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  What Does This Week’s Market Volatility Mean for Your Retirement Portfolio? By Tom Dupree, Founder, Dupree Financial Group Inflation cooled. The big banks beat expectations. And somehow, it was still a wild week in the market. If you’ve been watching your account balance bounce around and wondering whether any of it has anything to do with the actual value of what you own, here’s the short answer: usually not. Most of what moved the market this week wasn’t new information about businesses — it was leverage, technical trading, and forced selling. That distinction matters more for your retirement than almost anything else you’ll read this month, because it tells you when to act and when to simply hold on. This week’s episode of The Tom Dupree Show walked through four separate stories — cooling inflation, strong bank earnings, a leveraged-ETF blowup on the other side of the world, and a regulatory fight over how often companies should report earnings — that all point to the same lesson: know what you own, know why the price is moving, and don’t confuse someone else’s forced selling with your own emergency. Key Takeaways Inflation cooled to 3.5% year-over-year in June, but the Fed’s new chair has questioned whether the 2% target is even the right one — the ground rules for bonds and rate-sensitive investments could shift. Bank profits this quarter came mostly from paying less on deposits, not from a borrowing boom — a reminder that cash flow, not headlines, tells the real story. A leveraged single-stock ETF collapse in South Korea forced hundreds of thousands of retail accounts into liquidation — a case study in what daily-compounding leverage does to a portfolio. Semiconductor stocks have swung hard on technical signals, not fundamentals — which can create real opportunity for patient, long-term owners. A federal proposal to let companies report earnings twice a year instead of four times has reignited a real debate about transparency versus short-termism. Why Does the Market Feel So Unpredictable Right Now? If you’re 55, 65, or 75 and watching a retirement account that’s supposed to fund the next 30 or 40 years of your life, a week like this one is unsettling. The headlines contradict each other: inflation is cooling, but chip stocks are getting hammered one day and ripping higher the next. Banks are thriving, but somewhere on the other side of the world, hundreds of thousands of retail investors just lost their entire trading accounts overnight. It’s a lot to hold at once, and it’s reasonable to wonder whether any of it should change what you do with your own money. Here’s the honest answer: for most retirees holding a diversified, income-producing portfolio, almost none of it should. But understanding why requires pulling apart what actually happened this week — and separating the noise from the signal. What Actually Happened This Week — The Data Start with the good news. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that headline inflation cooled to 3.5% year-over-year in June, with core inflation (which strips out food and energy) coming in at 2.6% — both below what economists expected, and producer prices actually declined for the month. That’s a meaningfully better inflation picture than markets were braced for. But the Fed’s target isn’t necessarily fixed anymore. Kevin Warsh, who was sworn in as Federal Reserve chairman this spring, has openly questioned the assumptions behind the central bank’s longstanding 2% inflation goal and launched a broader review of how the Fed operates. For retirees who own bonds or rate-sensitive income investments, that’s not a footnote — it’s a reason to pay attention to what “the target” even means over the next few years, rather than assuming the old rules still apply. Meanwhile, bank earnings came in strong — but not for the reason most people assume. The lift came primarily from banks paying less to fund themselves (short-term deposit rates have fallen faster than the loans on their books have repriced), not from a fresh wave of borrowing. It’s a good environment for financial stocks, but it’s a funding-cost story more than a booming-economy story, and that distinction matters if you’re trying to judge whether the rally has legs. Then there’s the semiconductor sector, which has been the market’s most volatile corner. Taiwan Semiconductor, the company that manufactures the vast majority of the world’s advanced AI chips, reported June revenue up nearly 68% year-over-year, a genuinely extraordinary number driven by AI infrastructure demand. And yet chip stocks broadly have been whipping up and down for reasons that have very little to do with numbers like that one. A lot of that action is technical: when a stock breaks below a widely watched moving average, institutional trading algorithms are programmed to sell, regardless of what the underlying business is doing. That selling then triggers more selling. It looks like panic. It’s often just mechanics. The starkest illustration of what leverage does in a downturn came out of South Korea this month, where a wave of new single-stock leveraged ETFs tied to semiconductor giants Samsung and SK Hynix triggered margin calls on more than 1.2 million retail trading accounts, with roughly 320,000 to 360,000 of those accounts fully liquidated in a matter of days. These products were designed to move twice the daily price swing of a single stock — which sounds appealing on the way up and is devastating on the way down, because the losses compound daily rather than tracking the stock’s actual return over time. It’s an ocean away from Lexington, Kentucky, but the lesson travels: leverage doesn’t just add risk, it changes the math entirely. Finally, there’s a quieter but genuinely important story developing in Washington. The SEC has proposed letting public companies choose to report earnings twice a year instead of four times, a change championed by President Trump and SEC Chairman Paul Atkins as a way to reduce short-term pressure on management teams. The idea splits reasonable people: less frequent reporting could free executives to run their businesses for the next several years instead of the next ninety days, but it could also mean investors — including retirees who depend on knowing exactly what they own — get less information, less often. This week’s news cycle also included a primetime presidential address in which Trump alleged that newly declassified intelligence showed foreign interference — including from China — in the 2020 election, along with claims of voter registration fraud in Michigan. Election security officials, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, have said they’ve found no evidence that any votes were altered in past elections. Whatever your read on the speech, it fed into a broader theme running through the whole hour: how much can you trust the numbers an institution hands you, whether that’s a vote count or a government inflation report? It’s why we do our own research instead of relying solely on government statistics or Wall Street’s sell-side analysts, and it’s the same instinct that should guide how you evaluate any claim, official or otherwise. The Reframe: Manufactured Volatility vs. Real Risk Here’s the framework we come back to on nearly every episode of the show, and it’s the one thing we want you to take from this week’s news: there is a real difference between manufactured volatility and real risk, and confusing the two is one of the most expensive mistakes a retiree can make. Manufactured volatility is what happens when a stock’s price swings because of leverage unwinding, algorithmic trading around technical levels, or funds racing to exit ahead of a quarterly number — not because the underlying business got worse. The Korean ETF collapse is manufactured volatility in its purest form: a Samsung or SK Hynix shareholder holding actual shares, with no leverage, watched the same news and the same earnings power, just without the forced-selling spiral. Real risk is different. Real risk is a company losing its competitive position, cutting its dividend, or piling on debt it can’t service. Real risk should change what you own. Manufactured volatility, more often than not, should not. The trouble is that from the outside, both look identical on a stock chart. A share price falling 10% doesn’t come labeled “manufactured” or “real.” Telling the difference requires actually knowing the business you own — its cash flow, its dividend history, its balance sheet — well enough to judge whether this week’s headline changed anything about that story. That’s the diligence part of the job, and there’s no shortcut around it. How Should Retirement Investors Respond to This Kind of Volatility? At Dupree Financial Group, this is exactly why our approach centers on dividend-paying stocks and bonds rather than chasing whatever sector is moving fastest. When you own a company for the income it generates — not for a price target — a week of manufactured volatility becomes far less threatening, and sometimes it becomes an opportunity. When institutions are forced to sell a good company for reasons that have nothing to do with its fundamentals, the price drop that scares one investor is simply a better entry point for another. That’s not a guarantee of a favorable outcome — all investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal — but it’s a fundamentally different posture than reacting to every headline. Seven Steps to Retirement-Proof Your Portfolio Against Manufactured Volatility Know what you own, line by line. Pull up your statement and be able to explain, in one sentence each, why you own every major holding. If you can’t, that’s the first thing to fix — not the market. Separate the headline from the business. Before reacting to a price move, ask whether anything actually changed about the company’s earnings, dividend, or balance sheet — or whether it’s a technical or leverage-driven move like the ones described above. Keep leveraged and single-stock ETFs out of retirement money entirely. These products are built for daily traders, not long-term holders. The Korean ETF collapse is a real-world example of what daily compounding leverage can do to an account in a matter of days. Read past the quarterly headline number. Whether or not the reporting-frequency rules change, judge a company on multi-year cash flow and dividend trends, not a single quarter’s beat or miss. Keep a watchlist of quality companies for when panic creates a discount. When forced selling knocks a good business down for reasons unrelated to its fundamentals, that’s the moment long-term investors get paid for their patience. Revisit your income plan, not just your account balance. A retirement portfolio’s job is to produce cash flow you can live on for 30 to 40 years. Judge a volatile week by whether your income stream held up — not by the number on the login screen. Get a second set of eyes on your portfolio. If you’re not sure whether what you own is built to withstand this kind of volatility, or whether you’re carrying more leverage or concentration risk than you realize, that’s exactly what a portfolio review is for. Frequently Asked Questions Is a leveraged ETF a good way to boost my retirement returns? No. Leveraged ETFs reset and compound daily, so their long-term return can diverge sharply from the underlying stock’s actual performance — including large losses even when the stock has technically risen over time. They’re built for short-term traders, not retirement accounts. Does cooling inflation mean the Fed will cut interest rates soon? Not necessarily. While June’s cooler CPI reading supports the case for rate cuts, the Fed’s new chairman has signaled openness to rethinking the central bank’s approach to its inflation target, adding real uncertainty to the timeline for any rate decisions. Why do stock prices swing so much when a company’s earnings didn’t change? Much of the day-to-day movement in popular stocks comes from technical trading, algorithmic strategies tied to chart levels, and leveraged funds being forced to buy or sell — not from new information about the business itself. That’s manufactured volatility, not real risk. What does the debate over quarterly earnings reports mean for individual investors? If the SEC’s proposal is adopted, some companies may report financial results only twice a year instead of four times. That could reduce short-term pressure on management, but it may also mean investors get less frequent, less detailed information about what they actually own. How do I know if my retirement portfolio is built to handle volatility? Start by confirming you can explain why you own every major holding and that none of your retirement money sits in leveraged or single-stock products. A complimentary portfolio review with a fee-only fiduciary advisor is the fastest way to get an honest, unbiased answer. The Bottom Line Weeks like this one will keep happening. Leverage will keep building up somewhere and unwinding somewhere else. Traders will keep reacting to chart levels instead of cash flow. What won’t change is the difference between a business that’s actually worth less than it was last week and a stock price that simply got caught in someone else’s forced selling. Learn to tell those two things apart, build your income around companies you understand, and a volatile week stops being a threat to your retirement — it starts being background noise, or even opportunity. Schedule a Complimentary Portfolio Review If you’re not sure whether your portfolio is built to take advantage of volatility like we saw this week — instead of getting knocked around by it — we’ll take a look. No charge. No pressure. Just an honest conversation about what you own and whether it’s working for you. Call: 859-233-0400  |  Visit: dupreefinancial.com You Might Also Like Catch up on past episodes of The Tom Dupree Show — our full podcast archive, updated every week. Meet the team at Dupree Financial Group — learn about our fee-only, fiduciary approach and the people behind it. [PLACEHOLDER — link to a prior show notes/blog post on dividend investing fundamentals once a confirmed URL is available] About the Author: Tom Dupree is the founder of Dupree Financial Group and host of The Tom Dupree Show, heard weekly across Central Kentucky radio and podcast. With 47 years in the investment business, starting in municipal bonds in 1978, Tom built DFG’s investment philosophy around one idea: retirement money should generate income you can see, not just a balance you hope holds up. Dupree Financial Group is an independent, fee-only fiduciary Registered Investment Advisor based in Lexington, Kentucky. REGULATORY DISCLAIMER: This material is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment, legal, or tax advice, nor is it a solicitation to buy or sell any security. All investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Past performance of any market index or security is not indicative of future results. Dupree Financial Group is a fee-only fiduciary and does not receive commissions on any products or securities discussed. Please consult a qualified financial, tax, or legal professional before making any investment decision. { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "PodcastEpisode", "name": "What Does This Week's Market Volatility Mean for Your Retirement Portfolio?", "url": "https://www.dupreefinancial.com/market-volatility-retirement-portfolio/", "datePublished": "2026-07-18", "description": "Cooling inflation, strong bank earnings, and wild swings in chip stocks — what this week's market moves mean for retirement investors.", "partOfSeries": { "@type": "PodcastSeries", "name": "The Tom Dupree Show", "url": "https://www.dupreefinancial.com/podcasts/" }, "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Tom Dupree" }, "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Dupree Financial Group", "url": "https://www.dupreefinancial.com" } } { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "FAQPage", "mainEntity": [ { "@type": "Question", "name": "Is a leveraged ETF a good way to boost my retirement returns?