Jamie Beaton, co-founder and CEO of Crimson Education, the world’s leading US and UK university admissions support company, talks about his new book, “Accepted”, increasing student admissions, helping exceptional students overcome self-doubt, the “Moneyball” approach to college acceptance, the role that parents should play in the process, tackling ageism and skepticism, and geeking out to Warhammer with host Dan Moore. 

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This episode is brought to you by Southwestern Advantage.

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Today's guest is Jamie Beaton, co-founder and CEO of Crimson Education, the world's leading US and UK University admissions support company, one of the youngest in the world to be accepted into Stanford's graduate School of Business, Jamie developed Crimson to bring together experts from the best universities around the globe with users four times more likely to gain admission to an Ivy League univers.

Jamie shares some of the secrets to this success in his book Accepted Out now.

We hope you enjoy.

Well, welcome to the Action Catalyst everyone.

This is Dan Moore and I'm very, very delighted to have our multi nationally experienced and educated amazing guests, often called Wonder Keen.

Mr.

Jamie beaten joining us here originally from New Zealand, was stops at Oxford with stops in Cambridge, mass, currently in New York.

Jamie, welcome to the Action

Catalyst.

I'm super excited to be here.

Uh, great chat today.

Well, we, we know from our, our introduction that our listeners have already heard about you.

You have done some amazing things in the area of personal academic excellence, graduating and getting into master's program at the age of 19, and then a PhD as a Rhode scholarship at Oxford.

What you've done is remarkable.

What's even more remarkable is that you're becoming.

Very much a catalyst for a lot of young people to get into the colleges of their choice, the very top elite colleges, four times the average acceptance rate because of the techniques that you perfected and were able to teach to people.

Share with us a little bit about why you actually got into this particular business.

With your acumen, with your skills, with your background, you could be doing anything.

Why did you put your entrepreneurial talents in this direction of helping others do some of

what you've.

Great question.

So growing up in New Zealand, uh, until I was 14, I was focused on potentially getting into a domestic, uh, New Zealand University, for example, doing something like medicine or law locally.

And I'd never kind of even considered the idea of applying to one of these global universities.

Going through high school, I had really no idea what entrepreneurship was.

I didn't know what investing or Wall Street was, quite fortuitously.

I spoke to this boy who was the valedictorian of my high school.

He'd gone into Yale and he told me that I should consider applying overseas.

So I spent the next four years really building my candidacy for these top skills like Harvard.

It really became the goal for me.

And then, um, once I applied and got into these schools and I actually got to go to these institutions, it was just totally, uh, mind blowing.

Um, I was able to quickly meet so many inspiring students, classmates, professors.

Um, I was able to, you know, uh, build out my own company, Crimson, and begin working as a, as an investment analyst in New York.

Quickly I realized how transformative these higher ed experiences can be, especially from a, for a kid like me from a far flying part of the world like New Zealand.

So when I launched Crimson, I really had a lot of passion behind bringing more students access to the kind of guidance they need to get into these really elite institutions that will give them all this opportunity.

And I remember distinctly in 2015 or so, I was sitting at Tiger, which was a hedge funded here in new.

And I was, uh, looking my Bloomberg terminal.

I just finished some counseling with some students and I was really thinking about, you know, post-graduation, do I wanna really go big on Crimson or stay in the investment world?

And I really thought to myself that, you know, impacting students and helping them find the best path for them, you know, that is so impactful, so rewarding.

And I, I also could do it all over the world.

So I figured there was a great opportunity to build something that, you know, had real, uh, meaning.

So, uh, I haven't looked back and I've been really going deeper and deeper into this education space over the last, um, eight years.

Now in

my own experience of advising young people about college choices, so many of them sell themselves short.

They say, well, there's no point in even applying.

There's no way I would get in.

How, how would you address that to a, a bright young person that is considering not applying to one of these top tier universities simply because the lack of self-belief.

It's

a great question.

