Why Most SAT Prep Fails (And What Actually Works) | Al Benthall

Hey guys, welcome back to a day in Miami. Today we have Albenthal back. He's going to talk to us about ACT and SAT prep. All right, so we also have a student. Tomorrow, would you like to introduce yourself?

Hi, my name is Samira Prao. Um, and I am a current freshman at FIU.

And if you don't know about Dr. Al, Dr. Al, can you give us an introduction?

Sure. Uh, I'm the founder of Benthol Prep and um I have been a college professor for many years in North Carolina, but I started this company about 14 years ago to help kids out with SAT ACT and uh we've kept doubling our enrollments every year to where now I've treated over 5,000 students and I'm now moving into the Miami area. Have a lot of good contacts down here. We've already worked with a lot of families in Miami and got some great results. So, I'm excited to keep working with the Miami community for raising those SAT scores and ACT scores and getting those dream schools and big scholarships.

And I am Jenna Silva. I am the co-founder of Silva Creative Media and the founder of Silva Social Agency. Um, need any help, let us know. All right. So, today we are going to talk about your SAT and ACT um test journey. Can you tell us a little about about that? So, I started prepping for SAT. I'll say I think the summer before I went into my junior year cuz that's kind of when you have to start focusing on taking all these tests. And yeah, I was tutoring for about the whole school year. And I don't know, once I got to the test, I thought I was ready, but I would go into the test and I just it was something like that I would just forget about everything or like I'll see the math and I'm like, I know this, but I don't know what to do. Um,

how do you see that a lot in the students that you're tutoring?

Sounds very familiar. So, you probably were doing pretty well with the tutor, right? And you were doing well on the on the practice questions. Hey, I got this. And then you walked in the test day and things uh felt different.

Yeah. Things went

a little opposite of where I wanted them to be.

Mind go blank, you know, kind of thing. So we see that a lot with SAT, especially because it's such a high stakes test, right? It's like, no pressure, kid. This is just your future, right? So, um, one of the things that we started doing, not only giving students strategies for how to handle questions quickly and effectively, see the traps, get in, get out, get the right answer, but we started working with the mental game, right? How do you manage that test anxiety? How do you get into real time, take that down? Just like you're in a real performance, if you're an athlete or if you're a dancer, how do you get over those nerves? How do you get out of your head and just get into a flow state? So, we really work with students on that. And that's where a lot of our success has come.

Do you feel like you had your tutoring company that you worked with, did they work on anxiety and test anxiety with you or was it more just of like basic these are your SAT SAT questions and just kind of drilling that like can you tell us a little about your experience?

Yeah, so it was more like we would meet up. We had I had my SAT prep book. So it was questions that have been on the SAT. So we would go between reading and then we would switch to math and it was more like so focused on okay so this is reading this is how you would do the reading parts or this is a way you can break it down and then math would be like okay this is how you solve this and it'd be teaching how to do those problems but it wasn't so focused on like okay when you get to the test breathe slow down it's going to be okay it was focused on this is all you need for your test and what you need to pass, but it wasn't focused on.

And now the million-dollar question. Did it help you? Did you see any like any increase in your points with their method?

I saw a really minimal like increase, but it wasn't anything major that got me where I wanted to be with my scores. It did suck because it was like a toll on me like I know I can do this but why are my scores not coming out the way I want them to and it sucks because it's it's something important that you need for your future. So it was more like why can't I do this? This is my future. What's going on? So yeah. So, what's a way that you would think would benefit me in my situation that I thought I was doing really good in tutoring and then I got to my test and it just didn't come out?

Great question. Um, most tutors do something that I call informationbased tutoring. They give you information. So, your tutor sat down and said, "Hey, look at this reading question. Here's here's what these words mean." and they give you information and you can do it this way and you find this answer and see how we did it or grammar they say look at this rule see you got to put the comma here that's information math they do the solution right info okay information is 15% of the game 85% is strategy mental game preparation okay and building good habits right so they they give you information but they don't teach you how to learn they don't give you a system for how to learn and they don't give you a system to get it into your muscle memory. You know what I mean? So, we would do something very different. We would show you the information of course, but then we would give you a whole system where you go home, you do questions, you figure out why you missed it, and then you're going to watch my short videos on each one of those questions you missed. So, you're going to get really first rate strategy on not only the information, but wait a minute, I didn't even know what that word meant. How could I have still gotten it right? What's the back door? What's the trap? What's the way to get around it? So, you get strategy, but then we're going to train you on how to categorize that problem you missed into a category. Like, say you keep missing semicolon questions in grammar, or say you keep missing triangle questions on math, right? You're going to set up a little system where you're going to review all those triangle questions that you missed and and the markup you did on it before you do the next set. So, it's like repping it out into muscle memory. And finally, we're going to show you these grounding breathing exercises to take your anxiety way down, get you into that flow state, just like you're learning any other skill so that when you walk in on test day, you just have massive confidence. And if you see a tough question,

it bounces right off you, right? And then most of the time, you come back later and go, "Oh, I got this. What was I thinking?" Because the anxiety often shortcircuits your brain. And when you get rid of the anxiety, oh, I remember how to do that. So there's a lot more to the picture than just information. Does that make sense?

