James W. Keyes - Author, Global Executive, Philanthropist | Education Is Freedom

You said that education is the antidote for fear. You've also said that education is freedom, but I'm very curious as to why education is the antidote for fear. Well, I think the difference between just raw knowledge and wisdom to behave in a civil society, which is IQ. In my book, I try to set that out as an objective. It's why learning is so important. It's why education is so important. Let me try to explain the research that I did as it relates to education and why I discovered that fear is the culprit behind people not being able to succeed, or as individuals who are as society, and to think about entire societies. So how did you solve for that in your life? Now, reality is today, we don't really have that much to fear. How do you get rid of this cycle of fear, leading the anger, leading the hate, leading the violence? How do you reverse that cycle as an individual or as people? We don't have any natural predators out there. So what do we afraid of? Welcome to success story. 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No more chasing down prospect info if you're trying to close someone. No more one system for this, another system for that. HubSpot can help you find leads, reach prospects, deliver the insights you need to convert them to customers, all in one place. Plus HubSpot AI can literally do more work for you so you can focus more on scaling your business. Because HubSpot knows you have massive growth goals and they're here to make your productivity problem go away. Visit HubSpot.com to learn how they can help you grow better. HubSpot.com HubSpot.com Jim, thank you for coming on. I appreciate you a lot for spending some time. We're going to have a good time today. I wanted to kick it off with something that you said on previous podcasts. You said that education is the antidote for fear. You've also said that education is freedom, but I'm very curious as to why education is the antidote for fear. Sure, let's just start it off with something light, light, fear. Well, listen, I dive in and we'll get light. Don't worry, we'll get light. But I need like that. I need that mic drop moment at the beginning so people listen to that. It's really morning. We're talking about fear. Let me try to explain the research that I did. As it relates to education and why I discovered that fear is the culprit in so many cases behind people not being able to succeed. Or as individuals or as society, I mean, think about entire societies that have crumbled. If you dig into the reasons why, fear often is the reason they just imploded from within and trying to dissect that. I started to look at fear and try to understand that I literally went into the science of the brain to understand why is it that we in this day and age are still reacting with our caveman mentality. Literally goes all the way back to the to the fight or flight on nature that we have that's in our brain that that protects us from danger so that if the lion was to approach, we would be afraid and we would either be prepared to fight that lion or we would run fast enough to get away. Well, that same human impulse we carry into the office hit a blue call in a white collar world will carry that same fight or flight instinct in the office and if something makes us afraid, we react. And that reaction maybe we don't fight, maybe don't run away, but it's a variation of that same impulse to react to that fear and protect ourselves. Now, the reality is today, we don't really have that much to fear. Well, we don't have any natural predators out there that are going to kill us. Nothing in the work environment is going to do something of that much harm to us. So what are we afraid of? So I try to dig into that cause of fear and I have this way of trying to simplify things. And so by the way, that's very important. Like that skills it in and of itself because I think about what you just said about fear and that has side that sideline my career multiple times and you don't know why you're making the moves or not making the moves that you should be, especially in entrepreneurship in taking that next role. And that's why I love by the way, that is why I love that one liner. Like the antidote to fear is education because you're solving that problem that a lot of us can't even articulate. Exactly, exactly. It happens to every single one of us. Every single day, we have something in our life that triggers a reaction and that reaction is that portion of the brain. I think it's being big or something in your brain. That portion of your brain that is programmed to protect yourself. But there's so little to protect ourselves from. And yet it triggers an overreaction and it comes out in behavioral ways that are generally not good for us because that reaction then triggers a reaction with another person or another person or an entire group of people. And we end up in a very bad situation. We sometimes derail our career. Or as I said, societies can be real. There will society. A democracy can implode as a result of fear. If you go back to FDR's inauguration speech, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself at a very important time in American history. He called out