Okay, so the first thing is this problem often is, uh, actually catalyzed by, uh, guidance counselors, other folks in the school who, who, you know, might be just in the pattern of recommending, you know, local colleges and universities.

And, you know, uh, obviously these really, uh, competitive schools like Stanford and New Chicago, they've got very extensive application processes.

So it's a very big lift for everyone involved to send kids to these.

And so I think in general, um, there's a tendency to, you know, deviate to more conservative options and, um, take the path.

It's a bit easier, but that's really a huge loss opportunity.

So it's really critical that students are applying to the most ambitious schools possible for them.

And you know, the good thing about this process is that it is a holistic admissions process in which, you know, students are assessed based on the context of their high school.

So if they go to a high school where a kid hasn't gone to, say Yale in four years or something, or the school only has a couple of AP subjects, you can.

Or there aren't that many extracurriculars and offer actually.

Um, and you've got a student who's actually really, uh, thrived with that environment.

They actually get a lot more support from the admissions office for doing that.

So you actually do get a bit of a benefit from being one of the quirky few kids in your school that actually applies these bold schools, which is even more reason to do it.

The last thing that you know we do at Crimson is we, we have taken a bit of a Moneyball like approach to this, um, with our data science background.

So we've built these college missions algorithms, which tell you based on your SAT score, ACD score, or GPA or extracurriculars, um, financial aid requirements, majors, other kind of preferences.

What kind of schools are you like could get into with what probabilities.

And so our students will often be applying to reach match and safety schools based on probability rather than just intuition.

And that helps to correct some of that bias in which a student might be skewing downwards through a lack of belief to, you know, more conservative options.

Right.

I like the Moneyball illustration.

That's a fantastic way to look at it.

Now, what about the role of parents in this process?

Because parents are very much into the shepherding and sometimes the guiding and sometimes the coercing part of this whole process.

How do you coordinate parental influence with student desire when they may be at odds with one another?

So the first thing is the period has to play valuable on doing all three of those things.

You know, I see really talented students who are um, 5, 8, 10, 11.

And, you know, when you're a particularly young student, even if you've got a lot of passion for academics, um, you still don't really, uh, have the ability to make all these choices for yourself.

So having a, you know, a parent that can encourage you to challenge yourself, you know, hop into a more challenging math class, or take an extracurricular like debating for the first time and begin to catalyze those different experiences for you.

It's very, it is very impactful.

So in my life, I had my mum and she's actually featured in the book a lot, um, accepted.

And basically she learned a lot of the academic content, uh, that I, I needed to know from my school to the age of 10 or 11.

We would do studying together on the weekend.

I remember sitting at Wendy's with her, preparing for certain exams.

Um, and she was a bit of a cheerleader for me where, you know, when I was really under pressure studying some different tests or assessments, you know, she knew what was going on and I felt I had that strong kind of emotional support from her.

And as I moved through high school and I got a bit older and I was really, I guess, leading my own charge and setting my own priorities and goals.

You know, that support role she played, that emotional stability was really critical and giving me more endurance to keep, you know, taking more subjects, pushing myself harder, et cetera.

So I do think, you know, I see thousands of parents all around the world with many different parenting styles, many different cultural backgrounds across both America and the world too.

And I think in general the, the best approach is, you know, you wanna a child who at least through probably the middle of.

Has quite a lot of intrinsic motivation for the process, has found some majors or interests they're excited about, but you want an engaged parent or parents who, um, you know, help, you know, the child ride those different emotional waves this process creates for them.

And I think that's, you know, a really good harmonious state.

Typically when the parents are pushing too much of the process, it can sort of dilute the child's, uh, internal motivation a little bit.

But a good balance is critical to.

Uh, well said.

And I, I love the fact you're including all of these vital influences in this whole process.

That's fantastic.

You know, it'd be pretty easy to look at your, your career and your young life so far, Jamie, and conclude that everything has been smooth sailing, but I think I know better.

I'm sure that you've hit some brick walls once in a while where you would trucking right along and all of a sudden there's an obstacle you were not anticipating.

