look at it and and happy to share with folks in my network and anyone else I can tell about it. So Sam, thank you. You're welcome. No, and thank you so much for having me on. I really enjoyed it. All right. This concludes another episode Way to College podcast. Thank you to my guests. Thank you to all of our listeners and viewers out there. Please remember to subscribe, rate, share all of that good stuff and do me a favor. Please share the podcast with one other person. I'd appreciate it. We'll talk again soon. Bye bye.