the importance of people being victims of their own fear and not just individuals, but society being a victim of its own fear. So yeah, it's that portion of our brain that triggers it. So as you mentioned, simplicity is so important. So I try to break things down in the super simple term so I can understand this. Then the course of writing the book, I was puzzling over why do I react like that? Why do people around me react like that? And I remembered going back as a kid, you were afraid of all kinds of things. And what would you do? You'd call mom and mom would come in and mom would turn on the light. And when the light came on, you discovered there's nothing to be afraid of. There isn't a monster in the closet. There's no boogie man under the bed. Even though I thought there was, I was convinced there was a monster in the closet. But you turn on the list. The closet's no monster, right? Well, in the simplest fashion, that's what knowledge does. Knowledge is the light. You turn on the knowledge and you discover there's really nothing to be afraid of. Because now you understand. It's not really knowledge that encourages the fear. It's understanding. Well, knowledge leads to the understanding. And then understanding is what then helps you eliminate fear. You eliminate the fear. You eliminate the anger. You eliminate the anger. You eliminate the violence. I actually went back to the Greek philosophers and found a wonderful quote that I discovered Yoda used in Star Wars. I thought Yoda would relate much more to my audience than some ancient philosopher. So I've been quoting Yoda who says that fear leads to anger and anger leads to violence. So true. How do you get rid of this cycle of fear leading the anger, leading the hate, leading the violence? How do you reverse that cycle as an individual or as people? Well, you take the fear part and you obliterate with knowledge. Can I ask something in your career? Because you chose to focus on education as this thesis for solving so many problems. I think a lot of people would agree with. And we can talk about different kinds of education, formal education, non-formal education. But you make a clear distinction between education and knowledge. And I also want to go into your origin story and where you came from, because I've heard it a few times now. And why education played such a crucial point in your own life. But obviously, a lot of people, not everybody, but a lot of people do go through formal education. A lot of people still have a lot of fear. So how do you solve for that knowledge gap that eliminates the fear? Because most people that have formal education do not end up as CEOs of F 500 companies. And they don't not even, not even to that extreme. They won't even take their career to like the next role or the next level or the next company. Forget going to like the epitome of the company here, the of success, right? So how do you solve for that? How did you solve for that in your life? I wish I could say I've solved it perfectly. Perfect example of confidence and have completely obliterated fear. But I am human. And so I fall back into that same trap. But here's the way I look at it. I tried to understand this concept because you look through history. It's littered with examples of really intelligent people doing some really stupid things. And it's hard to understand. Even today, I puzzle over where we are in the world when we're still in this day and age, and this modern age of technology and reason and logic that we still are blowing each other up with eggs and rockets and bombs. It's mind-boggling to think that we as humans can't rise above that level of having to solve problems with military interaction. Now it's real, but it's kind of mind-boggling to think about it. So I've tried to understand going back through history what the difference is between intelligence and knowledge. And then what I take to another level, call it wisdom to really get beyond those things. And it's fascinating how wise some of the ancient philosophers really were because they called these same issues hundreds or thousands of years ago. And I tried to understand what their point of view was. And look at it. So look at it this way. We've got an IQ test, right? So we have a way today to measure someone's technically someone's raw intelligence. And it's called IQ. And then not long ago, somebody came up with a way to measure it. They said, wow, you know, intelligence alone isn't enough. There's something called EQ, right? An emotional quotient, emotional quotient. That measures someone's ability to perhaps moderate their reactions to some extent. And so IQ plus EQ, think of that as knowledge. Okay. I've got enough knowledge that I can survive in society without imploding and making it complete to myself. And then you still get people with IQ plus EQ still doing some things that make you pause and you say, well, I don't know why. Does this person think that way or behave that way? Well, then there's something in the in the book, I addressed this issue of why, why learning. And it's things like collaboration because we have to work with others. It's things like cultural literacy, being understand other cultures. But then the most important element of the why I think was