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "No. Leveraged ETFs reset and compound daily, so their long-term return can diverge sharply from the underlying stock's actual performance — including large losses even when the stock has technically risen over time. 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Is the Federal Reserve’s New Shake-Up Good or Bad for Your Retirement Income? By Tom Dupree, Founder, Dupree Financial Group Short answer: it’s genuinely both, and which one matters more depends on whether your retirement income is built to keep pace with rising costs. New Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh has launched a formal, five-part review of how the Fed operates — covering everything from how it talks to markets, to how it collects the inflation data that moves interest rates, to whether artificial intelligence is quietly reshaping the economy in ways the old playbook never anticipated. On this week’s episode of The Financial Hour, James Dupree, Mike Johnson, and Michael Dawahare sat in to break down what this shake-up actually means — and, more importantly, what it means for anyone relying on their portfolio to produce real, spendable income in retirement. Key Takeaways A new Fed chair is auditing the Fed itself — five task forces are reassessing communications, the balance sheet, data quality, and the inflation target. The Fed’s own bond portfolio carries an unrealized loss in the hundreds of billions — proof that duration risk applies to everyone, including the Fed. AI is cutting both ways on inflation — boosting productivity in some areas, raising input costs like memory chips in others. A tariff-driven price bump and true monetary inflation are not the same thing, and the difference matters for how policymakers respond. Income that doesn’t grow — money markets, CDs, old bonds — quietly loses ground to rising costs every year it sits still. Who Is Kevin Warsh, and Why Is He Changing How the Fed Operates? Kevin Warsh has been a student of the Federal Reserve for most of his career, and one of his first moves as chair was to launch five task forces to reassess the institution’s core functions: communications, balance sheet policy, data quality, productivity and jobs (including AI), and the inflation framework itself. According to CNBC’s reporting on the review, the task forces are directed to start from first principles and question existing practice rather than simply fine-tune it — Brown Brothers Harriman strategist Scott Clemons described the approach as “regime change, but in a velvet glove.” The philosophy behind it is simple: stop, assess, and pivot where needed — the same discipline any well-run company applies when a board challenges management on why things are done a certain way. Warsh is asking the Fed to do that to itself, publicly, for the first time in a long time. What Did the Federal Reserve Get Wrong in 2008 and 2021? To understand why this review matters, it helps to look at the Fed’s actual track record. In 2006 and 2007, as the housing market was cracking, the Fed’s regional offices were on record saying there was no housing problem. There was. Then, in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed held interest rates near zero for over a decade — a policy commonly called ZIRP — creating what our team described on-air as a “wet blanket” over markets that made honest price discovery difficult. The more recent example is fresher: in 2021, as trillions in pandemic stimulus moved through the economy, the Fed described the resulting price increases as “transitory.” They weren’t. Prices rose at the fastest pace in decades, and by the time policy caught up, households had already absorbed the damage — a miss the current review is squarely aimed at preventing from happening again. Why Does the Fed Have a Balance Sheet Loss in the Hundreds of Billions? Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York, System Open Market Account (SOMA) Annual Reports, 2022–2025. Here’s a detail that surprises a lot of listeners: the Fed itself is sitting on a large paper loss. During the zero-rate years, the Fed bought enormous quantities of bonds with very low coupon payments as part of a policy known as quantitative easing. When interest rates rose in 2022, the market value of those bonds fell — the same way any bond’s price falls when rates rise. According to the New York Fed’s own 2025 System Open Market Account report, the unrealized loss on the Fed’s securities portfolio stood at $844.2 billion at the end of 2025 — down from over $1 trillion the year before, but still historically enormous. The Fed can’t easily sell these bonds without disrupting the very bond market it’s trying to stabilize, so for now, it’s simply absorbing the loss. It’s a useful, if uncomfortable, reminder: interest rate risk doesn’t spare anyone — not even the institution that sets interest rates. The Reframe: What the Fed’s Own Mistake Teaches Retirees About Bonds Here’s the part of this story that doesn’t show up in the news coverage of Warsh’s review: the Fed’s $844 billion paper loss isn’t just a Washington curiosity. It’s a live demonstration of the exact risk that quietly erodes many retirement portfolios. The Fed bought long-duration bonds when rates were near zero, on the assumption that those rates — and the value of those bonds — would hold. They didn’t. If the most sophisticated balance sheet in the world can misjudge duration risk that badly, it’s worth asking whether a retirement plan built around the same assumption — that a fixed-rate bond bought today will still meet your needs in ten or fifteen years — is really as safe as it feels. A bond doesn’t know what a gallon of milk costs in 2035. It just pays what it promised to pay in the year you bought it. This is precisely why our firm’s approach leans on dividend-paying, financially strong companies rather than a bond-heavy “set it and forget it” allocation. A healthy company’s board can raise its dividend as costs rise — a bond’s coupon is frozen the day you buy it. The Fed just proved, at a scale of nearly a trillion dollars, what happens when income doesn’t adjust to a changing rate environment. Retirees don’t have the option of just holding to maturity and calling the loss “unrealized.” That gap has to show up somewhere in a household budget. Is Artificial Intelligence Good or Bad for the Economy? One of Warsh’s five task forces is specifically looking at how AI affects productivity and jobs, and our hosts see it as a genuinely mixed picture. On one hand, AI is already making certain kinds of work dramatically more efficient; our hosts pointed to real examples of complex technical projects being completed in a fraction of the time they used to take. Historically, technology has tended to be deflationary — it lowers the cost of producing things over time. On the other hand, the buildout of AI infrastructure is pushing some costs up right now — memory chips being a clear example, which in turn affects the price of consumer electronics. So the net effect on inflation isn’t a simple yes-or-no answer. It depends on which part of the economy you’re looking at, and over what timeframe. What’s the Difference Between a One-Time Price Increase and Real Inflation? This distinction came up repeatedly in the episode, and it matters more than it sounds. A tariff, for example, can raise the price of a specific good once — that’s a one-time adjustment, not ongoing inflation. True inflation, by contrast, is a monetary phenomenon: more money in the system chasing the same amount of goods and services, which pushes prices up broadly and persistently. Our hosts noted that both the current Fed and Treasury leadership seem comfortable with modest inflation as long as wages are rising faster — a meaningfully different posture than in years past, and one that, if it holds, could support the kind of broader economic growth the country hasn’t consistently seen since before the 2008 financial crisis. How Can Retirees Protect Their Income From Inflation? This is where the conversation gets most practical for anyone at or near retirement. Money markets, CDs, and bonds purchased years ago don’t adjust for rising costs — the income they produce today is the same as it was when you bought them, even as your expenses climb. That’s not a flaw in those tools; it’s simply not what they’re designed to do. An income approach built around dividend-paying, financially strong companies works differently. When the underlying businesses are healthy, they have the ability to grow their dividend payments over time — even during flat or difficult markets — because a board’s decision to raise a dividend is separate from where the stock market happens to be on any given day. That’s the mechanism our team described as the foundation of an inflation-aware retirement income strategy: income with the potential to rise, rather than income that’s frozen in place. Frequently Asked Questions Is a little inflation actually a good thing? Fed and Treasury leadership have signaled comfort with modest inflation as long as wages are rising at a faster rate. The concern isn’t inflation existing at all — it’s inflation outpacing the income people rely on to cover their expenses. Why did the Fed call 2021 inflation “transitory” when it clearly wasn’t? The Fed’s framework at the time treated the post-pandemic price spike as temporary, tied to supply chain disruptions expected to resolve quickly. Instead, inflation persisted and accelerated well into 2022, now viewed as one of the Fed’s most consequential misreadings. Does AI cause inflation or reduce it? Both, depending on where you look. AI-driven productivity gains tend to be deflationary over time, the way most technology has been historically. But the current buildout of AI infrastructure is pushing up costs in specific areas, like memory chips, in the near term. Why don’t bonds and CDs keep up with inflation? A bond or CD generally pays a fixed rate of interest set at the time of purchase. As the cost of living rises afterward, that fixed payment buys less — there’s no built-in mechanism for the income to grow along with your expenses, the same dynamic that produced the Fed’s own unrealized loss. What should I actually do if I’m worried my retirement income isn’t keeping pace? Start by getting a clear picture of what you currently own and what income it’s actually producing versus what your expenses look like today. A complimentary portfolio review is designed to give you exactly that picture, with no obligation attached. The Bottom Line The Fed rethinking its own playbook is genuinely good news — a clear-eyed institution is better than a defensive one. But the more useful question isn’t what Washington does next. It’s whether your own income is built to grow, or built to sit still while everything around it gets more expensive. That’s a question worth answering before the next rate cycle makes it more urgent, not after. Ready to See Whether Your Portfolio Can Keep Up? If you’re not sure whether your portfolio’s income is actually keeping up with what things cost these days, that’s exactly the kind of question a complimentary portfolio review is built to answer. No charge, no pressure — just an honest look at what you own and whether it’s working for you. Call 859-233-0400 or schedule your complimentary portfolio review. You can also listen to more episodes of The Financial Hour, and learn more about our fee-only, fiduciary approach on our About Us page. About Tom Dupree: Tom Dupree is the founder of Dupree Financial Group and a 47-year veteran of the investment business. He hosts The Financial Hour, covering the financial topics that matter most to retirees and those approaching retirement in plain English, without the Wall Street spin. Regulatory Disclaimer Dupree Financial Group is a Registered Investment Adviser (RIA) registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training. The information presented here is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, a solicitation, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. 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In this episode of the Future Learners podcast, Brett Campbell and Ellen Brown tackle the question underneath almost every parent’s worry right now: how do I prepare my child for a world that is changing faster than the one I grew up in? The short answer is that preparing children for the real world is less about facts and figures and more about the skills a curriculum alone rarely teaches, and homeschooling gives families the time and space to build them. Brett and Ellen walk through six real-world skills the Euka program is built to develop: financial literacy and entrepreneurship, independent thinking, self-awareness and reflection, hands-on real-world experiences, connecting learning to the world around them, and responsibility and self-management. Along the way they share practical, do-it-today ideas any parent can use, from letting a five-year-old scan the groceries to understand money, to a nightly gratitude check-in, to the simple “this or that” trick that helps a child feel ownership over their own choices. Want to have a positive impact on thousands of families like you? Leave us an audio question or share your homeschooling journey — anonymously if you like. Real questions from real families help us bring more value to every episode.  