Yep.

Yep.

That's

So one thing you mentioned um is about creating a habit for these students. Um do you see that you know now with our we get everything very easily to us and in very short spans. How do you feel that that works with creating habits and actually be breaking down that barrier almost that we've almost instilled in our students

like the like the short attention span and nobody can focus and if you can't focus you can't build a habit

right

and so the the problem it's you can't just say hey go build a habit kid

exactly

you have to have a system for building a habit

okay and that's where we developed this thing called the laser method this feedback loop l e r launch. Do your questions. Analyze what you get wrong very precisely. Use my little short videos for that. Strategize. Wait a minute. How could I have gotten that right? So you think negatively but also positively. What was the real approach to simplify that one? Right? Engineer. And that is put them into categories and build your learning model so that when you review later, you know exactly what you're reviewing, what your sticking points are. You're not just studying everything, you know. And then finally reinforce which is go over those things, rep it out, you know, go over review really really really systematically. Then you launch again. And when we do that, you have a system now your brain can lock on and focus. So when you when I give you like a structure, your brain can focus. When I just say, "Hey, do a bunch of problems and I hope you do better on them." Your brain just gets overwhelmed, you know?

So yeah, we fix that. And if I'm not mistaken, you are a dancer. Correct.

Correct.

So, so you tell me, how do you get out of your head before you go onto a performance? What do you do?

So, I'm actually I do have a lot of anxiety before I go on stage, especially for like my solos. But it's more so I shake it off. I do a little prayer. I knock on the wood before I go on stage every time. And I talk to my teachers, they give me hugs, we breathe, we relax, shake it off, we walk on stage.

Right? So, it's like a little routine, isn't it?

You see, it's a physical thing you're doing. Yeah.

You don't just go into your head and go, "Oh, shake it off. Shake it off. Get out of your head." Because the more you say, "Get out of your head, the more you get in your head, right?" But you do these little physical rituals. Knock on the wood, right? Shake it off. Breathe. Even a hug, right? Yeah. Those are all physical activities. And when your awareness, when your attention shifts from this crazy mental voice over to this other broader physical activity, you forget to think. You know what I mean? And so that's what you're doing, right?

Yeah.

Now, we train all of our SAT students to do something very similar to that, right? Where they go through these little routines and they train every week at home. So, they're at home before they do their their reading set, before they do their math set, they do these the these uh 10 grounding breaths. Find your feet on the floor. Breathe through the top of your head down and out through your feet. These are all martial arts uh exercises, but we use them for SAT. So, they can all become black belt SAT. But, um then when they get in the real test, they'll tell me, "Dr. Benthal, it was crazy. Like, I I started to get that anxiety. I started firing some of these breaths and it just went away, right? So, um, you can see that we're using techniques from sports and from dance to 10x everyone's SAT scores. You know what I mean? And so, that's something that, uh, you know, I think, you know, you're going to take that skill farther into life later on.

Oh, definitely. I think, you know, going back to even just our school education, we don't get taught mindset. We don't get taught the laser method. Um it's very here's a textbook read it and kind of just I think we get the practice right so like the more you practice but it's never with strategy or it's never with all these other right

things it's just kind of like here the math problem learning our timets right that memory you just want to go over the same thing over and over and over again

but sometimes it just doesn't stick so you get into a test and it's just not there why aren't schools teaching this type of method why are we stuck on this just memorizing and kind of just trying to ace the test versus actually learning life skills to be able to help us when we get to college, when we get into our careers,

becoming a problem solver, right? Really solving puzzles. Um, so you said like, why don't they teach us these things? They're teaching us memorization, right? But what I'm doing is teaching you rehearsal of skills. You rehearse getting these right. And so when you look back, we talked about laser method. That's a proprietary system that we developed. And again, L stands for launch, analyze, strategize, engineer, reinforce, and then go back to launch. And you keep looping this. So this is something we spent years developing. But you can see that it makes a lot of sense and it applies to every area of life. But once we understand we're not we're using the wrong muscles to learn. I'm just going over this thing wrote memory a million times. What most students do, they memorize stuff for a test, they dump it on the test, and they forget it forever. Am I right?

Yeah, it's definitely focus on memorizing it, especially for the test. But I will say that after some tests, a lot of that stuff that I focus so much on to get it for the test will go away,

right?

Cuz it's it's focused on the test. You need to pass the test. It's not.