character. So character is that integrity. Can I trust what you say to be true? It is humility. Do you, are you confident enough that you know you have more to learn? Which is my definition of humility. Compassion for other people. Yes, you want to be free. But are you, are you going to sacrifice the freedom of others for your own freedom? You're in a collective society. So those are the elements that I call character. And it's that go back to that formula IQ plus EQ. All right, if that's knowledge. Well, I think the difference between just raw knowledge and wisdom to behave in a civil society is IQ, you have to have some basic level of intelligence, EQ, you have to have some emotional quotient, some emotional capabilities to negotiate, navigate in this world. But then IQ plus EQ plus THEQ, you bring in that character quotient. Then I think we have people with true wisdom. And so in my book, I try to set that out as an objective. It's why learning is so important. It's why education is so important. Because it's not just about learning science or math. It's all about also learning how to navigate in this world with other people. So I think that what you're unlocking is the need for this lifelong attitude towards learning. And I think that what a lot of people end up fumbling is they stop learning after they finish high school college university, grad school, whatever, even PhD. But then like, there's like this mark between I've finished my education. And now I'm going to go into the workforce or do my thing. And I'm going to basically shift how I view the world. Now I'm just operating in the world. I'm no longer consuming as much at the frequency that I was. And I don't have I don't I'm not doing it purposefully. And this is not this is not a hard and fast rule. I mean, I think a lot of people do try and continue to learn. And those are probably the ones that end up building companies end up being CEO of X fortune 500 fortune 1000 anything. You're the ones who like rise to the top. When you look at like even your own career, how is education ongoing learning really changed like the trajectory of what you've been able to do? Oh, I've got a great analogy for you. Yes, I love it now it has changed that it has changed that trajectory. I credit virtually everything in my career trajectory to my lifelong learning. My continued willingness to learn and adapt and learn more. But here's my favorite analogy. As you can see in my background, I'm a aviation nut. I'm a pilot. I love to fly and learn to fly. You have a nice hanger too. I saw I saw the video. You have a hanger. You have a couple toys there. That's good. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's a you know, some some people like some kind of toys. I don't like your play. Different kinds of airplanes. Other old bush plane. Very war war two aviation trainers. Fabulous fabulous privilege to be able to do that. But there's what I learned really early when I learned to fly. Excuse me, you train for 40 hours basically to get a pilot's license. And at about 20 or 30 hours, your instructor will say, okay, now it's time to solo and they turn you loose in this aircraft. You're terrified because you have no idea what you're doing yet. And yet you have to learn. And so they turn you loose to solo and you lie a couple of times around the patch. And then you land it. Oh my goodness. I lived. It's amazing. And then you continue on. You practice more solo by yourself. You then take a test and they grant you with a pilot's license. Here you go. Congratulations. The FAA sends you a nice little letter and you get this little thing with a pilot's license with your picture on it. And you're so proud of yourself. All you have at that point is a licensed word. Because if you just jump in that aircraft and don't keep learning, you're probably not going to live. And that's what weeds out bad pilots and they cut. There's an expression they say there are old pilots and there are bold pilots. But there are no old bold pilots. And if you take that same lesson that to fly, you must keep learning. Not just about lying the airplane. You have to know meteorology. Because you're right into weather and if you bumble in with stop thunderstorm, you're likely to kill yourself and your passengers. You have to understand mechanics because a airplane breaks in mid-flight and something goes wrong. You have to understand the nature of that mechanical law to be able to land safely. Correct it in mid-flight or be able to land the aircraft even with something wrong with it. Perhaps you hit a bird, whatever the circumstance. So that idea that to survive as an aviator, you must learn constantly. Today I train once a year with the professionals on a place called Flight Safety and they throw all kinds of things at me that I'd never seen before to teach me how to respond. There's two things I'm learning. I'm learning the technique of responding, but I'm also learning to overcome that portion of my brain that causes me to freeze or flee or or want to fight resist. It's what I call the difference between a caveman brain and the aviator brain. On Apollo 13, I used the example in the book, if they wereverted to their caveman brain, they would have been fighting each other because they