What are some strategies that you have found effective when you run into a sudden setback?

That was just

out of the.

Some of the most challenging times in my life were actually in my last year of high school where I had, um, really, uh, so growing up, I guess I, I grew up with my, my granddad, my grandmother, my mom and my dad, and, um, you know, very close family unit.

Um, and my, uh, basically there was a bit of a family, uh, uh, challenge illness with, um, my grandmother that was really dragging on the family was a very, very sad, emotional burden for, for everybody.

And, you know, that experience was.

Jarring for my granddad, and he was a big role model to me growing up since I was very young.

You know, he was almost like a second father figure of sorts to me.

And so my last year in high school, I was sort of, uh, really grappling with, um, having to, you know, play more of a, uh, serious role in supporting, you know, my, my own granddad, um, emotionally alongside, uh, going through this really intense college process.

And so without going into all the details, basically, um, I was really being stretched in a lot of different directions and that failed, like at some points, you know, it was just gonna, it was just too much.

As far as how you kind of get through this, I think there are a couple of really, you know, practical approaches you can take.

So the first thing is that, you know, when you are getting, you know, knocked down, so to speak, you, you gotta keep those communication channels open to that select group of people in your life that you know, you really trust and, uh, you know, back you.

That for me was a couple of my best buddies.

That was my mom and that was my dad as well.

And I'm not closing off because I think, you know, if you open and share your stress, um, and you, you know, share how you're feeling, that can often really help to alleviate some of that burden.

A lot of the time, the way these things mount is quite exponential.

Um, you may have say three different bad things that have happened and they still overwhelm at the moment.

But if you slow down and just talk through them one by one and realize actually you can, you know, hopefully at least mitigate in two of these things, that can really bring down the pressure quite significant.

The other thing from a practical high school perspective to make this very concrete is you can actually smooth many of the, you know, challenging milestones of high school over four years rather than just, you know, one year.

So things like the s a t, things like your college essays, things like extracurriculars, you can actually bring them forward and do them, um, you know, in the early couple years of high school.

So there's less of this kind of big pressure near the end when everything is due at the same.

And so techniques like that in many areas of life where you just aren't allowing yourself to get to a point where there's just too many intense things happening at one time is, is a great technique.

Then finally, of course, you know, uh, fitness and sleep are critical.

Um, I played a lot of, uh, competitive field hockey and tennis.

Field hockey, I think is, is more of a girl sport here in America, um, which was a sad game of to the US realized.

But basically, um, you know, these, these sports, uh, really help me to also get some extra, you know, mental fortitude.

Cause I think they really do help you with all alleviating pressure and stuff.

And then sleep is something that a lot of high school students can start neglecting to the end of high school.

But you know, getting at least a good seven plus hours is I think, pretty critical for that mental stamina.

There's a whole lot of valuable information packed into a very short response that you gave us there, which is great.

Now, what do you do on a personal level to keep yourself growing, to keep yourself from getting satisfied or complacent?

And some people might say, oh, he's too young to let that happen.

But you and I both have known people that get a bit jaded, even in their mid twenties, where they feel as though I've got it all.

But you have that, that eagerness, that hunger, that desire to keep.

I think you really have to set up the environment around you very proactively to create, uh, the opportunity for continual learning.

So in my case, what I do is I, I'm constantly doing at least one academic program alongside, I work at Ston as I wrapped up my default program at Oxford, where I was studying what drove, uh, student outcomes and student satisfaction in, in online schooling in particular, you know, I'm now doing, um, law school and I find those experiences where I'm, you know, just learning for the sake of it.

Very valuable.

I then also, um, you know, you wanna avoid, you know, so to speak, burning out.

So I always have hobbies.

So one hobby I play is a game called War Hammer 4k, which is a bit of a nerdy tabletop kind of game, but I really enjoy it.

And, um, a bit of time for yourself.

Some of these hobbies, whatever it is for you, can, you know, really recharge yourself.

And then of course you've gotta make sure work is really stimulating, you know, if you're choosing the right context, hopefully it shouldn't feel like too much like work.

