I Sent My Wife A Video. She Thought I Was At A Concert.

In partnership with

Apple’s Starlink Update Sparks Huge Earning Opportunity

Apple just secretly added Starlink satellite support to iPhones through iOS 18.3.

One of the biggest potential winners? Mode Mobile.

Mode’s EarnPhone already reaches 490M+ users that have earned over $1B, and that’s before global satellite coverage. With SpaceX eliminating "dead zones," Mode's earning technology can now reach billions more in unbanked and rural populations worldwide.

Their global expansion is perfectly timed, and investors like you still have a chance to invest in their pre-IPO offering at $0.52/share.

With their recent 32,481% revenue growth and newly reserved Nasdaq ticker, Mode is one step closer to a potential IPO.

Tap into a $1T opportunity — invest now at just $0.52/share and get up to 20% bonus.

^{Please read the offering circular and related risks at invest.modemobile.com. This is a paid advertisement for Mode Mobile’s Regulation A+ Offering.}

^{Mode Mobile recently received their ticker reservation with Nasdaq ($MODE), indicating an intent to IPO in the next 24 months. An intent to IPO is no guarantee that an actual IPO will occur.}

^{The Deloitte rankings are based on submitted applications and public company database research, with winners selected based on their fiscal-year revenue growth percentage over a three-year period.}

I filmed 40 seconds on my phone. Didn't think twice about it. Sent it to my wife because I wanted her to see what I was seeing.

Her text back: "Wait, are you at a concert?”

I had to explain that it was a graduation.

She didn't believe me. Honestly, in the moment, I almost didn't either.

I've seen graduations in the movies. Handshakes on a stage, polite applause, everyone checking their watch by hour two. I walked into the Penn Foster graduation expecting a version of that. What I got instead was a room that felt like it had a pulse. People on their feet before names were even called. Grads pulling family members into the aisle to hug them mid-ceremony. Strangers cheering for other strangers' kids like they'd known them their whole lives.

That energy didn't start when the doors opened. It started the second I walked in.

I want to be honest about something. I go into a lot of these environments as an outsider. A consultant walking into someone else's world, trying to read the room, trying to figure out who's who and where I fit. Usually that takes a while. At Penn Foster, it took about four minutes. People I'd never met were greeting me like I'd been part of the team for years. I didn't feel handled. I felt included.

Jordan, Penn Foster's Chief Legal Officer, couldn't make it to the ceremony. But he checked on me multiple times throughout the event anyway. Texts asking if I was doing okay, if I needed anything, if I was finding my way around. That's not something you do for a vendor. That's something you do for someone you consider part of the circle.

Then there were the grads themselves. This is the part that actually stopped me in my tracks. These weren't just local students walking across a stage close to home. People traveled from South Africa. From Mongolia. From places on the map I'd have to double check to point to accurately. They flew across oceans, some of them alone, to walk for a few minutes in front of people who believed in what they'd just accomplished.

Think about that for a second. An online school. A credential earned mostly behind a screen, probably late at night, probably after a full shift at a job that had nothing to do with the thing they were studying. And it mattered enough, meant enough, that people crossed the world to make it physical.To have it witnessed.

I run in circles where "online education" gets said with a slight edge to it, like it's the consolation prize. I walked into that building carrying some of that bias myself. I walked out of it completely rebuilt on the subject.

Here's a sentence I never expected to write, though: the CEO of the company spent two hours handing out water bottles to strangers standing in a hallway.

Not two minutes. Not a photo op. Two hours.

Families had been waiting outside to get into the ceremony, some of them for a long time, because they weren't going to miss a second of watching their person walk. It was warm. The line was long. And Kermit Cook, the CEO of Penn Foster, worked that line the entire time. Water bottles in hand. Personally thanking people for making the trip. Shaking hands like he had all day, because that day, he'd decided he did. He was high fiving students the way you'd be fired up for a kid at a Little League game, not the way an executive performs enthusiasm for a room full of stakeholders.