Send us a message We're listening Send us your voice message Up to two minutes. Speak in your own words Your name Email ● Tap the red dot to start Re-record Download I'm happy for Euka to keep this recording and to share it (or part of it) on the Future Learners Podcast. See our privacy policy. Yes, let me know when new episodes drop. Fresh conversations every week — unsubscribe any time. Send to the Future Learners team Thanks — we've got it. Brett, Ellen and the team will give it a listen. Keep an ear out — we'll let you know if your message features in an upcoming episode. Key Points The six real-world skills covered Financial literacy and entrepreneurship, Grade 7 and 8 business studies where students run their own small business, building into a practical Grade 9 and 10 financial literacy program covering budgets, tax, and how money actually works. Developing independent thinkers, lessons written directly to the student, plenty of hands-on activities, and a “why this lesson matters” section so children see the relevance before they start. Building self-awareness and reflection, a reflection section at the end of every lesson, achievement certificates, and an upload space so students can look back on what they have made with pride. Creating space for real-world experiences, volunteering, work experience, and the everyday curiosity that the slower pace of homeschooling makes room for. Connecting learning to the real world, teaching children to weigh opposing views, question a single source, and stay curious about the world around them. Developing responsibility and self-management, age-appropriate ownership, from doing their own washing to organising their own weekly timetable. Practical ideas any parent can use today Let young children scan a few grocery items to learn how money and barcodes work. Give a small daily reward tied to completed lessons so children learn the value of earning something. Run a nightly gratitude check-in, and lead by sharing your own first. Use “this or that” choices so a child feels ownership over their decisions. Why preparing children for the real world starts outside the curriculum The starting point Ellen and Brett keep returning to is that the world today’s students are entering is not one where memorising facts is the thing that makes them successful. It is about how they think, not just what they think. “The world that our students are going into isn’t a world where facts and figures and things like that are going to be the thing that they need to take with them to become successful in their future. So it’s about looking outside of the curriculum.”— Ellen Brown, co-founder and Head of Education, Euka Brett frames the urgency around change. As the world moves into an AI-infused future, he argues families will see more change in the next three years than many have seen in decades. That can feel daunting for a parent, but he is clear it is an opportunity, not a doomsday, and the job is to prepare children to think and adapt rather than simply to remember. Financial literacy and entrepreneurship The first skill starts in Grade 7 and 8 business studies. Rather than only learning how a business works in theory, Euka students start their own small business and look at a different part of running it each week, from marketing one week to budgets the next. Ellen shared a real example from a parent she spoke to recently, whose Grade 7 daughter runs a ragdoll cat breeding program from home and applies what she learns in her business subject directly to it. Brett is careful to say this is not about turning every child into a business owner. It is about the lessons entrepreneurship teaches, whether that is a lemonade stand or simply understanding how commerce works. His everyday example is letting his five-year-old scan a few items at the shops to learn how money and barcodes work, and where the food on the plate actually comes from. “When you pay, you pay attention.”— Brett Campbell, CEO and co-founder, Euka That principle carries into the Grade 9 and 10 financial literacy program, which covers the practical money knowledge many of us wish we had been taught: what tax is, what happens when you buy a car, and how to build and stick to a budget. “It’s that real practical financial literacy that, I guess we all take for granted, and then of course when you’re a young person you’ve got no idea.”— Ellen Brown Developing independent thinkers The second skill is built into the way Euka lessons are written. From the foundation program, lessons are written directly to the student, even before they can read, so the child feels ownership over their learning rather than being talked at through a textbook. Two other design choices support this. Plenty of hands-on, practical activities give children room to try things with their hands and develop their thinking without a boundary around it. And a “why this lesson matters” section in the introduction helps a student see the value of what they are about to learn before they start. Brett connects this to a bigger idea: children who have everything done for them can end up unprepared for adult life. He shares the memory of a friend whose parents did everything for him, and who struggled with the basics of running a household when he finally moved out. “Anything that your child can do, you should probably get them to try it and do it and practice it.”— Brett Campbell His caution to parents is that giving a child everything, without any ownership attached, can quietly build entitlement. The more useful question is not what you can give them, but whether they understand and are prepared for the real world. Building self-awareness and reflection The third skill is one Brett describes under the umbrella of emotional intelligence: helping a child first understand how they feel, and then learn to regulate it. Ellen points to the practical tools inside the Euka program. Every lesson ends with a reflection section where the student picks an icon for how they felt, happy, frustrated, bored, and that small habit helps them notice patterns and act on them. “It’s about getting them to think of themselves as learners and reflect on their learning experience and improve it, because that’s the kind of thing they’ll take on into the workforce.”— Ellen Brown There is also an upload space after practical activities, so a student can look back on a diorama or poster they built and feel genuine pride in it, plus achievement certificates each term. The slower pace of homeschooling, Ellen notes, is what gives families the time to reflect together in the first place. Brett’s at-home version is a nightly gratitude check-in with his daughter. The key, he says, is to lead by sharing your own first rather than forcing gratitude, because that models the behaviour instead of demanding it. Creating space for real-world experiences The fourth skill is about the experiences that time makes room for. For Ellen, this was one of the biggest draws of homeschooling, and her family did Meals on Wheels together when her children were little. “What the kids got out of that was seeing where people live, how much just spending a few minutes talking to somebody can mean to someone.”— Ellen Brown She contrasts the packed after-school schedule of soccer, dance, homework and bed with the breathing room homeschooling can offer, room for volunteering, work experience, or a child simply pulling things apart to see how they work. Brett’s thread is that real-world experiences quickly show a child where their real interests and abilities lie. He wanted to be a professional athlete growing up, but experiencing it taught him the gap between natural ability and the work required to break through. “Putting yourself in real world experiences quickly shines a spotlight on where your areas of opportunity lie.”— Brett Campbell His encouragement to parents is to pay close attention to what their children are drawn to, even a video game, and ask why they love it, because there are usually clues in it worth pulling a thread on. Connecting learning to the real world The fifth skill builds on the first two. Brett describes how, as children grow into independent and critical thinkers, they start to question a single source of information rather than accepting it at face value. His practical tool is teaching children to look at the “steel man” of the opposing view, so they learn there is usually more than one side, and that beliefs can and should change when new evidence appears. “Being able to be fluid and not rigid and dogmatic on your thinking is a very, very important skill to bring into the big wide world.”— Brett Campbell Ellen’s example is meeting her first homeschooled teenager, who had a strong sense of self and an awareness of local issues that surprised her. She sees homeschooling as an opportunity to live in the real world rather than being cocooned from it, so young people grow up engaged with what is going on around them. Developing responsibility and self-management The sixth skill is responsibility, and Ellen’s view is that children often love the ownership it gives them. Her kids have done their own washing since they could press a button, and by their teenage years that responsibility was simply part of who they were. “If the worst thing is you can’t find some clean knickers, then you’ve learned that lesson the hard way and you’ll work that one out.”— Ellen Brown That same principle extends into managing their own weekly timetable when homeschooling, and reflecting on what did and did not get done. Brett’s practical trick for younger children is “this or that”: offering two choices rather than an instruction, so the child feels ownership over the decision. “She’s not being told what to do. She’s now making the choice herself, which feels like she’s got this ownership over it and it’s her decision.”— Brett Campbell Answered Questions Real questions Australian parents ask about preparing their children for life beyond the curriculum. What life skills does homeschooling teach that a standard curriculum might miss? + Brett and Ellen focus on six: financial literacy and entrepreneurship, independent thinking, self-awareness and reflection, real-world experiences, connecting learning to the world around them, and responsibility and self-management. Their argument is that these skills, more than facts and figures, are what prepare a child to think and adapt in a fast-changing world. How does Euka teach financial literacy and entrepreneurship? + In Grade 7 and 8, students take business studies and start their own small business, looking at a different part of running it each week. This builds into a Grade 9 and 10 financial literacy program covering practical money knowledge like budgets, tax, and what happens when you buy a car. How can I teach my young child about money at home? + Brett’s suggestion is to let them scan a few items at the shops so they learn how money and barcodes work, and where things come from. He also gives his daughter a small daily reward tied to completed lessons, so she learns the value of earning something rather than being given everything. “When you pay, you pay attention.”— Brett Campbell How does Euka help children become independent thinkers? + Lessons are written directly to the student, even before they can read, so the child feels ownership over their learning. Plenty of hands-on activities and a “why this lesson matters” section help children see the relevance of what they are learning before they start. What is a simple way to build self-awareness in my child? + Every Euka lesson ends with a reflection section where the student picks how they felt, which helps them notice patterns over time. At home, Brett suggests a nightly gratitude check-in, and leading by sharing your own gratitude first rather than forcing it. How does homeschooling create space for real-world experiences? + The slower pace of homeschooling gives families time for volunteering, work experience, and following a child’s curiosity, experiences that a packed after-school schedule can crowd out. Both hosts see these experiences as one of the fastest ways for a child to discover where their real interests and strengths lie. Why This Episode Matters Preparing a child for the real world is not mainly about how much they can memorise. In a world changing as quickly as this one, the skills that matter are how a child thinks, reflects, and takes responsibility, and those are exactly the skills a curriculum alone rarely has time to build. Homeschooling gives families the time and space to build them deliberately, from financial literacy and independent thinking through to real-world experience and self-management. And most of it starts with small, everyday moments any parent can create. Your Family, Your Journey Choosing to homeschool for your senior year is a genuinely viable option with Euka Future Learning. The assessed university pathway can guarantee you entry into over 100 universities across 18 countries without the requirement of an ATAR. For those students not seeking to go to Uni, our assessment-free path can be a breath of fresh air. Students still receive their Grade 12 certificate, but have the freedom and stress-free environment to learn in. New to homeschooling? 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In this episode of the Future Learners podcast, Brett Campbell and Ellen Brown put the lens on the senior years. As families near Term 3, the pressure of Grade 11 and 12 climbs, and so does the anxiety. The short answer they keep coming back to: yes, you can switch to homeschooling as a senior student, even mid-year, and you can do it without losing a year of progress. Brett and Ellen walk through how Euka’s Grade 11 and 12 program works, the assessed and non-assessed streams, the university pathway recognised by over 100 universities across 18 countries, and the flexible fourth term that gives senior students room to breathe, work, and explore what comes next. They also answer the fear underneath almost every senior enquiry: without an ATAR or HSC, is the door to university closed? Ellen’s answer is that it is the opposite, and this episode explains why. Want to have a positive impact on thousands of families like you? Leave us an audio question or share your homeschooling journey — anonymously if you like. Real questions from real families help us bring more value to every episode.  