wouldn't have actively worked even with mission control to solve the problem and to return to Earth safe. So they had to block out that natural instinct of fear and overcome it with reason and lodge it. And that's that aviator brain working. It's the frontal lobe versus the amygdala that causes you to react and overreact and pit it. So think that same analogy now and apply it to business. It's the same thing. You know what I was going to say. I was going to say candidly you've gone through some like some stressful shit in your career. Like exactly. I would say it's the same blockbuster was the same level as Apollo 13. It wasn't exactly life threatening, but it was pretty scary. It was I think at one point you said you were a billion dollars in debt. Well, when I arrived at the company, they had a billion dollars debt. And it really wasn't that big a problem because a lot of cluster was like for a company that's that. Yeah, for a company that size was a cash flow machine. It had very good credit terms with the studios. So it was it was a great business model. But in I arrived in 2007 by September of 2008, barely a year after I got there, Alayman Brothers collapses. All financial market implodes. The world thinks it's going to act and I'm trying to refinance a third of a billion dollars of debt and the and the banks are looking at me like a crazy. Nobody's getting refinanced. Never mind somebody need blockbuster. So yeah, challenging times. I want to I want to learn just like a little bit more. And we'll go back to this. First of all, this is a great. This is a great little spiel and education. And we're going to get back there in a second. As I think, obviously, this is where you focus most of your work. But I just want to understand a little bit of your origin story. And maybe some of the maybe some of the things that sort of formulated or formed how you think, how you work, how you operate. You don't have to go into the whole thing. But some major parts of your of your childhood, of your early career, they really sort of set you up or teach you up to who you are today. Yeah, sure. Well, I was really, really fortunate growing up because I was dirt poor. That's a little bit. But yeah, and I had a whole host of horrible things happen. You know, family breaks up, mother leads, mother gets sick, ends up passing away. Yeah, all that stuff was great. And I'm just I'm kind of being facetious, but I'm serious in a way because I've all that crop that I had to face as a kid and adversity built into me a resilience that made me realize, okay, all this bad stuff's happening. It's nothing I can do about it. I might as well figure it out myself because nobody's here to, I don't have a safety net anymore. Nobody's here to catch me. And my my course of action was for whatever reason, I felt that inside of books would be the answer. That I would, if I could just learn as much as I could possibly learn, I'll figure out how to survive this world. And it worked. And the more I learned, the more I figured out I could do, whether it was just in school or in sport or in work. When I first started working, my very first job at McDonald's, flipping burgers, I worked, I think harder than anybody around me on purpose and learned more than I ever thought I would want to know about hamburgers. And I ended up being made a shift manager at like 60 and a half years old. It worked. So this positive reinforcement of adversity can actually be turned into advantage if you respond in a certain way. So when you look at how you turn adversity into advantage, I think there's a term that you coined. It is, where is it? It's CEO. What's the change equals opportunity? I love that. Very, very clever turn. Very clever turn. So what's the framework for change equals opportunity? Yes, okay. That sounds great. It sounds nice. I think a lot of people would say, oh, that's a nice little acronym. But when it changes, it doesn't always work out so well. So we're talking about new technologies that are coming into the workplace. We're talking about new problems that that exactly is people are trying to deal with. How does change equal opportunity? Because like for you, even rock bottom created opportunity through the mindset that it instilled in you, but change is different than rock bottom. Because change means things were kind of going okay. And then it took a hard left. Rock bottom makes sense because there's nowhere else to go. But change is like we had it figured out for the past five, ten years. And then all of a sudden we don't have it figured out anymore. And I think that screws up a lot of people. So how does change equal opportunity? It screws up a lot of people. But if you think about what change represents the core of all commerce, all commerce starts with change. Somebody needed something. And it was a change that occurred in some way. It may have been somebody invented fire or the wheel. And somebody else said, oh, that's bad. And I imagine the first guy out there, the first caveman that they invented fire. And somebody else's wife probably said, what are you crazy? You're going to burn our little hut down. Yeah, but look what I can do with this fire. I can create something. And it may be that maybe fire came from a lightning bolt