I've spent over a decade around leadership teams. Boardrooms, sales floors, executive offsites, the whole circuit. I've watched a lot of CEOs work a room. Most of them work it like a room, one eye on the exit the whole time. Kermit didn't work the room. He was in the room. There's a difference, and once you've seen the real version, you can't unsee the fake one anywhere else.

I got real face time with the leadership team throughout the visit, and every conversation reinforced the same thing. This wasn't a company culture built around a mission statement on a wall. It was a company culture built around a bunch of people who actually believe the mission is real and act like it every day.

I want to give credit where it's due, because a mission this size doesn't run on vision alone. It runs on the people grinding through the parts nobody claps for.

Nicole is out there working the maze of different state requirements and government relationships that most people never think about until something breaks. Every state has its own rules, its own timelines, its own way of making your life difficult, and she's navigating that so Penn Foster can keep expanding responsibly.

Rebecca is holding down compliance, which is its own kind of thankless. It doesn't get celebrated when it goes right. It only gets noticed when it goes wrong. The fact that Penn Foster can move fast and stay covered speaks directly to the work she's doing behind the scenes.

Here's what got me the most, though. I asked people, one on one, off script, what brought them to Penn Foster. Different departments, different tenure, different roles. Every single one landed on the same answer.

The learners.

Not the mission statement. The actual human beings on the other end of the screen trying to change their life. That was the real answer, every time, from people who had zero reason to coordinate their talking points with each other. They talked openly about their work life balance too, and genuinely seemed to love it. People locked in on a mission but not burned out chasing it. That's rare.

They believe in what Kermit, Jordan, and Dobbs are building. Not because leadership told them to. Because leadership showed them, one water bottle, one handshake, one high five at a time.

150,000 graduates a year by 2029. That's Penn Foster's North Star.

I heard that number in a leadership conversation and nodded like a consultant does. Big number, ambitious goal, got it. Then I watched the ceremony and realized I'd completely missed the point. The number isn't the story. It's just math wrapped around something a lot more human.

I watched kids in the crowd watching their parent walk across that stage. A look that doesn't need an explanation. It's pure and what a blessing.

I watched grandparents graduate. Think about the life you have to live to end up earning a credential at that stage of life, and the comfort you'd have every right to settle into instead. They didn't take the easy road. Their grandkids cheered louder than anyone in the building.

I watched single moms graduate. Single dads graduate. People who clearly built this credential out of whatever scraps of time were left after work, after kids, after everything else life demands first. Nobody hands you those hours. You steal them back, one at a time, from a schedule that was never designed to give you room for a dream.

That's the part that hit me the hardest. The unseen felt seen at that event. People who spend most of their life invisible to the systems around them stood in a room where hundreds of strangers stood up and cheered like they were the only person in the building.

If you asked me to describe it in one line, I'd say it felt like someone blended a concert with a church. The energy of one, the reverence of the other.

And that's when the North Star finally made sense to me. 150,000 people a year isn't a growth target. It's 150,000 rooms like that one. 150,000 versions of a kid watching their parent get proud of themselves. 150,000 versions of a single mom finally getting to exhale.

I've spent years around organizations in this space. I know what mission drift looks like. I know what it looks like when the vision on the website doesn't match the energy in the building. This wasn't that. This was a leadership team, from Kermit to Jordan to Dobbs, to Molly, building something the entire staff actually believes in, and living out that belief loudly enough that a guy who showed up as a consultant left as someone rooting for them like family.

I filmed 40 seconds of that room and my wife thought I was at a concert. She wasn't wrong to think that. She just didn't know yet that the loudest, most emotional room I'd been in all year wasn't a concert at all.

It was 90,000 people a year, one graduation at a time.

Until next time, control what YOU can control, take action on something, and don’t forget to smile. Like what you read? Here’s how you can help:  Share this newsletter with friends who could use a boost. Sharing is caring!

Connect with me on X (formerly Twitter) – let's chat and support each other.

Find me at @Trade Schools Secrets-WIOA Whisperer