Send us a message We're listening Send us your voice message Up to two minutes. Speak in your own words Your name Email ● Tap the red dot to start Re-record Download I'm happy for Euka to keep this recording and to share it (or part of it) on the Future Learners Podcast. See our privacy policy. Yes, let me know when new episodes drop. Fresh conversations every week — unsubscribe any time. Send to the Future Learners team Thanks — we've got it. Brett, Ellen and the team will give it a listen. Keep an ear out — we'll let you know if your message features in an upcoming episode. Key Points How the senior program is built Euka runs a full Grade 11 and 12 program with two streams: assessed (upload assessments, get teacher feedback, resubmit to lift your mark) and assessment-free (same subjects and assessments, self-directed, just no ATAR exams). English is the only mandatory subject; students choose five more from around 20 options, and external exams like piano or ballet can earn credit towards a subject. Subjects are one-year courses, so a student can change a subject a few weeks in, or start fresh with new subjects in Grade 12, which mainstream school rarely allows. Switching mid-year You can switch mid-year, including in Term 3 of Grade 12. Euka does not carry over school marks, but the student’s knowledge comes with them, and they can still finish the year with a full academic transcript. Euka does not run exams, which removes the ATAR and HSC pressure at the exact point in the year it usually peaks. The pathway beyond Grade 12 Euka’s university pathway is recognised by over 100 universities across 18 countries, with no ATAR required for entry. Senior students complete a diploma in their first year at the university’s college, which guarantees entry into second year of the degree and stands on its own if they choose not to continue. Grade 12 runs across three terms, leaving a flexible fourth term for work experience, volunteering, or exploring a passion before the next step. The single most asked question: can a senior student switch mid-year? The fear that holds most senior families back is timing. If Grade 12 has been hard, there is a strong pull to just finish the year, then make decisions off results that came from a difficult stretch. Ellen sees the pattern often. A student has been unwell, or a family situation has knocked Grade 12 off course, and by Term 3 the stakes and the pressure are both climbing. The student starts to withdraw, and the parent is left asking how to help. Switching mid-year breaks that bind. Students can start with Euka in Term 3, bring their existing knowledge with them, and still complete enough assessments and feedback to finish the year with a full academic transcript. “Whatever they’ve done in Term 1 and 2 at school can be brought forward in that they’ve got their knowledge. We don’t take their marks.”— Ellen Brown, co-founder and Head of Education, Euka The result is that a student who has had a rough first half of the year still gets the same opportunity at the end of it as if Grade 12 at school had gone well. How Grade 11 and 12 work at Euka Euka offers a full senior curriculum with two streams. The assessed stream is the one most students choose: they complete the same subjects and assessments, upload their work, and get feedback from the teaching team. The assessment-free stream covers the same content as a self-directed journey, finishing with a completion certificate rather than an academic transcript. Most families pick the assessed stream for the feedback, not because university is the goal. At school, feedback can feel like a verdict, a mark out of 100 with a list of what went wrong. At Euka, feedback is part of the learning. A student uploads an assessment, gets a mark alongside their strengths and the areas to improve, and can redo and resubmit the work to lift the result. “A student’s final results are up to the student, not up to what they know on a particular day.”— Ellen Brown English is the only mandatory subject. Students then choose five more from around 20 options, and Euka can credit external exams like piano or ballet. Because the subjects are one-year courses, a student who finds a subject is not the right fit a few weeks in can change it, and a student who did not enjoy their Grade 11 subjects can start fresh in Grade 12. The university pathway: over 100 universities, no ATAR needed There is a common assumption that without an ATAR or HSC, competitive university courses are closed. Ellen is emphatic that the opposite is true. Euka has a partnership recognised by over 100 universities across 18 countries, as well as every state around Australia. The university colleges have had their academic teams review Euka’s program and recognise it as equivalent to Grade 12, so students who meet the benchmark, around 70 per cent in the relevant subjects, have guaranteed entry. Here is how it works. In the first year, the student completes a diploma at the university’s college, sitting in the same lecture rooms but with smaller tutorial groups and extra academic support. Finishing the diploma guarantees a place in the second year of the degree. If they decide partway not to continue, they still hold a diploma, which sits higher than a Grade 12 certificate or a Cert III or IV. “You’re not picking a degree when you’re going on this Euka pathway, you’re actually picking a route.”— Ellen Brown Because the major is chosen at the end of first year, students do not have to lock in a decision before they even start. Ellen contrasts this with a student who goes straight from Grade 12 into first-year university, picks the wrong major, and leaves with nothing but a debt. Euka also handles the university applications, so families are not left navigating that part alone. The flexible fourth term: room to breathe, work and explore Grade 11 runs across four terms, building the foundation for the senior years. Grade 12 is structured over three terms, with assessments uploaded when the student is ready rather than against fixed due dates. That leaves a flexible fourth term, and Brett argues the breathing room it creates is one of the most underrated parts of the senior program. That space can go into work experience, a passion project, or volunteering. A student curious about a trade can spend a month in a workshop and learn quickly whether it fits. A student drawn to photography can chase that interest far enough to know if it is a path worth pursuing. Ellen points out a practical detail that often stops parents: work-experience insurance. It is simple to arrange, covers a three-month period, and costs less than $100, enough for a full term of trying something out. “There isn’t a door that has not opened for my own children when they just simply sent off an email saying, this is what I’m interested in doing.”— Ellen Brown Brett’s own thread through this is work ethic. It is not a subject you study, it is a behaviour you build, and he argues it is the single attribute he and other business owners look for most when hiring. His encouragement to senior students is direct: put your hand up, offer to help, and be willing to start on the broom before you build the house. Answered Questions Can I start homeschooling in Grade 11 or 12 mid-year? + Yes. Senior students can switch to Euka mid-year, including in Term 3 of Grade 12. Euka does not carry over school marks, but the student keeps their knowledge and completes enough assessments and feedback to finish the year with a full academic transcript. Can my child get into university after completing Grade 12 with Euka? + Yes. Euka has guaranteed-entry arrangements recognised by over 100 universities across 18 countries. The university colleges recognise Euka’s program as equivalent to Grade 12, so students who reach the benchmark, around 70 per cent in the relevant subjects, are guaranteed entry. No ATAR is required. “We guarantee that students who are keen to get into uni are able to do that anywhere in the country, or even if they want to go study in the US, they can do that too.”— Ellen Brown Does Euka provide a report card or academic transcript for Grade 11 to 12 students? + Yes. Assessed-stream students receive an academic transcript with their grades. Non-assessed students receive a completion certificate confirming they have finished Grade 11 and 12. Do Grade 11 and 12 students have to sit exams? + No. Euka does not run high-stakes exams. Assessments are uploaded for feedback and can be resubmitted. Removing exams is one of the ways Euka takes the ATAR and HSC pressure off senior students. Can my child change subjects between Grade 11 and 12? + Yes. In homeschooling the senior subjects are one-year courses, not the two-year lock-in of mainstream school, so a student can start fresh with different subjects in Grade 12 if Grade 11 was not the right fit. Why This Episode Matters A hard Grade 11 or 12 at school does not have to define what comes next. Senior students can switch mid-year, keep their progress, and finish with a full transcript, without the exam pressure that usually peaks in Term 3. The university door is wider than most families think. With guaranteed-entry pathways recognised by over 100 universities across 18 countries, and no ATAR required, a homeschooled senior student keeps every option open, and gains a diploma in the first year either way. Your Family, Your Journey Choosing to homeschool for your senior year is a genuinely viable option with Euka Future Learning. The assessed university pathway can guarantee you entry into over 100 universities across 18 countries without the requirement of an ATAR. For those students not seeking to go to Uni, our assessment-free path can be a breath of fresh air. Students still receive their Grade 12 certificate, but have the freedom and stress-free environment to learn in. New to homeschooling? 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{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "PodcastEpisode", "name": "The Nike Cautionary Tale: What Happens When Leadership Loses Touch With Its Customers", "description": "Tom Dupree and analyst Michael Dawahare examine Nike's dramatic decline — from dominant global brand to a stock trading near 10-year lows — and draw clear parallels to retirement portfolio management.", "url": "https://dupreefinancial.com/blog/nike-cautionary-tale-leadership-lessons-retirement-investing", "datePublished": "2025-06-11", "inLanguage": "en-US", "partOfSeries": { "@type": "PodcastSeries", "name": "The Tom Dupree Show", "url": "https://dupreefinancial.com" }, "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Tom Dupree" }, "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Dupree Financial Group", "url": "https://dupreefinancial.com", "telephone": "859-233-0400", "address": { "@type": "PostalAddress", "addressLocality": "Lexington", "addressRegion": "KY", "addressCountry": "US" } } }, { "@type": "FAQPage", "mainEntity": [ { "@type": "Question", "name": "What caused Nike's stock to fall from $180 to around $44?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Nike's decline was driven primarily by a strategic pivot under CEO John Donahoe, who took over in 2020 and aggressively reduced the company's reliance on wholesale partners like Foot Locker and specialty running stores in favor of a direct-to-consumer digital model. 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What actually happened was that the vacated shelf space went to competitors — HOKA, On Cloud, New Balance, ASICS, and Brooks — who used it to earn consumer loyalty. Once runners found a shoe they loved from another brand, they did not switch back. Nike also lost the critical feedback loop that specialty running retailers provided, making it slower to detect that its technical product was falling behind." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "Who is Elliott Hill and can he turn Nike around?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Elliott Hill replaced John Donahoe as Nike CEO in September 2024. Unlike his predecessor, Hill spent his entire career at Nike, starting at the lowest rungs and earning his way up — giving him deep institutional knowledge of the business. He is widely regarded as credible and clear-eyed. However, nearly two years into his tenure, Nike has not yet been able to regain meaningful traction, illustrating how much harder recovery is than the original damage." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "What is Dupree Financial Group's investment approach for retirement income?