that hit their house and burned it down. And they said, oh, look at that. We can actually cook this buffalo on fire now. And it tastes better. I'm being facetious, but I say, but the origin of all commerce is someone responding to a change that someone else thought was bad or didn't respond to and turned it into an opportunity. They made money off of that opportunity or were compensated in some fashion or that opportunity. And this continues today. So someone will create a new technology and it terrifies people right now. People are afraid of AI. Someone is going to harness AI and turn it into something miraculous here for some incurable disease and ability to light up the world with clean energy or an ability to teach people who couldn't otherwise learn because you can modulate the curriculum and the learning style to the way someone or the teaching style to the way someone learns. So it is even the worst possible change and sometimes be for a reason. Let me give you another example. A forest fire sounds like it's a devastating thing. This is a natural occurrence when forests become overgrown sometimes, they will hatch on fire, burn to the ground and the rebirth of that forest if left alone may take many many years, but then it grows back stronger and healthier. Humans are the same. We have changed that happens to us. It feels devastating. It hurts. Maybe a lost love one, whatever, but somewhere in there could be a learning that makes us better on the other side. We can power through. Do you think that now just to apply that sort of thesis to education, how do you feel that education has changed? Because I have opinions about university and higher education and the value that it provides. And I know that a lot of people, I mean, I went to university, I got my MBA, so I'm not really one to talk. So I've never dropped out and built something like a lot of the Stanford graphs or whatever or the Stanford dropouts. But how do you think education has changed? When you say education, what version of it are you referring to as it? Self-education, auto-died act where you're going on YouTube, is it going to formal school? Like just talk to me about what education should be from your perspective for somebody who is in high school right now. Well, first of all, the accumulation of knowledge is the most important thing. So for yet, how you get it and some of us need a more formalized structure, others don't. And they're self-starters and they can learn, they can become a genius without. Let's face it, David, she'd have a formal school, right? That's very true. She didn't get his undergrad. She didn't get his undergrad or is engineering degree, but it was able to accomplish, right? And so learning is the first most important thing. But there is a really, really dangerous narrative that's going on right now because we are a lobby, education is a lobby, technology will transform education over time in the same way it's transformed retail or the automobile industry or anything else. Technology will be a huge, huge boon to society all over the world, lighting up bark corners of the world where they couldn't get learning in traditional fashion. They will with technology now. Here's the problem, we're in this evolutionary phase. So if someone leaps too quickly and believe me, I'm one of those guys that tends to be a head of friends. I was a little early, perhaps, with Blockbuster, bought a streaming video company before Wi-Fi was able to stream. We were ready to go, but we were early. I've had a lot of those circumstances. The same applies to someone who says, I don't need to go to college. I can learn everything I need to learn from YouTube. Well, maybe that's true. But until technology comes up with a credentialing system and a measurement system for how much knowledge one is able to accumulate without the formalized structure, that entrepreneur that drops out of school has to raise money when they sit in front of a banker or an investor. The first thing the investor is going to look at is their resume. And if the resume says, I learned early, I needed to know from YouTube and I stated a holiday in. The investor may say, you know what, I'm going to give my money to this other person who excelled in the formalized structure, got an MBA and is an entrepreneur. So at the end of the day, it comes down to differentiation. We are all like products. We compete for opportunity with others and how we brand ourselves. Back to that character quotient, that's a factor certainly in our personalized branding. But our credentials where we went to school, how we get into school, those things are also not critically important. But in today's practical, practical reality of today's world, they're still pretty important. I just want to take a second and thank the HubSpot podcast network for supporting success story for part of the network. If you love podcasts, the HubSpot podcast network has other incredible podcasts like entrepreneurs on fire hosted by John Lee Doomass, entrepreneurs on fire is one of the OG entrepreneur podcasts. It really stokes inspiration, share strategies to fire up your entrepreneurial journey to create the life you've always dreamed of. It has unlimited energy, value and consistency. The podcast is truly