See, what's what's interesting with what you just said kind of ties me back to your dance. When we when we're doing our sports, when we're doing the hobbies, when we do the things we like, right? Cuz you know, we get into this mindset of we don't like school, but we like our hobby, then we like dance. And you think about the laser method. How do we practice for dance? Cuz as a fellow dancer, it's exactly what he says. We rehearse, right? We're not practicing or we're not doing the same steps over and over again. We have our cleaning dates. If you're a dancer, you know exactly what that means. your teacher will have you in a classroom doing the same dance over and over again. But what are they telling us? They're telling us where we're getting our things incorrect. Now, we have to go back and we have to redo that again. And then we kind of go right back into that whole laser method. And if you look at the sports and you look at our hobbies, I feel like indirectly these are the things that we're learning when we're doing our sports. So, it's very interesting that in school we're not getting that, but we can see that exactly what you're saying within sports, within dance, within the things that students love to do. That's essentially what we're teaching them. And then we're also getting that whole mindset. So, it's almost like making learning enjoyable again for these students instead of just having them, hey, I need you to memorize this. You know, you have parent pressure of you need to score. I'm spending X amount of money on your tutoring. you need to make sure that you're hitting all these points. It's kind of going back to like finding that spark in a child and being able to show them, hey, you can do this, but let's make it a method that you're pretty much used to, just not in a education setting, but maybe more in a hobby setting. So, I think that's very interesting that you say that because we're able to find something that our students actually can enjoy when it comes to learning again. And I think that's a huge do you see students really, you know, when you teach them the leather method and you're going through all these things, do you see that joy almost again with their education?

Yeah, it's kind of uncanny. I'll get uh emails from parents and they'll say, "What have you done to my child? [laughter] She's upstairs and doing her SAT work and she won't come down for dinner and she says she's having fun with this." And they're like, "Uh, did you make my kid a nerd?" I say, [laughter] I say, "Yes, I did, ma'am. and your kid will be very successful one day. I mean, I mean, a nerd in the best way, right? Like a like a really smart person who has who enjoys learning. And it's all about igniting that emotional connection to the learning, not just up here, but down here. I think you were telling me that, right, Samira, that sometimes you'll get kind of into the math, right?

Yeah. There's times where I will sit down and I'll have fun if I understand what I'm doing and I break it down the way I understand things. I'll sit down and I'll sit for hours and I'll have fun doing what I'm doing, but it's just a matter of finding a way that I understand it and a way that helps me rather than the overall way that it things are being taught. I'll be taught something one way, but then I'll go home and I'll find a completely different way to do it that works out for me and it'll be so much better cuz I'll have fun. I'll understand what I'm doing and it makes it so much easier. But when it comes to a test, there is those times where even that method that I'm using that works out for me won't work on the test.

Well, but you still and it's because maybe you get up in your head and think maybe I should do it the other way, right?

And it's because you had that emotional connection and made it fun. It made you want to keep going and you see how that keeps going and going. You're going to get better and better if we can light that little fire. You know what I mean? And uh so so unfortunately a lot of teachers put that fire out. They come in and say do it this way, my way or the highway. They don't take into account how students learn differently. And I'm constantly talking to the students and does this work for you or not. Let's let's tweak it for you. Let's let's adjust this to you a little bit more. Right? You're more visual learner. You're more auditory. You need to be reading things out loud more in your head. You need to be really training your eyes to see what matters. So we we we fine-tune it. That's a really important point. But um it's so weird that you feel that way doing work at home and then the test is just a drag. So one one thing we try to inculcate is reframing. You know you reframe what you're doing. So here's a good one. Uh students will say I'll say how many of you think the reading is boring. All the hands go up. Reading is boring. These are terrible reading passages. I hate these. And I say look I want you to reframe this from bored. If you think it's boring, it's going to stay boring, right? And you're just your brain will not penetrate it, right? I say, imagine you're sitting around you watching these professors make the next SAT now. Imagine the best teacher you ever had. Did you ever have a good teacher?

Usually, you can find at least one, right? This teacher was funny, you know, she was cool. He was interesting. Right? Imagine a room of teachers like that making SAT questions. And I say, "All right, do you think they're sitting around the table saying, "How can we bore these students to tears?" And they all go, "Yes." And I said, "I know you're going to say that." But then they all say, "No, really, they're not doing that. They're probably coming up. I'm a biologist, right? This is a cool biology breakthrough they made. Let's put it on the SAT. This is a funny little passage from a novel. Let's put it on the SAT." Right? They're coming up with interesting stuff. I say now I want you to reframe every single question on the SAT is fascinating and you have to go find the golden nugget. I say have you ever been reading a something you thought was boring and then suddenly a little sentence pop you. I never thought about it that way. You actually learned something on that little SAT question or maybe a math read. Oh, I never thought about doing it that way like you did. Ah, golden nugget. I say reframe it. I say pretend each passage is fascinating. Find the golden nugget. Boredom does not exist. So what we're doing is turning them into puzzles to solve, not problems. I hate that word problem. It's a puzzle. Once you start start looking at it that way, you start to take more interest and then the whole laser method starts to take off and and catch fire because you're getting better every week.