So when I build in Crimson, you know, I have the thrills.

Seeing the students we've worked with for years is so engaging.

And then, you know, there's the business challenges, strategy questions.

Should we buy this company?

Should we invest in this business that keeps you really fresh?

And then I think continually resetting your ambitions and then also having some longer term goals too, family goals.

So I think it's all about continually looking at that growth mindset, sort of forgetting the past a little bit and what you've been able to do and looking forward and sort of continuing to tilt the plane of ambition, uh, to a higher horizon.

The last thing is just who you surround yourself with.

If you surround yourself with people that have a growth mindset that are also challenging themselves and are very ambitious, it's infectious and, you know, you get kinda like a one plus one equals three situation going on.

So I do think, um, you know, you wanna make sure you've got, you know, the folks in your life as well that do have that mindset too.

Um, and, and that will, you know, really help you as well with that energy.

If you surround yourself with other people with a growth mindset, it is infectious.

That is a brilliant quotation.

I love it.

And I'm quite familiar with War Hammer.

When my eldest turned 16, we made a pilgrimage to Nottingham and we played a few games there.

So I quite understand.

Wow.

That

is the dream.

So for those of you are familiar, I think, uh, you may be referring to War Hammer World, which is sort of the, uh, the, the biggest war hammer, uh, store, I think in the world or production place.

So that that's, that, you know what you're talking about.

That's very exciting.

That was tremendously fun.

Now, what guidance could you give for, for our listeners that are maybe at the moment really struggling with a sense of direction?

They may be mid-career things are are okay, just not brilliant, not great to reinvigorate the sense of excitement.

You've got some really powerful ways to just keep yourself reinvigorated.

What could you pass on to people that are maybe a generation or two older than you about how to look at your current situation and find a way to get even more excited?

The first thing is people really underestimate how quickly you can, um, pivot your trajectory or build some new skills that can meaningfully change, you know, uh, the, the, the pace of your career.

So I see a lot of folks that are, you know, in the mold or in the funk of a certain kind of job.

Um, they're not pursuing any kind of studying outside of their, you know, career.

And so they're really just going to the motions in, in one particular role.

On the flip side, I've seen, um, you know, for example, take one of our directors, her name's Janine.

When she was in her fifties, she decided to go to Cambridge and do a, a new degree in social innovation and then pivot her role towards, uh, angel investing, uh, corporate governance, et cetera.

And she's been on a fantastic career, uh, trajectory over the last, you know, 10 years or so, having made that decision to pick up that Cambridge degree after seeing all these Crimson kids, you know, looking to do these, uh, top university program.

So I think, um, first thing people underestimate how quickly you can pivot and change to a new trajectory.

So think about, you know, it could start with a course you class where you learn, you know, some, uh, basic statistics tools or some financial analytics skills you haven't learned before.

Or it could be a negotiating class, uh, online that helps you, you know, manage conflict in your job more effectively.

And then secondly, um, you know, uh, often it.

Only, you know, six months to three years to pivot to a new type of role.

But you need to ask, so, you know, you need to either speak to your employer, figure out what other parts of the organization could be really interesting to you and how you can get there.

Or, you know, obviously you could change jobs too.

Um, but I think you, you need to switch from being sort of like a passive recipient of, you know, working dynamics to being a very active learner.

There's actually a really good book that I recommend.

The book is called Power.

Why Some People Have It and others Don't.

By Jeffrey Pfeiffer.

He's a Stanford Business School Profess.

And he talks about how in many companies the dynamics are set up such that, you know, you really have to think about your own career trajectory.

You've gotta ask the hard questions, you've gotta ask for progression because it's not always gonna be the case.

These things, you know, just magically landing your lap.

So, uh, being very proactive about, you know, pushing your manager or other folks to, uh, engage with you on those career conversations.

Um, we will keep your, you know, energy replenished and if you set the norm with your manager that you wanna have those career progression conversations, you do have this clear career.