for anyone who wants to learn more about entrepreneurship. If you like fast paced, packed with value stories as shows for you, John brings on great guests. He speaks about failures, aha moments, what's working for them currently. If you love podcasts, go listen to entrepreneurs on fire wherever you get your podcasts. You know what I think we're doing? I think that we have like we we put these people that this one entrepreneur that dropped out of school or university or college. We put that person on a pedestal and then we're like, you know what? That's going that's going to be us. And chances are like no offense, chances are that's not going to be most people. Now I think that there's still because there's I also believe that some school is overpriced. I believe that some school creates massive amounts of debt. I think formalized education is good for the right reasons, but I don't think that $100,000 per year is required. So you see what I mean? Like it's like it's good if it could be a little bit I'm Canadian. So I never paid $100,000 per year for college. That to me is that is like post graduate stuff. If you wanted to go to law school or med school, fine, but for undergraduate, like sort of like getting like the basics down, it shouldn't be that expensive. So it's it's a tough it's a tough balance. You have to strike because some people I don't think it's smart to go into massive amounts of debt. But then what do you do? Because are they going to respect a degree from like a second to your second rate college that isn't 100 that I have no idea. I'm not American. So I've never played this game or the system before. But I'm curious like if you were going to give advice to say your your son or your daughter, what what career path and assuming that they don't have scholarships, where would you say they should go? What's like the best outcome for debt versus network versus actual education and all the other in silvery benefits that you do get when you're in like a formalized educational setting? Simple answer. Achieve all you can achieve. Attend the finest school. You can get into work your butt off to get into the best school that you can get and then go. I don't care what it cost, go to be finest education institution you can or as long as you can. Because what that will do for you is generate and then it will be an investment. We're going to talk about that investment. I'm going to talk to you about it from a businessman's perspective, which very few people are looking at. But it is an investment that will pay dividends for the rest of your life. Now let's talk about the cost. There's a lot of misinformation and it's dangerous misinformation because a kid like me would have listened to this and said, well, get it. I can't afford it. And besides Peter feels tell me I don't need to anyway. I can just go be an entrepreneur and here's the analogy. It's like Michael Jordan saying, you don't need to go to college. I didn't just go go be a basketball player. Look how much money you'll make and some people will look at that and they'll strive for that. But 0.1% will succeed and somebody on and Silicon Valley can say the same thing. You don't need to just drop on the school. Just go be an entrepreneur. But do you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur? And if you don't have that base knowledge and you fail as an entrepreneur or just as you may try to be a basketball player or you fail, what do you have to fall back on? Then what? And that's then what that people are taking into consideration that I worry about so much. So my advice is work as hard as you can and get into the best school you possibly can. Okay, let's talk about the price. I'm going to get you some math. I just read an article in Forbes and they talked about the exorbitant price of college education today. It's just grown crazy with inflation. Yeah. Well, in 1980 dollars and they use this example in 1980, it only cost $10,000 room board and tuition. Just do the math. Get on your on your iPhone and run. I don't know what is $10,000 in 2023. It's just straight value of the dollar. It's $55, $60,000. Okay, wait, that's what college costs today. So you're telling me it's not any more expense than it was in 1980. Yeah. What do we remember when I talked about fear and people are scaring people to death. They're throwing all this 100% because I'm not even American and I hear I hear enough of this about college debt and tuition for me to have an opinion about it, even though I never went through the system, which actually when you say it out loud, it kind of sounds a little bit nuts, but you get the second hand information. It's so exactly and it is somebody is afraid of something and they're stirring up all this stuff. You know, maybe somebody had a lot of debt and they're mad about there and they don't have a good job in that. I'm going to say that that doesn't happen. It's not everybody shouldn't isn't cut out for school and not everybody who takes on that debt will be able to pay for it. But here's the way I look at it as an investment. You don't buy a business as an entrepreneur. You would never ever buy a business based on today's dollars. What we do as business people is we have an opportunity. Here's a company. I'm going