That's amazing about the laser method. We're going to pause on that because I want to get back to you, talk to you about that cuz I really feel like there's some life lessons that we can learn with the laser method. Um I did want to talk about a little bit about AI. So AI is popping up everywhere even within the SAT SAT world and also when it comes to studying. Um how are we seeing AI take over that? And is it even beneficial for us to be investing into AI when it comes to our SAT and ACT prep or should we stick with the traditional route of hiring a tutor? The quick version is uh both, but especially hiring a tutor.

Okay,

AI is a great tool for helping you organize your thoughts, getting some quick feedback on certain questions, right? But it will not tutor you and it will not help you help you diagnose your sticking points. And so, you know, there's a we're starting to discover this just now. one of the leading figures in AI has just stated last week that he thinks the large language model or the large language learning model is a dead end. And we have to start modeling AI on what's called world learning and not language learning because it's just repeating words. That's all AI is doing right now. It's scanning the internet, finding the best that's been thought and said, and cobbling it together one sentence and word at a time, and it spits it out. And it's great. I love it. I can spend hours talking to those, but it's really not learning. It's just regurgitating in a really sophisticated way, which is cool. I like it. I like it as a tool. But as far as a tutor being able to say, "Hey, wait a minute. This is your sticking point and we need to do more of this for you." But also providing you with real SAT questions. You understand? That's one of the biggest issues. And a lot of AI companies now are generating their own SAT questions through AI. and the feedback is not great that they're they really aren't able to capture authentic SAT questions made by real people. So people think, well, I'm gonna use this a AI company to tutor and it cranks out 5,000 SAT questions, but then they take the real SAT. Oh, these are harder. You see what I mean? So, so there's a lot of overconfidence with AI right now. We have to be cautious with it. So that's say great tool,

but it's not going to do the learning for you. So, you just mentioned that AI or maybe even other tutoring companies will make their own SAT questions, right?

I'm assuming that's not how Al Benthal does it.

Not a great idea.

Okay.

Better than nothing.

Okay.

Okay. But, you know, the College Board releases real SAT questions. They they started doing that back in the 90s. They didn't do it for decades, right? The SAT has been around for 100 years, and they jealously guarded those questions. you know, nobody could get their hands on a real SAT. There's a black market. You had to go meet this weird guy with a paper brown envelope. Hey, don't look. Right. But, uh, that's when the prep industry was born, right? Kaplan, Princ, they started making up their own SATs back in the 50s, right? Oh, great. So, they have these little books, you know, but you would you would and I still have students who used those. And I say, come on. Was it like a real SAT? And they go, no. Did you ever try one of those?

Yeah, I did. I had a I had a purple SAT exam book that said it was from 2023. So, we thought that it would work out cuz it was newer. But once again, it's like what you're saying that once you get to the actual test, those questions have nothing to do with those test questions.

Yep.

So,

so it's good for just learning formatting and kind of the feeling of taking it, but you know what I mean? it can actually backfire like you said because if you start getting overconfident, hey,

I got this right and then you get a real SAT question.

So, um you have to be a little bit cautious about that and now they're again trying to generate them with it with AI. Uh and maybe they'll get better. I'm always open to progress. You know, if if someone starts to develop really authentic SAT questions through AI, I'm all for it. But for now, use only College Board material. use or if you're doing the ACT, use only the ACT book, the red book for ACT, the blue book, official SAT uh study guide for SAT. So, use the real stuff, train on the real stuff. That's what's going to train you for the real test.

Going back to something that you mentioned about our teachers putting the fire out in our students, you know, like she experienced a lot of the time she'll have her way of doing something and you have the teachers that are kind of like, "No, you need to do it this way." Do you see our parents doing that to our students as well?

Unfortunately, yes. Uh and um as with everything in life, there's a sweet spot in the middle. We have to hit with every topic, right? You have to train hard as a dancer, but you could overtrain, burn out, or you could undertrain. Right? Parents have to be um very engaged with their with their children, with their students. uh they have to help them create discipline. But can that go too far? Yeah. Can parents put too much pressure on their kids? Absolutely. Right. So, I've seen it all. I've seen the the helicopter parents, you know, who never never let their kid have a moment's piece. And then I've seen the parents who forget to sign them up for the SAT and on test day the kid [laughter] says, "Now, are we taking the SAT at your tutoring center?" I say, "No, you're taking it at the SAT." They go, "Oh, we didn't know that the parents are asleep at the wheel." So those are the two extremes, you know. Um, yeah, but I would say it's the helicopter parents we have to watch out for. And I do have a funny story about that I can tell you. But anyway,

all right, Al, give us the funny parent story. Tell us your craziest experience with parents.