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Dupree Financial Group is a fee-only, fiduciary SEC-registered RIA based in Lexington, Kentucky. The firm builds retirement income strategies around dividend-paying, income-generating separately managed accounts — with no products sold, no commissions, and no conflicts of interest. They specialize in helping adults 50 and older build portfolios designed to generate income that can keep pace with inflation over time." } } ] } ] } The Nike Cautionary Tale: What Happens When Leadership Loses Touch With Its Customers The Tom Dupree Show | Dupree Financial Group | dupreefinancial.com | 859-233-0400 Nike spent decades building one of the most recognized brands on the planet — the Swoosh, the Air Jordan, high-heat basketball shoes that consumers lined up for, and a presence in every major sporting goods retailer in the world. Then, in 2020, the company handed its future to a CEO who believed physical retail was a dying model, and what followed became a business school study in how quickly a great company can lose its way. In this episode of The Tom Dupree Show, host Tom Dupree and analyst Michael Dawahare walk through the full arc of Nike’s rise and decline — from its origins in a track coach’s garage to a stock that traded at $180 and has since fallen to around $44. They examine the strategic decisions that caused the damage, the board failures that let it compound, and the hard-won lesson that consumer loyalty, once transferred to a competitor, is almost impossible to reclaim. And for anyone managing retirement assets, the parallels are direct: proven strategies should not be abandoned for untested ones, fundamentals matter more than narratives, and the cost of a foundational error can take years to undo. You cannot put your own lenses on the lenses of your customer — you have to ask how they see the world, not how you see it. — Tom Dupree How Nike Built the Brand — and What It Was Actually Built On Nike was founded on performance athletics. Phil Knight, a runner at the University of Oregon, partnered with legendary track coach Bill Bowerman — who famously experimented with a waffle iron to create better running soles — and built a company that stood for technical innovation and athletic credibility. The brand’s cultural ascent accelerated in 1984 with the signing of Michael Jordan, and from there, Nike became what everyone knows: the dominant force in athletic footwear and apparel, consistently ranked among the world’s most recognized brands. At its peak, Nike operated across multiple business lines — high-heat basketball, lifestyle and streetwear, performance running, and endorsement deals with some of the most iconic athletes in the world. Its Jordan Brand alone eventually grew to represent 25–30% of total business. But that success carried a hidden fragility: the Jordan Brand was built on a generational talent, and there was no clear plan for what would carry that brand forward once Jordan’s cultural relevance inevitably faded with younger consumers. The 2020 CEO Transition and the Fatal Pivot When Nike’s board appointed John Donahoe as CEO in 2020, it elevated someone who had served on the board since 2014 and who had an exceptional track record — at eBay and ServiceNow. But his entire professional background was in direct-to-consumer digital commerce, and he arrived at Nike with a conviction that physical retail distribution was a slowly melting ice cube. His plan: reduce Nike’s dependence on wholesale partners — Foot Locker, Dick’s Sporting Goods, specialty running retailers — and shift the business toward a pure direct-to-consumer model. Margins would improve by eliminating the distribution layer. And the consumer, Donahoe believed, would simply find Nike on their phone rather than in a store. The pandemic made it look like a genius. Physical retail was disrupted, Nike’s direct channels surged, the stock reached all-time highs around $180, and the board was enthusiastic. Beneath the surface, the strategy was already creating irreversible damage. The Shelf Space Problem — and the Competitors Who Said Thank You When Nike told its wholesale partners they would be receiving significantly less product going forward, those partners did not fight back. They simply filled the space with someone else. HOKA — already a credible running brand — accelerated its growth dramatically. On Cloud, a Swiss performance running brand, began one of the most remarkable growth runs in the industry, expanding into running, tennis, golf, and multiple other categories simultaneously. New Balance, ASICS, and Brooks also claimed their share of the newly available retail real estate. The consumer who walked into a Foot Locker or Dick’s and encountered a wall of Nike was now encountering a much more competitive set of choices. They tried the alternatives. Many of them preferred what they found. And once a runner builds loyalty to a particular shoe platform — especially in a category where consumers replace their shoes every 90 days — that loyalty is remarkably durable. Nike also lost something less tangible but equally important: the feedback loop. Specialty running retailers were the ground-level intelligence network that told Nike week by week what runners wanted, what was working, and where the product needed to improve. When Nike walked away from that channel, it walked away from its early warning system. The Board Failure — and the Groupthink That Let It Happen One of the most striking aspects of the Nike story is not that one CEO had a flawed conviction — that happens — but that an entire board of accomplished executives approved and sustained a strategy that was, in hindsight, obviously misaligned with how Nike’s business actually worked. By some accounts, Tim Cook of Apple was on that board during part of this period. It is difficult to imagine Cook making an analogous argument that Apple did not need its retail stores. The dynamic Tom and Michael describe is familiar to anyone who studies large organizations: board members are generally reluctant to challenge a CEO too forcefully, because the social and professional cost of being the dissenter is real. The result is groupthink — a board that validates a strategy long past the point where the data should have prompted hard questions. By late 2022 and into 2023, the numbers made it undeniable. Nike attempted to reverse course, reaching back out to wholesale partners and offering them premium product. The response was polite — and firm. Retailers were glad to take the high-demand items that consumers queued for. The rest of Nike’s moderate catalog? They had already replaced it, and they were satisfied with what they had. Where Nike Stands Today The board replaced Donahoe with Elliott Hill in September 2024. Hill’s story is genuinely different from his predecessor’s: he started in a Nike stockroom and built his entire career inside the company, earning credibility at every level. He speaks clearly and credibly about what went wrong and what needs to happen. And nearly two years into his tenure, Nike’s stock remains near $44 — roughly 75% below its peak —, and the company has not yet found its footing. In running — the category that gave Nike its identity — the brand no longer consistently appears in the top 10 for preferred shoes among dedicated runners. In China, sales are down 20–30% in recent quarters. On Cloud continues to grow at roughly 50% per quarter. The chart, as Tom notes throughout this episode, always tells the story: if a real recovery is underway, you will see it in the price action. The current chart does not yet show that. What This Means for Your Retirement Portfolio Tom closes this episode with a point that connects the Nike story directly to retirement investing: when someone tells you that a proven model is outdated — that index funds are so last century, or that some new product captures market upside without any downside — the right questions are always the same. What is the process? Has it been tested across different market conditions? And who benefits when you believe in it? The investor who abandons a sound income strategy during a period of volatility, convinced by a compelling narrative, is making the same error Donahoe made. The fundamentals that built something durable do not become wrong because someone new arrived with a different set of lenses. Key Takeaways Know what your business — or portfolio — is actually built on. The moment Nike shifted focus from technical performance products, competitors filled the gap. Investors face the same risk when strategies drift from the principles that made them work. Never surrender your shelf space. Giving up distribution is almost impossible to reverse. The same principle applies when investors abandon a proven income strategy during volatility — re-entry is rarely seamless. Leadership bias is one of the most expensive mistakes in business. Donahoe was an outstanding digital executive who ran a physical consumer company through a digital lens. Bias in a CEO or a portfolio manager costs real money. Boards exist to prevent catastrophic decisions. Most don’t. Nike’s board approved a strategy that effectively fired its wholesale customer base. Institutional oversight is only as good as the willingness to ask uncomfortable questions. Consumer loyalty, once transferred, is remarkably sticky. Runners who found HOKA or On Cloud did not come back. When you give a customer a reason to try something else, and they love it, you may have lost them permanently. Recovery from a foundational strategic error takes far longer than the error itself. The damage from a few years of bad decisions can take a decade to undo — in business and in retirement portfolios. Proven strategies deserve skepticism about replacement, not abandonment. When a new model sounds compelling, the questions are always: what’s the process, has it been tested, and who benefits from your belief in it? Frequently Asked Questions What caused Nike’s stock to fall from $180 to around $44? Nike’s decline was driven primarily by a strategic pivot under CEO John Donahoe, who took over in 2020 and aggressively reduced the company’s reliance on wholesale partners in favor of a direct-to-consumer digital model. This freed up shelf space for competitors like HOKA and On Cloud, whose products consumers tried, preferred, and stayed with. Nike also lost focus on technical product innovation — the foundation of the brand — and the combination proved very difficult to reverse. What leadership lessons can retirement investors take from Nike’s decline? The Nike story illustrates several principles that apply directly to managing retirement assets: proven strategies should not be abandoned in favor of untested new models; losing touch with core fundamentals creates compounding damage; and when someone tells you the old approach is outdated, the right question is always whether the new approach has been tested and who benefits from your belief in it. Why did Nike’s wholesale withdrawal strategy fail? Nike believed consumers would migrate online and that eliminating wholesale intermediaries would improve margins. What actually happened was that vacated shelf space went to competitors — HOKA, On Cloud, New Balance, ASICS, and Brooks — who earned consumer loyalty through it. Once runners found a shoe they preferred, they did not switch back. Nike also lost the critical feedback loop that specialty running retailers provided. Who is Elliott Hill and can he turn Nike around? Elliott Hill replaced John Donahoe as Nike CEO in September 2024. Unlike his predecessor, Hill spent his entire career at Nike, starting at the lowest rungs and earning his way up. He is widely regarded as credible and clear-eyed about the challenges. However, nearly two years into his tenure, Nike has not yet regained meaningful traction — illustrating how much harder recovery is than the original damage. What is Dupree Financial Group’s investment approach for retirement income? Dupree Financial Group is a fee-only, fiduciary SEC-registered RIA based in Lexington, Kentucky. The firm builds retirement income strategies around dividend-paying, income-generating separately managed accounts — with no products sold, no commissions, and no conflicts of interest. They specialize in helping adults 50 and older build portfolios designed to generate income that can keep pace with inflation over time. Schedule a Complimentary Portfolio Review If you’re not sure whether your portfolio is built on the same principles Nike abandoned — proven strategy, staying close to what works, and never losing sight of the fundamentals — we’ll take a look. No charge. No pressure. Just an honest conversation about what you own and whether it’s working for you. Call: 859-233-0400  |  Visit: dupreefinancial.com Dupree Financial Group is a Registered Investment Adviser (RIA) registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training. The information presented on this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as personalized investment advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of principal. Please consult a qualified financial professional before making investment decisions. The post Nike’s Fall: Leadership Lessons for Retirement Investors appeared first on Dupree Financial.

What happens when your child trains 20 hours a week, flies overseas to get a shot in the Premier League, and still has to get a great education along the way? In this episode of the Future Learners podcast, Brett Campbell (CEO and co-founder of Euka) sits down with Melvyn Wilkes, Sporting Director and Global Operations Manager of Sunshine Coast FC, Australia’s only full-time youth football academy, to talk about how young athletes are training at an elite level without losing the education behind them. Melvyn shares the inside view of full-time academy life: 7:15 AM sport-science testing, 12:30 PM on the field, gym sessions woven through the school day, and a new international pathway sending 32 athletes a year to play in elite UK youth competitions. He also speaks plainly about what mainstream education does (and doesn’t) handle well for high-performance kids, why mental load matters as much as training load, and what changed for his athletes once they switched to Euka’s flexible learning model. If your child trains, performs, competes, or travels at a level that does not fit a 9-to-3 desk, this episode is for you. Key Points: What Euka is making possible for young athletes: A real education pathway for kids whose week does not fit a 9-to-3 desk Lessons that travel with the athlete across states, across countries, across competition calendars The Australian Curriculum delivered the same way regardless of where the athlete is training that month A partnership with Sunshine Coast FC that has unlocked Australian players competing in elite UK youth football Why Euka students are outperforming their peers: “You would be shocked at how well a Euka Future Learning student performs.” Quote from Melvyn, Sporting Director of Sunshine Coast FC Flexible timing means lessons fit around training, not the other way around, and the brain that learns is a brain that has not been worn down by a rigid timetable Athletes on Euka land the same Australian Curriculum outcomes as peers in mainstream school, but are visibly less stressed Self-paced learning builds time management as a side effect, a skill that pays off long after the playing career Why mainstream school stops working for serious athletes: Rigid school timetables pile mental load on top of training load Moving interstate or overseas for sport resets the curriculum every time Even a single inflexible class can hijack a child the night before training and the day after Exam-condition rules are built for a 9-to-3 student, not a kid in a different city every fortnight How the Euka and Sunshine Coast FC partnership came together: Sunshine Coast FC needed an education partner who could align athletes from multiple states into a single squad heading overseas Mainstream and distance-education models could not solve the state-to-state curriculum mismatch Euka’s self-paced, curriculum-aligned model meant every athlete arrived in the UK on the same academic page The partnership now supports athletes training in Australia and competing in the UK in elite youth leagues When this matters for your family: Your child is training, performing or competing at a level that needs daytime hours Your week already does not fit inside 9 to 3, and you are tired of forcing it You want the education to keep up with the sport, not the other way around You want your child to perform better at school, not in spite of the sport, but because of how the model is built Australia’s only full-time youth football academy: how it started When Sunshine Coast FC went full-time