to buy instead of $10,000. I'm going to spend $10,000,000 by this business. What is the first thing we do? We run a net present value of future income streams that will come from that business, so we discount it back to today's dollars. So why don't we do that when we look at a college education? No, no. It's just fear. I don't know why we don't do that. I don't know. I've never heard that analogy before, but it's very correct. It's a business decision. It's a personal investment that you're making in yourself. You're turning yourself into a corporation, if you will, that will have earnings streams into the future at future dollar values. Not at today. So somebody looks at it and they say, I can't pay $8,000 a year. I'm going to get out of that. I'm going to make $50,000 a year. Well, yeah, but that $50,000 in today's dollars 20 years from now will be $250,000 a year because you had that college education. So it's like buying a business. It's no different. We would never buy a business, any business. If we measured the value, the way we measure the value of a college education, that's so interesting. But it's very, it's very correct. It's very correct. It's simple. You have to sense it. You have to. Yeah, no, I'm just, now you got me thinking now, but I never thought about it that way. Yeah, because all you hear are these conversations about student loan forgiveness. And when you hear so many conversations about student loan forgiveness, then you start to think, well, wow, that must be like a serious issue. Like that must seriously be impacting people because that's all I keep hearing about. So if there's such coverage fear, news coverage equals fear in most circumstances, if there's such coverage about this and that must be something that's really weighing heavily on the recently graduated, you know, US student, American student. But I guess, yeah, that's a very smart way to think about it. You're just like that. We had heavily on me. I thought I'm never going to step back. Man, but I had confidence that if I keep learning and I keep excelling in my job, I'm going to keep getting raises over time. And that that went away. It was shocking at ultimately what an investment that was, what a good investment. Now, I was arguably, probably an outlier in that I leveraged my degree into much greater opportunity, leading to five or 500 companies. So I'm in some ways, I'm as much an outlier as an outlier into that. And that, yeah, yeah. But I mean, okay, so let's be candid. You didn't need the salary of CEO Fortune 500 to pay off the debt. It's not like that's when you paid it off when you are making that much money. Like you can pay it off at a much earlier stage too, right? So, I don't want somebody to think like, well, I'm not going to be see yelling. It's not the point we're having. It's not that. What are some other things that you think we have to unlearn about education? Oh, so there's so much to unlearn in today's narrative because there's so much bashing of education. I know there's there's a lot of noise now about what what teachers are teaching, what schools are doing. Again, it I encourage everyone to separate the fear factor because some of this is motivated by fear. I may not like the teachers union. So I'm going to bash the teachers union. I'm I mean, not like what's being taught. So I'm going to bash the teachers for teaching the wrong things. At the end of the day, I do a lot of work with public school systems. I do a lot of work with post secondary schools. I set a board of two colleges. These are some of the most conservative people I know that said on these boards. And the idea that they would foster an environment, not just not just condone, but foster it to try to change the minds of the young people is mind boggly. I look at it and I say, what are we afraid of? I think we're teaching people how to think. And that's the idea that is the idea in teaching them how to think we're going to cause them to question certain things yet when they question them, then we recoil from that and are afraid of what they're being taught. But that is the way that you should that is the most useful thing. In my opinion, that I actually got from from my formal education, it was critical thinking. Exactly. That's what I got from it. Yeah. Thank you. There's a whole chapter in my book. But if you think of where we are as a polarized society, we're encouraging critical thinking, right? In school. That's the idea. So the think of this is a bell curve and you've got the extremes on both ends of the bell curve and both of those extremes when you have true critical thinking are going to recoil at what the response might be. It could be from the left or the right, they'll recoil from it and say, oh my gosh, what in the world we're teaching them? Well, we're teaching them to think. And and that's what's often missing in this equation. So again, it just, you know, comes back to this idea of what in the world we afraid of. You know, it's very interesting because I've noticed a trend with even young families because I'm at that stage in my life where we have friends with kids and growing up, homeschooling was like never even a thought. That wasn't a thing. But now I hear that more and more and more the people want