Well, I got a few, but there was one parent who um she was obsessed with helping her son. you know, the the mom was helping the son and she had him like doing all the problems in the book the first week, you know, we got like seven full SATs and he came in and he and we were doing like one test a week and he'd already done four of them and he said, "Yeah, I just want to get ahead." And I said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, Tiger." You know, I said, "First of all, you're going to burn through all the questions, right?" And then um I called and then the mom would call me back about two weeks later. I just want I just want him to do better. and I I tell him to study but he doesn't and and I don't know and and and u she would call me every week you know and um I think he took his practice SAT and he was doing pretty well but then he he didn't do so hot right huh imagine that right and so she called me up and all upset and why isn't he doing better and I said um I say this with all respect I think I know what the problem might be take a look in the mirror her and and she kind of laughed, you know, I mean, cuz I was I was saying it with a certain loving playfulness, right? And I said, "But do you understand that you could go too far, right?

And you could just put too much pressure and he just falls apart, right?" And she said, "You know, Dr. B, I think you're right. I think I'm going to let up." And she did, you know, and he and I had a nice conversation. And I said, you know, your mom just loves you. She wants you to do well, and she's not trying to, you know, hurt hurt you or or derail you. But once we had that little talk, he started pulling back and he did decently on that SAT, then he came back and took another refresher course with me. Took the SAT twice. Most students take it a couple times, right, as you know.

Yeah.

Second time he took it, he he crushed it. But because we had fixed that problem with the with the overzealous discipline with the parent and that can be a real issue because we all love our kids, right? But we understand that that can be a trap.

No, definitely. I think as a parent myself, one of the biggest struggles that I feel like is at especially here in Miami, we have public schools, we have charter schools, and we have private schools. Do you feel like you see any benefit from one type of education versus the other when it comes to SAT, ICT prep? Like maybe where they feel more prepared. Do you see that at all or are we kind of just on an even playing field?

It's fluctuating. What I would say traditionally is that the private schools tended to be a little bit ahead of the curve.

Okay.

Um especially as regards the grammar language arts. Um there's something about the Catholic schools. They were always out in front. Every time I came in, I would have 10 kids and I would say, "Raise your hand if you studied grammar seriously at school this year." Two hands would go up and the rest of them like and I would go Catholic school. And they would go, "Yep." And I'd said, "I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the nuns whacking them with the ruler, you know." uh with a you know that's not a semicolon, that's a colon. But um I think that we saw that emphasis in private schools uh at some point. Now what's happening is you're starting to get these public schools that are kind of waking up and you're starting to get kids coming in from public schools and oh wow this kid crushed it. So I would say it varies school by school. So I don't think you have to worry if your kids in public school oh no they're not going to do well on the SAT. It's a matter of getting the proper preparation and training. Whether that's a tutor, whether that's a program like ours, or whether that's just setting up a training schedule on your own, which I can show you how to do, but it's about it's more about the training. You can't trust the school. And let me just be clear, I've seen kids from private schools who are not so good.

Okay?

You understand? And sometimes um there can be that factor where the kids a little bit complacent because they think they're in a private school and I'm cool and they don't they don't they don't some of them don't work as hard. You know what I mean? So it goes both ways.

Okay. And going off of that, how early should a parent start to really you know sit with their student and start planning for these tests? Like is there too early that we shouldn't be talking about it? What's the sweet spot of getting our students to really take SAT and ACT prep seriously? I don't think there's a too early as long as the parent understands it's not a pressure deal. I've had some parents I've had eighth graders start my class, ninth graders, but the parents were very understanding. We're just getting her feet wet. We're just not going to put pressure on her and she would take my class again a year later, maybe as a ninth grader and then maybe as a 10th grader. I've had some do a refresher two or three times because the parents understood that my program was helping them in all their classes. You know what I If you take my class seriously, you're going to go up in English class, math class, chemistry, biology. Everything starts to come up because of the study skills. But standard um you have to understand most students take the SAT two to three times to hit their target score. It's not just a oneanddone thing the way it might have been for some people of my generation. Now, that means you probably need to start out in the fall of the junior year. Okay? So, sometimes parents start the summer. they'll take my summer program going toward that fall SAT. The benefit of doing that is that preps you not only for the fall SAT, usually um late August, early October, but then you pivot and take the PSAT a week later in mid-occtober. And if you do really well on the PSAT as a junior, it puts you in the running for National Merit Scholarship money. So, that's a really important uh thing for parents to know about that junior PSAT. Now, back to your question, the student can then pull back, see how they do. If they didn't hit exactly their target, they take it a second time, maybe in the spring, maybe say start prepping in late January, early February, take my six week class, and hit the March SAT. So, it's a year-long process the junior year there. And then typically there will be some time in the summer before the senior year maybe to get one more good SAT in August, but then you're usually your October deadlines are coming where the early decision, early actions. So you want to have that SAT handled by the beginning of senior year.