in July 2020, the rest of the country thought they were mad. The pandemic had just turned the world upside down, and here was a football club on the Queensland coast tearing up the part-time academy model and committing to something nobody else in Australia was doing. Five years later, the bet has paid off. What started with 26 student athletes in a single building has grown into 180 full-time athletes across four sporting codes (football, basketball, netball and dance) with academic tuition delivered through their partner school, Peregian Beach College. Sunshine Coast FC funds the academic side. The sporting operation funds the school. It is the only setup of its kind in the country. For Melvyn, the model copies what works at the sharp end of European football. “We worked closely with the academic team and the principal to devise a timetable which could encompass training within the day without cutting any corners on the education,” he explained. The point was never to be a school with extra footy on the side. It was to mirror Premier League youth academies, where training and learning sit beside each other from the start. Australia as a whole has got some exceptionally talented young people, particularly in the football fraternity. We wanted to open the network up and give them an opportunity. — Melvyn Wilkes, Sunshine Coast FC What a week at the academy actually looks like Monday is recovery. The athletes have competed on the weekend, so the first coaching contact comes Monday afternoon. There is a strength and conditioning session during the day, but the body is the priority. Tuesday is the heaviest day. Athletes report at 7:15 AM for sport-science testing. Heart-rate variability, thermal muscle scans, baseline data collection. The team uses platforms like Polar and Apollo Sciences to track recovery and readiness across the week. After testing, academic lessons run until lunchtime, then the athletes are on the field from 12:30 PM through to roughly 4:30 PM. Wednesday opens with a 7:15 AM technical session on the field, then academic lessons through the middle of the day, then back on the field from mid-afternoon until 5 PM. Thursday is the “lighter” day, where the athletes report to school as normal, do academic lessons until early afternoon, then complete a final field session by 4:30 PM. Friday is a deliberate taper. One short session at midday so the body is fresh for competition on Saturday or Sunday. “We worked closely with the academic team to devise a timetable that could encompass training within the day, without cutting any corners on the education.”— Melvyn Wilkes, Sunshine Coast FC Australian football meets the English FA: the international pathway In 2023, Sunshine Coast FC made the call to take Australian players to where the elite youth competition actually is. Melvyn, originally from the UK and still well-connected through the football fraternity there, legally affiliated the club in the United Kingdom under the name Sunshine Coast FC UK. That gave the program access to some of the most robust youth competitions in the world at Under-16, Under-18 and Under-23 level, with a senior men’s space launching soon. The response from Australian families was enormous. 167 applications for 32 spots in last year’s intake. Players came from Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, Cairns, regional Queensland and even New Zealand. For an aspiring footballer in Australia, this is genuinely the closest pathway to Premier League football most kids will ever get. It is also the moment Sunshine Coast FC ran headfirst into the problem that mainstream schooling could not solve for them: every state runs a slightly different version of the Australian Curriculum, and Year 11 to Year 12 progression rules differ from one state to the next. When you are recruiting 32 athletes from five states and trying to send them to the UK as a single squad, that fragmentation makes coordination almost impossible. “You can sense it when you’re around these athletes. The ones doing the future learning program have a more relaxed persona.”— Melvyn Wilkes, Sunshine Coast FC Why mainstream school stopped working for high-performance athletes This is the part of the conversation Melvyn was most direct about, and worth quoting carefully. Sunshine Coast FC was not built to knock mainstream education. They still have athletes enrolled in mainstream programs in the UK, and many do well. The point is more honest than that. The athletes on Euka’s flexible learning model are observably less stressed than the athletes still navigating mainstream timetables, exam conditions, and rigid attendance rules. Melvyn lives with these kids for stretches at a time when they are in the UK. He sees the difference. For a child who is already carrying the mental load of competing at an elite level, a single inflexible class on a Wednesday morning can become the thing they think about for 24 hours either side. Multiply that across a week, and the cumulative cost on performance and wellbeing is real. “You would be shocked at how well a Euka Future Learning student performs, compared to those learning distance-ed or in person, because it’s a more relaxed environment.”— Melvyn Wilkes, Sunshine Coast FC This is consistent with what Euka has seen across its own family base. Approximately 5 percent of Euka students are aspiring athletes, including Olympic athletes, world champions, and the next wave of professional-track competitors. The pattern is the same: flexibility in when and how the learning happens removes a layer of stress that no amount of resilience training can replace. How Euka fits a full-time training schedule Three things in particular make Euka’s program work for the Sunshine Coast FC model It travels. An athlete in Brisbane, Adelaide or rural Queensland gets the same curriculum as an athlete on a UK road trip in November. The state of residence stops being a constraint. So does the country. It is self-paced. When training takes precedence on a Tuesday afternoon, the lessons do not vanish. They sit there waiting for the athlete, ready to be picked up on Sunday evening or in the back of the team bus. There is no penalty for movement. It is rigorous. This is the point Melvyn and Brett both stressed. Flexibility does not mean lower standards. Athletes are still ticking the same curriculum boxes, the same Australian Curriculum standards, the same Grade 12 outcomes. The path through is just shaped around their lives instead of forcing their lives into a single shape. For families considering a similar move, Euka’s flexible learning page is the right place to start understanding what that looks like in practice. Key Insights for Families If your child is on an elite sporting pathway, learning needs to travel. Mainstream school is built around a fixed time and a fixed place. Aspiring athletes train in the day, compete on weekends, and increasingly travel between states or countries. The education system you choose has to accommodate that, not the other way around. Mental load is part of training load. Coaches now talk about cognitive recovery the same way they talk about physical recovery. If a class, an exam, or a teacher conflict is hijacking the night before training, performance suffers. Removing avoidable stressors is part of athlete care, not a soft preference. Curriculum alignment beats curriculum location. The reason Sunshine Coast FC chose Euka was not because the academic content was different. It was because the Australian Curriculum is delivered the same way to every athlete regardless of which state they walked in from. For families moving between states for sport, performing arts or work, that alone is the unlock. Not every child is going to be a professional. The model still works for them. This is the honest reframe Brett brought into the conversation. Even if the elite-sport pathway does not pan out, an athlete graduates with a complete Australian Curriculum education, real-world time-management skills built from running their own schedule, and the confidence that comes from years of high-performance training. Those are durable assets either way. “Euka was built for students who want to aspire to bigger, better things — kids who can’t sit at a desk all day.”— Brett Campbell, Euka Future Learning Your Family, Your Journey If your child trains, performs or competes at a level that demands daytime hours, this episode is the clearest look yet at what an alternative could feel like. You do not have to be aiming at the Premier League to benefit from a model that travels with you. Many Euka families come to us simply because their week does not fit inside 9 to 3. If you are curious about how this might work for your family, the Future Learners podcast has plenty of other episodes from families who have made the switch, including Travel Schooling with The Slow Road and Travel Schooling: Everything You Need to Know. And if you would like to know more about Sunshine Coast FC’s full-time academy or international pathway, head to sunshinecoastfc.com.au. figure.wp-block-table.testimonial-element { background-color:#fffdf5; } figure.wp-block-table.testimonial-element .has-fixed-layout td{ padding:2em 2em; border:none; border-left:.2em #e8a838 solid; } figure.wp-block-table.testimonial-element .has-fixed-layout td em{ display: block; margin-bottom: -1.1em; } figure.wp-block-table.testimonial-element .has-fixed-layout td strong{ font-size:.8em; } h3{ font-size:16px !important; font-weight:900; } { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "PodcastEpisode", "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/all-episodes/how-young-athletes-train-full-time-without-falling-behind-in-school-42/#episode", "name": "How Young Athletes Train Full-Time Without Falling Behind in School", "episodeNumber": 42, "description": "Brett Campbell and Melvyn Wilkes, Sporting Director of Sunshine Coast FC (Australia's only full-time youth football academy), discuss how young athletes train 16–20 hours a week, travel to the UK for elite youth competitions, and still complete a full Australian Curriculum education using Euka's flexible learning model.", "datePublished": "2026-05-16", "dateModified": "2026-05-15", "duration": "PT33M17S", "url": "https://euka.edu.au/all-episodes/how-young-athletes-train-full-time-without-falling-behind-in-school-42/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://euka.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/euka-future-learners-podcast-episode-42-how-young-athletes-train-without-falling-behind-in-school-thumbnail-1024x536.png", "width": 1024, "height": 536 }, "partOfSeries": { "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/future-learners-podcast/#podcast-series" }, "associatedMedia": [ { "@type": "AudioObject", "url": "https://open.spotify.com/show/7g35PbIHMXHV6hRVMIHhkC", "encodingFormat": "audio/mpeg", "name": "Future Learners Podcast — Episode 42 on Spotify" }, { "@type": "AudioObject", "url": "https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/future-learners/id1717947259", "encodingFormat": "audio/mpeg", "name": "Future Learners Podcast — Episode 42 on Apple Podcasts" } ], "video": { "@type": "VideoObject", "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/all-episodes/how-young-athletes-train-full-time-without-falling-behind-in-school-42/#video", "name": "How Young Athletes Train Full-Time Without Falling Behind in School | Future Learners Podcast Ep 42", "description": "Brett Campbell and Melvyn Wilkes discuss elite youth athlete education, the Euka and Sunshine Coast FC partnership, and the international pathway to UK youth football.", "thumbnailUrl": "https://euka.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/euka-future-learners-podcast-episode-42-how-young-athletes-train-without-falling-behind-in-school-thumbnail-1024x536.png", "uploadDate": "2026-05-16T00:00:00+10:00", "duration": "PT33M17S", "embedUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/embed/GeRob6s5ATk", "url": "https://youtu.be/GeRob6s5ATk", "publisher": { "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/#organization" } }, "author": { "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/#brett-campbell" }, "actor": [ { "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/#brett-campbell" }, { "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/all-episodes/how-young-athletes-train-full-time-without-falling-behind-in-school-42/#melvyn-wilkes" } ], "publisher": { "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/#organization" }, "inLanguage": "en-AU", "keywords": [ "homeschooling for athletes", "flexible learning Australia", "youth football academy", "Sunshine Coast FC", "elite athlete education", "Australian Curriculum", "homeschool sport", "Future Learners Podcast" ], "transcript": "Brett: Hello and welcome to another episode of Future Learners. I am Brett Campbell, co-founder and CEO of Euka Future Learning, and today we have a special episode. I am joined by Melvyn, who is the Sporting Director and Global Operations Manager of Sunshine Coast FC, a partner of ours and a partnership we are really excited about. We brought Melvyn in today to tell us and tell you about the academy and what they are doing. Brett: At Euka, we believe we are a very pioneering organisation, and we only partner with people who are working in a very similar field. What Sunshine Coast FC are doing, I wish was available in Melbourne when I was a kid. So we want to talk about this opportunity, and also check in on how a lot of our students have been going and how it really works when you are an aspiring athlete trying to get your schooling completed as well. Melvyn, welcome to the episode. Melvyn: Thanks for having me, Brett. It is really interesting. Brett: Let us start by giving our listeners an overview. What is Sunshine Coast FC? Melvyn: The FC obviously stands for Football Club, but we have many facets to our operation. We are more of a sporting club, Brett. Football is our core business, but we also have a basketball program, a netball program, and a dance academy. All of them are full-time. By full-time I mean the students combine their academic studies with full-time training, and full-time training is between 16 and 20 hours per week during the working day. Brett: And for those who are unsure of what football is, the running joke, it is soccer. I will do the interpretation. One of the things that was really exciting when you reached out to Euka is that we accommodate a very wide variety of needs. One of our largest growing cohorts is the aspiring athlete arena. Close to about 5 percent of our students are in that space. We have Olympic athletes, world