You know, that will force them to engage with you and that'll become a clear priority for them.

These are brilliant ideas.

Somehow, despite your obvious brilliance, your many achievements, you have a very appealing humility to you.

Oh geez.

What obstacles have you encountered because of your age in trying to get backing, trying to get support, trying to get buy in, trying to get people to even believe in you at all?

Have, have you encountered any, and what are strategies you could advise for our younger listen,

So I would say whenever you're building any entrepreneurial venture, by definition you are trying to build something new that's tackling a problem in a new lens.

And so you've got, you know, incumbents who are gonna naturally wanna push against whatever you're doing.

You'll have people that are, you know, initially skeptical.

And so really entrepreneurship is often about pushing through waves and waves and waves of, uh, you know, detractors or folks that aren't necessarily on the same page.

And then you're converting them hopefully to be big advocates to you as you.

So in my case, to give very specific examples, when I started Crimson, I was 18.

I had, uh, you know, just had a great academic, you know, track report at high school, but I had no teaching degree.

Um, and I was, you know, guiding students on how to apply to these schools.

And I knew that I had this knowledge and insight for my personal journey to add a lot of value.

But you could see a lot of traditional guidance council would be very skeptical.

Or you know, teachers at schools that have been teachers for 20 years, you know, wondering, you know, why is this even necessary, especially in these international countries.

And so initially it was about really focusing on student outcomes and just in my first cohort of students just getting some amazing college outcomes.

So I can really speak to the track record of success.

You know, they had achieved and those students gave really brand ambassadors and advocates, you know, for us.

So it was about creating that, that movement of credibility.

The second thing that I did was to, you know, try and build a lot of external validation for this, um, you know, area of education I was focused on.

So, um, I did that Masters in education at Stanford.

I went over to Oxford for the, um, PhD looking at what drives student outcomes and student satisfaction in online.

And I really formally studied in a very rigorous way, a lot of these different problems we were encountering in, you know, regular at Crimson for our students and opportunities for them.

So then when I spoke to, for example, you know, heads of universities or um, heads of major schools, you know, I had some credibility to stand on as well, um, from an academic perspective.

So I think, um, uh, you, you want to get both, uh, you know, soft or informal, uh, credibility through success in whatever you're building.

And then also look for those, you know, serious external signals of credibility.

And over time I've also been able to recruit some amazing advisors.

I'm really grateful for, you know, folks like Larry Summers, who used to be the president of Harvard and folks like Tommy here, or Hoshi, who's the head of the Stanford Online high school.

And you know, it becomes infectious over time as you keep building your organization and your principles become very clear and your results and impact are very clear.

You can attract top advisors, which then.

Amplifies that impact further.

So there are a couple of the techniques that I've used, um, to, you know, build a lot more momentum behind Crimson from sort of when we started, when I was 18 to now, you know, 26, 8 years.

Then.

So you were a Harvard undergrad when you started

Crimson.

Actually, I started Crimson before I even got on campus.

So, um, I started Crimson in the middle of 2013, around, uh, around March, 2013.

And then I, you know, jumped on campus first time in September, 2013.

So my first recruits to Crimson were the three other kids that had gone into Harvard from New Zealand that year, and a bunch of students from high school that I, that I'd gone through and done competitive debating with or Olympiad with.

And so I recruited this pool of great academic students from New Zealand.

That was my first, you know, pool of mentors.

And then when I landed on campus at Harvard, I, you know, recruited my kind roommates on the platform, you know, freshman year, um, uh, you know, in the dorm rooms, et cetera.

Getting on onboard business, initial mentors.

That was kinda how this all began.

That's great.

How big is your current staff?

It's kind of a, a crazy number, but we're, we're up to about 650 full-time staff around the world.

And about, um, 2,400, uh, consultants, mentors, tutors, teachers, um, who do a lot of delivery as well.

And our staff are really dispersed across a bunch of different countries.

But, uh, America is one of the biggest destinations for our full-time staff as well as, um, the uk, Australia, New Zealand, China, Russia, Korea.