Okay.

Yeah.

Did you start SAT prep junior year? I yeah I started the summer going into my junior year but also about the junior year PSAT at least for my school it was more so it wasn't encouraged to take it was more so

I believe it was sophomores took it

and juniors I think you had to pay or you had to do something but it wasn't encouraged to take your PSAT as a junior.

That's interesting. Yeah. So,

well, there is a 10th grade PSAT.

There is a 10th grade version. And the 10th grade version, you know, again, doesn't count towards scholarship money. It's just a practice thing. So, um, you got to understand the PSAT is 90% like the SAT. Parents get really confused about that because the score only goes to 1520 on the PSAT, but it goes to 1600 on the SAT. They go, "What what is the deal here? Why is this one 1520? Why is the SAT600? Do I need a chart to tell I got a a 1,200 on the PSAT? Is that like a 1260? They don't know. But they're they're equivalent. You understand? All they do for the PSAT is they they snip off the top three hardest questions. They just cut those out so that if you got the point is if you got a 1200 on the PSAT, that's what you're going to get on the SAT because you wouldn't have got those really hard questions. So relax. That's how the PSAT works. But it's I'm kind of sorry to hear they were encouraging you to take that junior PSAT because that's where the money can be, you know, for the National Merit Scholar Program.

But it's just a great it again if you prep for it and train for it, it's it's just another great occasion to practice because it isn't a real setting.

And I think you were telling me before we started that sometimes they don't take it very seriously at all. They were saying like just get through this or Right.

It was more so I was being told this. Okay. You have to take the SAT in the future. Right now, this is the PSAT. This is practice. It's nothing important. Don't stress about it. Just do it. You'll get results, but it doesn't matter. So, I feel like a lot of people, me included, were like, "Okay, I'll do it. I'll try, but this isn't important." But it was important. And I feel like that's something a lot of people should focus on is everything that you think is not as important as it is is very important in the upcoming future. So

yeah, it goes back to the sweet spot, right?

Yeah.

It's not massively important. It's not your whole life. It's not a real SAT. So relax. That's true. But doesn't matter. That's too far in the other direction. It should be, hey, actually, if you did really well on this, you can get some money. Now, it's not going to hurt you if you don't, but give it your best, kid. That's where it should be. Give it your best. Take the pressure off and give it your best. That's it. There's nothing that's going to hurt you if you don't do well. But everyone, seriously, give it your best. That's where the headsp space should be, you know, because if they say, "Oh, like you said, probably some student just went through Christmas treeed in or whatever, right?" and and you know that's wasting your time. You know, you're not going to get good feedback off that.

So, going off of that, I that's a great tip that parents should know. Um can you give us three tips that students can use in order to raise their test scores?

So, outside of a program, taking a good SAT prep class like mine or someone else's or or getting a good tutor on board, three really quick tips. One just mentioned is take the pressure off. uh find the sweet spot of sort of loving encouragement, right, to get in and do your best. Um we need a little bit of nudge from mom and dad sometimes, but we don't need that crazy pressure. Okay, so that's the first piece. Second piece, reframe this as puzzles, not problems. Right? I'm going in to solve number puzzles, word puzzles. It's going to be kind of fun. Okay? So start thinking of that way. But the most important thing, the third thing is set up a consistent training schedule. So set aside two days a week for SAT or one day, whatever you've got. Do real problems from the real SAT book. When you miss one, figure out why you missed it. Right? Take a few notes and start to collect notes on your sticking points as you move through. So get the SAT book or use the blue book app for ACT. Use the red ACT book. go through and just be disciplined with your prep. Don't cram. Don't spend six hours on it. Hour and a half on Tuesday, hour and a half on Thursday. Be consistent with your training and take your notes and you will see increases if you do that.

So, going back to the laser method, it also helps students in their other classes. You mentioned that.

So, tell me a little bit about that.

It helps across the board. The the most notable thing it helps with is AP classes. Okay, especially AP Lang, AP Lit. The AP tests are made by the same people who make the SAT. Okay, so there a lot of the same strategies that are involved. Students will come in and take my SAT class and then they'll come back to me say, "Hey, I just took my APs and I crushed it." Right? So the strategies translate directly, but on a broader level, I get notes, emails from students five years later. I had a note from a student in medical school and she said, "Hey, Dr. B, I took your class five years ago. Do you remember me?" I said, "Sure. I'm in medical school now and I'm still using your techniques." Said, "All right, I like to hear that." You know, so it's learning how to think, it's learning how to learn. Not just learning how to think, learning how to learn. We we we we touched on this earlier. You said we often hear practice makes perfect. Yes.