champions, aspiring athletes from dance through to football. We are living in a very different world now than when I was at school. Brett: When you talk about 16 to 20 hours of training, how have you currently set up the process? How does it operate? You have been operating prior to reaching out to Euka and adopting a very different education philosophy. Talk to me about how that looks from the schooling element. Melvyn: We transitioned our program from part-time to full-time bang in the middle of the pandemic in July 2020. People thought we were crazy, but it is a similar sort of story to yourselves with Euka. You have to be innovative and you have to be bold. We currently have a partner college, Peregian Beach College, based on the Sunshine Coast. They deliver mainstream education from prep to Year 12 which is stock standard for any educational institution. Melvyn: What we wanted to do was mirror what the academies were doing in the United Kingdom and other parts of the world. We worked closely with the academic team and the principal to devise a timetable which could encompass training within the day without cutting any corners on the education. We went from piloting the program with 26 student athletes when we kicked off in July 2020, to 70-odd within eight or nine months, to over 100 within 12 months, and as we speak today we are about 180 full-time student athletes based at Peregian Beach College. That is funded academic tuition by our sporting operation. Melvyn: Let me talk through what a working week looks like in our full-time academies. Generally, we do not have access to the athletes on a Monday morning because they have had competition on the weekend and they are still in their recovery process. Our first point of contact is Monday afternoon at 2:45 PM. They report for school on Monday morning, do lessons through the day, and there is a gym session during the day with our strength and conditioning team. We have full-time S&C coaches and full-time sports scientists. Melvyn: Tuesday is our main contact day. Athletes report at 7:15 AM for sport-science testing and data collection. We have many platforms including Polar and Apollo Sciences. We do heart-rate variability testing, thermal muscle scanning, and various data collection to get everybody's baseline recovery status for the week. After testing they go into academic lessons up until lunchtime, then we have them on the field from 12:30 PM through to roughly 4:30 PM. Melvyn: Wednesday morning we have them back in at 7:15 AM until 8:30 AM for another technical session on the field. They have quite a big break where they go into academic lessons up until about 2:30 or 3:00 PM, and then we have them back out until 5:00 PM. Thursday morning we do not touch them. They report for school as normal, have academic lessons until about 12:30 or 1:00 PM, and then we have them back out until 4:30 PM. There are gym sessions, performance analysis, and practical elements throughout. Melvyn: Friday is more relaxed. We will do one component around midday because a lot of the players are preparing for competition on Saturday or Sunday. We taper the training on Friday to help maintain them or prepare them for the weekend. And then they have games on the weekend. Brett: My back-of-the-napkin maths says they are doing 50 percent school, 50 percent training. Melvyn: Yeah, but it is still not enough training for us, Brett. We are greedy people. Sport people are greedy people. That is how we came across you. Melvyn: We had some challenges in our state within the football fraternity. We could see them coming, but we wanted to grow our operation and provide additional pathways which would make the competition more robust and produce more talented players for the Australian nation. When we started looking at this in 2018, that did not sit well with various organisations that govern football in Queensland. That did not deter us. In 2023 we decided to expedite the process of our pathway from Australia to other parts of the world. Melvyn: I am originally from the UK, albeit an Australian citizen now. I still maintain my contacts in the UK football fraternity. That enabled us to legally affiliate our football club in the United Kingdom under the name Sunshine Coast FC UK, and to participate in extremely robust youth competitions, some of the best in the UK at their specific age groups of Under-16, Under-18 and Under-23. We are about to develop and move into the senior men's space. Melvyn: What we required was another unique opportunity from an educational perspective. Rather than just pulling from our academy, we opened the network up across Australia. Last year we had around 167 applications vying for 32 spots to play in the United Kingdom. Players came from Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, Cairns, regional Queensland. We had contact from New Zealand. Melvyn: Each state has a national education curriculum, as you know, but there are slight variations in different states. That provides complexities to try and get everybody on the same page. When you have students enrolled in Year 11 going into Year 12 who have already done their elective subjects, Year 11 has to marry up with Year 12, and different states are delivering Year 11 to Year 12 differently. Melvyn: Our partner school, Peregian Beach College, were having some of these challenges trying to align Year 11 and Year 12 across states. That is when we did our research, our due diligence, whatever you would like to call it. We found you guys at Euka and made contact. I think it was Jake at the offset, and then it was full steam ahead. The service we have had from Euka has been top class. The support, the guidance, even working with our academic institution at Peregian Beach College. There has been communication back and forth, and even with the parents. It has been seamless. Melvyn: It is important to bring the truth to the table. A lot of people who do podcasts mask things over and paint rosy pictures. We had real challenges, and the challenges came from mainstream education. There is a large element of rigid learning attached to mainstream education. I am certainly not knocking it, because it has a place, and it is horses for courses for parents and guardians. We support all of our athletes whether they are on mainstream education or on the future learning platform. Melvyn: Our preference is to have all of our athletes with Euka on the homeschool program. We are replicating what the very sharp end of football is doing in the United Kingdom, the Premier League. The vast majority of Premier League clubs run their youth program as full-time and school them inside the football club. This is the closest any kid will ever get from Australia to Premier League football, by embarking on this with us in football, and also jumping on with Euka Future Learning. Melvyn: We still have a number of athletes on mainstream education in the UK, and as much as they are doing well in football, they have a lot of challenges in terms of the education. They have to be in contact with the teacher, they have exams, certain parameters, exam conditions. We have provisions in place to deliver the program as prescribed. But the online platform with Euka is less rigid, which means there is less stress on the students. Melvyn: You can tell the ones on mainstream education and the ones on future learning. You can sense it when you are around these athletes. We live with these athletes. I have spent significant time with them over the last six months. You can feel and sense that some of the athletes are under pressure with the mainstream education program, and the ones doing the future learning program have more of a relaxed persona. Melvyn: I am the one doing all the recruitment for student athletes going to the UK. I am the first point of contact, and I am also the person who, for want of a better word, is selling the program. I have to talk about the Euka program and the mainstream education program, and offer the holistic package. I always lean towards steering parents to look at the future learning platform, because of the stress and strain mainstream education can lay on a young person at a critical stage in their life when they are vying to get into a professional football club. Brett: I always look at things through the outcome we are trying to solve for. In your case, you are wanting to give your students the best possible shot at becoming a professional athlete. What that means is that education is not the first cab off the rank in terms of when it happens. It still has to happen, but it has to fit around the sport. We now live in a world where unless you are going down specific routes like medicine or law, the rigidity of school as the first priority does not always serve the child. Aspiring athletes are a clear example. Brett: Even if they have one class on a Wednesday at 10 AM in a subject they are not great at, or they do not enjoy, or they are behind on, or they do not like the teacher, that one thing can be the thing that hijacks them the night before and stays with them the day after. We are trying to create high-performing athletes here. Euka was built for that. We say we are the backbone for students who want to aspire to bigger, better things and who cannot sit at a desk all day to do their schoolwork. Brett: I want to reframe that, because we absolutely still believe in education. Not all of these athletes are going to become professionals. That is the reality. But the beauty of what you have built is that you have set it up around the outcome of a student aspiring to be a professional, and at the same time making sure they are ticking the boxes and getting an education. Because that is still required. Melvyn: I tackle it as a parent. My own kids have been through mainstream school education in the UK and Australia. The world is evolving. I always say to parents, the words future learning mean exactly what they say. This is the way the world is going. When I am talking to parents now, the conversation is always related to the health and wellbeing of the young person, particularly mental health. A lot of stress and anxiety is centred around exams, assessments, going to school, dealing with people face to face. Melvyn: I used to be a post-16 lecturer in the UK, so I can speak from experience as an educator. What appeases or alleviates parents concerns is when I explain the online platform. It is done at their own pace. If you put two athletes in a room, one doing future learning and one doing mainstream, they will both come out with the same certificate of education. But one is sitting in a classroom being directed, while the other is at their own pace with support. You would be shocked at how the future learning student performs because it is a more relaxed environment. Melvyn: With future learning, they are managing their own time. Indirectly, this is setting young people up for time management in how they conduct themselves through the online platform. You do not need a bell telling you when to start and when to stop. You do not need to move from one classroom to the next. You really do manage your own time. Brett: This is the way the future is moving. There are options now, which is what I love. There are options for families to choose whatever path they want. If you want your child to be an aspiring athlete, or an aspiring actor, or anything, you have to ask how do we put them in the best position possible. Not everyone learns the same way, at the same time, or at the same pace. Until recently there has not been a real option for parents. Now there is.", "citation": [ { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "You would be shocked at how well a Euka Future Learning student performs, compared to those learning distance-ed or in person, because it is a more relaxed environment.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/all-episodes/how-young-athletes-train-full-time-without-falling-behind-in-school-42/#melvyn-wilkes" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "You can sense it when you are around these athletes. 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Mainstream school is built around a fixed time and a fixed place. Aspiring athletes train during the day, compete on weekends, and increasingly travel between states or countries. The education system you choose has to accommodate that — not the other way around. Euka's flexible learning model travels with the athlete, delivering the Australian Curriculum regardless of where they are training or competing that month." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "How does mainstream school affect a young athlete's performance and wellbeing?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Mental load is part of training load. Coaches now talk about cognitive recovery the same way they talk about physical recovery. If a class, an exam, or a teacher conflict is hijacking the night before training, performance suffers. Removing avoidable stressors is part of athlete care, not a soft preference. Athletes on Euka's flexible learning model are observably less stressed than those navigating rigid mainstream timetables and exam conditions." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "Why does curriculum consistency matter more than curriculum location for travelling athletes?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Sunshine Coast FC chose Euka not because the academic content was different, but because the Australian Curriculum is delivered the same way to every athlete regardless of which state they came from. Each Australian state runs a slightly different version of the curriculum, and Year 11 to Year 12 progression rules differ state to state. When recruiting 32 athletes from five states to compete in the UK as a single squad, that fragmentation makes coordination almost impossible. Euka's model solved it." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "Does flexible homeschool learning still work if my child does not become a professional athlete?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Yes. Even if the elite-sport pathway does not pan out, an athlete on Euka's program graduates with a complete Australian Curriculum education, real-world time-management skills built from running their own schedule, and the confidence that comes from years of high-performance training. Those are durable assets either way. The model is built around the outcome of a student aspiring to be a professional, while still ensuring they tick every curriculum box." } } ] } ] } The post How Young Athletes Train Full-Time Without Falling Behind in School | 42 appeared first on Euka.