These are all other major hubs for crumbs

around the world.

And most of your staff is involved in the mentoring and guiding of, of applicant.

Yes.

Uh, we have a dedicated technology engineering, data science team that helps to build the platform that a lot of students learn through.

So we've got like a video crew.

We've filmed, you know, more than a thousand videos on these college campuses describing different parts of the application process.

So we've got a very popular YouTube channel that a lot of students love to watch around the world, learn about these different schools.

But yeah, a lot, a lot of our, our team are directly working with students.

They're called strategists, working on their counseling journeys, figuring out, you know, what they can do throughout high school to best develop their profile.

We've got student success managers, curriculum designers, you know, are really extensive team to make sure we are really putting our students best foot forward.

That's brilliant.

And do you have some, uh, some full-time people working with you in the finance arena or operations, things

like.

At this point, um, we've got a pretty heavy hitting, um, I guess headquarter functions, finance, operations, human resources, sales and marketing, digital marketing country teams, led by local country managers to speak to local language and are responsible for running their particular neck of woods.

So if you go to Crimson in Russia, if you're ever making the trip, The whole office speaks Russian, for example, and has a lot of local cultural context.

They can advise families accordingly.

And then we've got a great, you know, board and, you know, fantastic investor base behind us, which has been great because, you know, we started this time, we were very young, we're still pretty young.

And, um, getting that advice from those who've done these kind of things before us.

Has been critical to being able to serve more students in a short period of time.

Good.

Well, one of the other compliments I'd like to pay you is your willingness to bring other people into your team, because many brilliant entrepreneurs have a really difficult time letting go, sharing authority, sharing responsibility, sharing opportunity.

Clearly you don't have that hangup, and that's part of why you're grown as much as you've grown and the impact you're having is so significant.

Thank you.

I, I appreciate that.

I think, um, this comes from, uh, the same philosophy applied to actually schooling.

So for the students on the call and.

A lot of students will go through high school and it's your averse to asking questions.

If you're, if you're that student who's a bit stuck in class, you don't quite understand a concept in English or in math, and you just leave that class, you don't ask a question, you just think I'll figure it out later.

Versus the student who proactively says, Hey, actually I want to get the answer to this question.

I wanna ask for advice and I'm okay appearing that, you know, I don't know what I'm doing here.

That different mindset is critical.

Cause if you compound just asking that one question a day over the course of four years of high school, the amount of extra information you soak.

Is is far higher.

And so I found, for example, even at college, a lot of opportunities, they're not advertised on a website.

Like, uh, I had to go to, you know, email, cold email, different professors or, um, different, you know, advisors to get opportunities like my thesis advisor and stuff.

And so I think that willingness to practically ask for advice and um, you know, bring in experts around you is, is a critical.

And furthermore, um, people are usually really happy to help.

You know, people love to share wisdom and expertise, and so it's, it's very rare that you ask someone to help who's, you know, older than you, with a bit more wisdom than you, and they say no, um, you know, hardly ever happens.

So it's more of that mental barrier within the student or the entrepreneur that they need to overcome.

And then once they've sort of gotten over that, you know, internal qum, um, you know, it's, it's a very powerful, uh,

It is because people do like to share, particularly when they're asked by somebody that's got the heart and the sincerity that you've got.

So, Jamie, time with you flies my friend.

This has just been a wonderful conversation.

I've thoroughly enjoyed getting to know you.

Uh, how can people locate your book and what's the best way to access more information about Crimson?

So people can jump onto, uh, Amazon.

Uh, it's under accepted and if you wanna hear more about Crimson and how we work with students across the us, um, just go on to crimson education.org or type Crimson education on Google and you'll find us

really quickly.

Perfect.

Well, I appreciate you very much.

Keep up the great work and listeners always believe, don't let age be a limitation.

Let everything be an inspiration.

Thanks so much, Jamie, for joining us today in the Action Catalyst.

Thanks, Dan.

Amazing.

Thank you very much.

It was super fun.