Is that really true

just by itself? If I just buy an SAT book and just blast through it practicing, am I really going to see the results I want if my practice isn't honed? The answer is probably not or just a little tiny bit. You have to re reconfigure that as perfect practice makes perfect. So again, if I said, "How do you become a good dancer?" And I said, "Practice makes perfect." Are you just going to go out and dance a bunch without a coach, without a dance instructor, and are you going to get good?

I mean, no, not really. because I especially at the studio we do a lot. It's a lot of coro and I will say I'm the one of the ones that will sit there and struggle and I'll stress and want to quit but it is something that I love and I know that I could do. So it's a lot of practice but not an overwhelming amount of practice.

Right. You never lose the bun of it.

Yes. But you also have a good dance instructor or you've had good dance teachers and they perfected your form, right?

Yes.

Then you practice. So you got to get the right form, then you practice. So perfect practice makes perfect. Do you see what I'm saying?

So kids think, well, I just got to practice a lot. I got to hack through a bunch of tests. And they're just making the same mistake over and over again.

And then when their score doesn't improve, they start to feel worse. Wow, I must not be smart because, you know what I mean? I've done all these tests and it's not improving. And then they'll just make all these crazy conclusions. I'm just not an SAT person. I'm just not a good test taker. I hear it all the time. I'm just not a good test taker.

Oh, really? You think you're a special snowflake, huh? Okay. And I say, we're going to debug that out of your system because you had a you probably had a bad math teacher.

Mhm. And

couple

and you have a bad teacher and now you internalized now I think I'm bad at math. You had a bad English teacher. You know the kind of teacher who comes in and says, "What do you think it means, kids?" And then he or she never really helps you unlock what's happening. And you walk out thinking, "I'm terrible at English. I hate English." So those are self-limiting beliefs, right? I think I'm bad at math. Guess what? You're going to be bad at math. And then every time you're bad at math, it gets stronger. Every time you bomb an English test, that belief gets stronger. So once we debug that out of your system, hey wait, I can do math. Hey, wait, I can do English. These are puzzles. These are fun. Okay. So, um, deprogramming is a big part of it, you know, getting out of those, uh, those ruts we've been in.

I definitely think mindset and the le method is the perfect combination to help students not only within their testing, but even maybe college students or I know that you're studying to be a doctor. Would you think that a laser method would be able to help you maybe with the math that you're struggling now or with your current courses?

I I believe so. Yeah. Because it does help break things down and it'll smooth out the process of not getting overwhelmed and not trying to be like, "Okay, well, I have to get this right now cuz if I don't get it right now, God knows what's going to happen next." So, it does I do believe that it will help me like relax, break down. It's okay to not get it right away. This is a different way you can do it. Break that down. See what I'm doing wrong to then add that into like add that into another way that I can do things rather than piling it up and being so negative about, oh, I can't do it. I just suck. Like what he was saying. Uh I don't want to get in my head and say, okay, I I'm bad at math. I'm bad at math. That's it. And I don't want to stop it there. I feel like the laser method will help you be like, "Okay, I'm bad at math, but why am I being bad?" I can use this way to figure it out. And it'll help you like mentally, too. So you're not like downing yourself and downing yourself because once again what you said it'll be like if I'm bad at math and I'm saying I'm bad at math I will keep thinking that and I will end up being bad at math because I'm not saying anything positive to myself to contribute to being better at math. So

that's a great point. It's creating a positive loop a positive feedback loop not a negative. That's why we we we analyze why we got it wrong but then we strategize how to get it right. You see what I mean? We flip them from the negative to the positive as part of the laser loop. You understand? So that

we're getting little wins every week. Little wins, little wins, and then suddenly I'm trending upward. You know what I mean? I mean, it's um it's a a reframe on on your You probably heard this, there is no failure, only feedback.

There is no failure, only feedback. So I bombed that math question and I tell my students, every question you miss is a $100 bill. How do you pick up the $100 bill off the sidewalk? What do you do? Do you just watch it walk? Do you watch it blow down the sidewalk or do you Oh, no. I'm taking that. You missed one. That's a $100 bill. How do you put that in your pocket? You do laser. You analyze. You strategize. You engineer. Now you got a 100 bucks in your pocket. Every time you miss one, you're getting rich. All right. So,

yeah, that reframe and that reframe of finding something positive when you're

right. They're just learning less learning moments, right? And so once they realize, no, I can do this stuff. And it's funny because they have these breakthroughs like, "Wow, I never thought I could do that. I never thought I could do math." Right? And I actually kind of like math better than English now. So that's that's pretty wild. Dr. Al, right? You last time we spoke talked to me about the laser method, which I have begun implementing in my company. I want you to tell the public a little bit more of the process. For me personally, it's helped me tremendous in scaling my company and finding the pain points that I needed for a long time to fix. So, tell them a little bit about the laser method that you developed.