Monster’s favorite sandwich shop has vanished, replaced by a mysterious boba ball establishment! Chaos ensues as the gang tries to secure their first sponsor while Monster mourns his lost lunch spot. You should send us an email to bumperpodcast@nattybumpercar.com. We’re here and we’re listening! Podcast: Download | Embed Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | RSS | subscribe {"@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "PodcastEpisode", "name": "Bumperpodcast #470 u2013 Season 3 u2013 Monster", "url": "https://www.nattybumpercar.com/bumperpodcast-470-season-3-monster/", "datePublished": "2026-03-06", "episodeNumber": 470, "partOfSeries": {"@type": "PodcastSeries", "name": "Bumperpodcast", "url": "https://www.nattybumpercar.com/bumperpodcast/"}, "description": "Monster's favorite sandwich shop becomes a boba place, causing chaos as the gang tries to navigate potential sponsorships, legal threats, and everyone's food phobias in this delightfully absurd episode."} Podcast: Download | Embed Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | RSS | subscribe {"@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "FAQPage", "mainEntity": [{"@type": "Question", "name": "What is Bumperpodcast #470 u2013 Season 3 u2013 Monster about?", "acceptedAnswer": {"@type": "Answer", "text": "Monster's favorite sandwich shop becomes a boba place, causing chaos as the gang tries to navigate potential sponsorships, legal threats, and everyone's food phobias in this delightfully absurd episode."}}, {"@type": "Question", "name": "What topics are covered in Bumperpodcast #470?", "acceptedAnswer": {"@type": "Answer", "text": "Bumperpodcast #470 covers: comedy, food, sponsorship, business, legal troubles, friendship, disappointment, boba."}}]} Podcast: Download | Embed Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | RSS | subscribe Explore More: Characters | About the Show | Episode Guide | All Episodes

"Certain formats consistently trigger AI Overviews: clear explainers and definitions, step-by-step how-tos, detailed comparisons and buying guides, and local discovery content with consistent business details," writes Laughlin Rigby, Digital Transformation & AI Director of Core Optimisation The search experience has fundamentally changed. Users no longer just scroll through ten blue links, they are reading answers. Google's AI Overviews, now reaching 1.5 billion users across 200+ countries, synthesise trusted sources into concise, cited summaries above the fold. Meanwhile, agentic browsers like ChatGPT Atlas, Perplexity's Comet, and Edge Copilot sit beside the page, comparing options and completing tasks on behalf of users. This shift demands a new approach: be citable, machine-readable, and action-ready. The classic pillars of SEO remain foundational. What's changed is how we express them, ensuring machines can reliably extract and act upon our information. The behavioural shift When AI-generated answers appear above the fold, click-through behaviour transforms. Traffic concentrates on pages offering canonical facts, original insights, and proprietary data, which is precisely what AI assistants quote. Expect fewer low-intent sessions but higher post-click quality. KPIs must evolve to emphasise assistant-layer visibility through citations and mentions, alongside completion metrics like enquiries and bookings. The content strategy follows: write answer-first, then layer in nuance. Address likely follow-ups on the same page. Becoming citation-worthy Earning citations from AI systems requires deliberate choices. Remain discoverable. Allow reputable AI crawlers like OAI-SearchBot in your robots.txt. Keep high-value pages indexable and track assistant-origin traffic. Structure for dual audiences. Employ semantic HTML and WAI-ARIA. Write one idea per paragraph. Use proper tables for data. Implement schema.org markup for Article, Product, FAQPage, Organisation, and Person, always including datePublished and dateModified timestamps. Clear headings and concise sections improve both human comprehension and machine extraction. Deploy focused FAQs. On high-intent pages, add four to six genuine questions marked up as FAQPage schema. Place direct answers first, then link to details. Demonstrate provenance. Feature named authors with verifiable credentials. Cite reputable sources and maintain claim consistency across channels. Maintain currency. Regularly update priority pages, eliminate duplicates, and establish a single canonical source for each claim, price, or specification. Provide reliable APIs. AI assistants act, not just read. Publish OpenAPI endpoints for dynamic information like prices and availability with stable IDs and clear errors. For complex interactions, develop an official integration. Measure rigorously. Track AI Overview presence, citation share, and SERP features. Monitor assistant referrals using server-side tagging. This is continuous, data-driven optimisation for the assistant era. Campaign strategy in the AI Era Use consented, verifiable sources and label AI-assisted copy where appropriate. Develop a concise brand style guide documenting preferred phrases and model summaries to help your tone survive AI paraphrasing. Establish a visible "source of truth" for prices, policies, and key figures. Position this prominently and mirror it in structured data, ensuring AI assistants quote your facts directly. Agent-friendly design Agentic browsers navigate via the accessibility tree, making inclusive design both ethical and strategic. Bind inputs with proper labels, use descriptive button text, apply ARIA landmark roles, keep states predictable, and design forms for autofill and programmatic submission. Your goal: the agent completes the intended action correctly, first time. Preparing for agentic commerce September 2025 brought two competing standards: OpenAI and Stripe's Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), now powering live...

1. Start & End Dates For Google Algorithm Updates Are Approximate - Netizens have asked Google for clarification as to why there is an unexplained gap in start and end dates for Google Algorithm updates on what is published on Google's official website and what is announced on social media. John Mueller of Google replied on Mastodon saying, "It's hard picking a date for some of these (especially afterwards). For many (not all) updates, the update rolls out, it takes a while to be visible (which is when we call it a start), and it takes a while to be in most queries / URLs / datacenters (which is when we call it done). There's no binary border for start / stop, it's more about "starts being visible" and "mostly settled down". It's a bit like timing when bread rises when you bake it."Later Alan Kent from Google tweeted, "Done" is a grey definition as systems roll out across multiple data centers and and process backlogs at different rates. So its really do we say done at 99.9% or 99.99% or ... (I'm done)”So do not take the dates literally. Just know that the updates are happening and take necessary proactive steps. 2. How Long It Takes To Recover From Google Penalty? - Like I always say that “prevention is better than cure.” But what if you accidentally get penalized by Google due to an oversight or by actions of a contractor or agency? Ever wonder how long it takes to recover from a Google penalty? Well you are in luck because in a recent Google SEO office-hours  Google's John Muller  said that it will be a “a couple of months, a half a year, sometimes even longer than a half a year, for us to recognize significant changes in the site's overall quality. Because we essentially watch out for …how does this website fit in with the context of the overall web and that just takes a lot of time.”Sometimes the best defense is a good offense. So your first step is to clean up your website, remove thin content, create good, helpful and relevant content before Google decides to penalize you.3. Google Recommends Multiple Date Signals On Webpages - Google's Search Liaison Danny Sullivan reminded the recommended practice of including multiple date signals on webpages to avoid Google picking up the wrong date on the search results page. After all, inaccurate or outdated dates can lead to confusion and dissuade users from visiting the site. To make sure Google has the correct information for your published articles, update your articles' structured data markup (“datePublished” or “dateModified” fields with the correct time zone). You can also use the “byline date” - the date that Google estimates that the web page was updated or published.4. Google Removes The 110 Character Limit For Headlines In Structured Data - Google updated the article structured data help documentation to remove the hard character limit for the headline property. Google says you should write “concise” article headlines. The 110-character limit has been eliminated.5. Don't Blindly Follow Google Ads Recommendations - The first thing we do when we start working with a new client is to turn off and pause all Google Ads recommendations. And now you have one more reason to keep these recommendations turned off. On Jan. 4, Google Ads announced that starting January 19 the “Remove redundant keywords” will suggest redundant keywords within the same ad groups and they will removing redundant phrase and exact match keywords in favor of broad. At marketANDgrow we eschew using “broad match” unless there is a specific reason (market research) for us to use it.When you choose broad match for a keyword Google will show your ad to people who type in all kinds of variations of your keyword, as well as the keyword itself. For example, let's say your keyword is ceramic pots. If you set this keyword to broad match, your ad won't just show up for people who type ceramic pots into the search bar. Google will also show it to people looking for blue ceramic pots, ceramic cooking pots, and cooking pot ceramic. Your ad can even show up when people type in synonyms of your keyword, like pottery cookware.6. Is Core Web Vitals (CWV) A Google Discover Requirement? - Google Discover is a mobile experience that lets you discover content you didn't even know you needed. It is a totally different search experience, meaning the searching is mostly gone. If the system learns enough about you, you can simply keep swiping to keep the fresh content flowing. Think of it as Instagram or Facebook feed but in text format. So a lot of people are interested in getting their content on Google Discover because it gets your content in front of your intended audience.Google John Muller wrote on Mastodon that “many people ask me if the site's loading speed must be high to enter Google Discover? Or should our urls be fine in CWV?" And then he went ahead and wrote “we don't have that connection documented anywhere. I'd be surprised if CWV were a requirement for Discover." If you are interested in getting your website, article or blog shown in Google Discover then review Google Discover content policies and the Get on Google Discover help documents.

Join Drew and Randy as they have an extended conversation with Sam from iUpdate as they recap 2020’s Apple news.The Tailosive Tech Podcast is now in video form on YouTube: https://youtu.be/01ACa3KW4c8If you are looking for the Tesla talk, tap this link to be taken to the Tailosive EV Podcast! https://apple.co/2YHJf2a-Please leave us a voicemail with comments or questions to be featured in next week’s show at: (855) 841-1277-Rate us in iTunes if you liked the show, or follow us on Twitter to provide us with recommendations and feedback:twitter.com/TailosiveCasttailosive.netDrew:https://twitter.com/TailosiveTechNic:https://twitter.com/NicAnsuini Randy:https://twitter.com/RandyVazquezSam:https://twitter.com/iup_datePublished: 11-30-2020, Recorded: 11-28-2020© Tailosive Podcasts 2020 | All Rights Reserved

Welcome to Episode 218 of the Yeukai Business Show. In this episode, Brad Blazar and I discuss how you can raise funds for your startup business fast. So if you want to expand your business, create an efficient selling system, elevate your brand and attract thousands of customers and investors, tune in now! In this episode, you'll discover: How to raise money for your business quicklyHow to activate your prey drive and transform your lifeWhy is proper branding a gamechanger for startup business owners About Brad Brad Blazar is a master ‘Lifestyle Architect’ whose accomplishments include: Successfully helping hundreds of business owners raise capital to grow their business, make acquisitions, and scaling using OPM (other people's money). Has raised in excess of $2 Billion US to datePublished author of two books, “Put Some Thrive in Your Hive,” and “On the Wings of Eagles.” Hosts Award-winning Beast Nation Podcast More Information Learn more about how to grow your own business with Brad Blazar Website: www.bradblazar.com You can also connect with Brad through Social Media: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradblazar/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brad.blazar Join: Facebook Group called Beast Nation LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradblazar/ Thanks for Tuning In! Thanks so much for being with us this week. Have some feedback you'd like to share? Please leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode on how to raise funds for your startup business, please share it with your friends by using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Don't forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic episode updates for our "Yeukai Business Show!" And, finally, please take a minute to leave us an honest review and rating on iTunes. They really help us out when it comes to the ranking of the show and I make it a point to read every single one of the reviews we get. Please leave a review right now (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/yeukai-business-show/id1231475990) Thanks for listening!

In this episode, Mark Williams-Cook will be talking about: - Pagination problems There is a significant pagination bug present in the WPEngine system and Google have updated their best practise advise regarding pagination. - Date published abuse Google reaffirm best practise for articles using datePublished and dateModified as some SEOs cite concerns Google may not have a grip on this as publishers are abusing it for rankings - Google My Business fraud reporting In case you missed it, Google My Business as launched a new form which enables you to report competitors or fraudulent listings within Google My Business. You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk

Today's guests:Mark Traphagen, Content Strategy Director at Perficient Digital Marie Haynes, Owner at Marie Haynes Consulting, Gianluca Binelli, Founder at Booster Box Topics: 1:35 Google is now encouraging you to consider adding datePublished and dateModified to your structured data What value could this provide from an SEO perspective? In what type of scenario would you use this information? In what type of scenario wouldn’t you use this information? Does WordPress publish this as standard?   8:01  Google introduces ad strength indicator – and also reporting for responsive search ads What data feeds into the ad strength indicator? How can you improve your score? What impact will improving your score have? What reporting is available for responsive search ads?     16:43 Content Marketing Close-Up feature Today we’re looking at an article called “Mobile vs Desktop Usage in 2018: Mobile takes the lead” which was published on StoneTemple.com. This is part of a study series which has been quite successful for you in the past - why so? What our other guests would have done differently

by Questionable AudioPublication date 2017-12-11Topics x32, M32, Midas, Beringer, Audio-Technica, Wrapping CablesLanguage EnglishToday AaronG and Joe talk about the X32 and M32, cables, a new microphone, and soOoo much more.How to Wrap Cables: https://youtu.be/-VzZaJ1xJpYBe sure to visit QuestinoableAudio.comAnd add us on social media as QuestionableAudio and @QuestionableAUD(on twitter)Send questions to QuestionableAudio@gmail.com