Sure, man. Well, I'm glad to hear that it's uh already starting to work for you. Um, we realize that information is not enough, right? So, you can you can get feedback and information all day, but how are you going to fix it? How are you going to implement it? So we came up with laser five steps right launch do what you need to do you need some data points right and then you analyze what went wrong where did we you saw pain points right we analyze that but then we strategize L strategize how could I have gotten it right not just what's the negative what's the positive you know what could I have streamlined what could I have cut out right what's the what's the real shortcut way to uh to get effectiveness but then that's the Most people stop there with L, but they don't go to E and R. E is I engineer a way to get it right next time. I I engineer those pain points into these sort of data points, right, where I see that this broke down here, here, here, and here, and I see patterns. So, I set up like a blueprint, right, for how I'm going to fix that. Then the final step, the R step, is reinforce. So yes, we can all have insight why we got it wrong. But we have to have like a reinforced session where we go in to say, "Look, this is what we came up with. These are the points we're going to hammer." And you hammer those over and over and over again until people really get how it's going to be different next time. Then you're back to the Lunch again. And we keep iterating that that loop until the optimization occurs. Um I I guess I didn't know I was doing at the time, but I I think obviously speaking to you and you know seeing how the agency has grown. Um it's not something that's just for like administrators. It's a mentality that you need to implement across the board, you know, from a community manager to your designer and all the way up, right?

And I've noticed too that our our meetings now uh are they have more purpose to them. you know, there's like an agenda, there's a thing we're trying to resolve and we're moving forward and there's consistency in resolving problems and passing down the mentality or or the way of thinking to the team of being solutionbased, you know, um and also thinking a little bit outside the box and allowing yourself to be creative, you know, like because a lot of people get stuck in the day-to-day, you know, more of the same, more of the same, more of the same

has really made a big difference for us. Um yeah

well one of your points you made it's institutional you can use laser method for the entire company but then you implement laser method with each individual team member right each one has a personal laser method that they're doing where did my where did I break down on that call how did I lose that lead right why didn't I close that sale right and you're working with each one then when you're in a meeting for example instead of saying hey let's have a meeting and fix everything it's all over the place. You say, "No, no, no. We're going to have an analysis meeting today. We want everything that's wrong. Just grind it out." That's it. That's that meeting. Next week, we're having our strategy meeting. How could we get it right next time? What are the optimization points? So, you're you see how you're focusing your energy with each meeting. Now, we're going to have an engineer meeting. What can we do to put into place that each one of you is going to have different action points for next time, right? Not just theoretically, but practically. Then, maybe you have kind of like a huddle, like a reinforce. Okay? what are we doing before the next uh big uh big client

and the big the biggest thing was too who's in that huddle

was another issue for me you know like

so then I started bringing everyone then I'm like okay there's not much moving on here then I started bringing um you know a group of my people that are I thought were leaders then I created structure and I put directors in charge of departments and then we were just bringing the directors

that's it

and now I gave directors KPIs and you need to find me the biggest problems I'll talk to the employees under what are the biggest problems it doesn't get it fixed in 30 days we're having a problem

that's That's it.

And that's really how I started changing.

But you see how you're you're you're cutting out the noise

from every step of optimizing. So every every one of the laser points is very intentional and it helps you optimize that point and then you move on to the next.

I feel like a lot of businesses if you look at what you're struggling at at the end of the day it's going to be your systems and your operations, right? You need to have a clear system. But it goes back to what you're saying. We're just trying to solve a problem where you're saying, "No, I'm able to pull everybody and create a system." And once you have that system, I think the laser method can help at least people on top really organize what that system is going to look like versus just like, "Okay, throwing this person to this problem, this person." Like, we're actually able to really see what we can,

you know? I did like a survey with all the employees and one of the questions was um they do you feel like when you get to work um like you have clear tasks and direction people that I thought were like had clear no I they would put like oh I feel a little bit lost etc etc so it's like people sometime even though you have your role and your responsibility and everything people still get here sometimes just like okay like I'm just bouncing from task all day long

it's too abstract it's in I got this here's a here's one of my favorite say

very abstract that's a great way put it. One of my favorite sayings is goals are for losers, systems are for winners.

100%.

And so when you I got this goal, we're going to do this great thing and everyone's got a goal and how are we going to get there? No idea. Right? But when we have a system in place, right, we know we know where the system's breaking down and we can stop,

cut out the noise, optimize that point, and move on.

Especially in marketing, we have so many moving parts. I mean exactly what you're saying you have a graphic designer you have and it's like or your graphic designer or lines get blurred right because then between jobs and I think that's why everybody like I don't have a clear cuz maybe you're helping somebody with one thing but it's like kind of the laser method literally making them laser focus on what they need to be focusing on.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's good stuff. Good stuff. A pleasure my friend. Always a pleasure having you here and this is the first time I sit across you so I was right. We're good.