a homeschool because they're so scared of the education system. And when I was a kid, I mean, my mom would look at me like I had three heads if I said I want to be homeschooled. Like, she'd be like, what are you talking about? Like shut up and get on the bus. And I'd go and act like, exactly. So it's definitely, it's definitely, I understand where you're coming from. I understand I understand why you want to sort of fight back and why you focus on education now because you see a world fit like filled with fear. It's filled with fear. I mean, your example is a great one. I had an assistant I was interviewing and we were talking about the book and I said a big part of your job is going to be this book called education is freedom. And she said, well, I hope it's okay. I didn't go to school. Yeah, it's everyone has a choice as long as you're learning and able to do the job. I'm happy. But I hope you'll continue learning. And she said, oh, no, I believe in education. I believe in it so much that I pulled my son out of high school. And I said, what? She said, yeah, I didn't like what they were teaching him. It was scaring me. They were teaching him crazy things. And I was felt that he was being indoctrinated and, uh, et cetera, et cetera. And so I said, well, what's going to happen? And she said, well, I'm homeschooling him. I said, okay, but is he going to be able to get into college? And she said, no, he didn't really care about college. Okay. Is he getting to play sports? Um, homeschooling, he's getting him this out of football and baseball and things like that. And she's, well, you know, yeah, but there's a trade off. And it was, for me, really hard to hear because I think about that young person and what they'll miss, what the opportunity they'll miss, because they lack that, uh, the collaboration that don't get, the community that they'll, they'll get in that school environment. And it was triggered purely out of fear, sadly. It's sad because I was going to say it's sad because the people, this is very interesting because the people that are pulling their kids out of school or, or saying that colleges are too woke and I don't want to send my kid to this college, whatever, all of these decisions and ideas are, are technically being pushed by people who probably went to college and went to high school. And I don't think anybody, regardless of, of what you believe, really can say with complete certainty that you know the end result of a child that did not have that exposure. Like that's an experiment. It's basically an experiment and you just hope for the best because nobody's ever really gone through this to any degree. I mean, again, those Stanford dropouts, those are not the norm. Those are really in people that had the intersection of smarts plus timing plus luck. And yeah, fine. They built a billion dollar company. You know, many graduate, you know, many dropouts did not build a billion dollar company. I would say like 99.999 percent of dropouts did not build a billion dollar, billion dollar plus company. So, it's a whole experiment. I mean, life is always, you know, this is the first time anyone's ever really done life. They don't really know. But I don't think we really understand the repercussions of completely uprooting a formal system that's been entrenched in society for so long. And what the end result of that person's going to be. Yeah. So it's it's back to that practical bit, be practical. In today's environment, we need that credentialing. We need that formal structure to some extent. Home schooling is great. But my encouragement to friends is use home schooling to supplement the formalized education, not to replace it, at least for now, until we have better technology solutions. And we will down the road. There will be ways that you can measure your credential, et cetera, with technology that we don't have today. But I want to go back to your point, because I think this is the ultimate irony of all. Remember, I am a child of the Vietnam era. I grew up in a world where people were protesting. They were burning flags that were doing all of this stuff. And I was I was scallion doing any of that stuff. I was afraid. I was scared to death. I'd get in trouble for it. I couldn't afford to be one of those protesters or do all those things. But I saw it and I lived it. And and half of it was silliness. I remember moratorium day, everybody walked out of school. Well, none of these kids really cared about the Vietnam war. They were kids. They were high school kids. I mean, not none of them. Some of them did. But everybody walked out of school. Most of them just walked out of school because they got a day off. Yeah. And now dial forward. Oh, wait. And the adults, the adults, back then, this generations just fallen apart. Their drugs, their, their, their pot smoking hippie freak, you know, long hair near the wells. Their, this generation is just a mess. Now those same kids that were, that were long hair, pot smokey hippie freaks are now the conservatives screaming in fact, in fact, your nation in the school and all the terrible things that students are doing today. They're same kids. They grew up. They got money. They became conservative in there. Now Paul that what's going on with young people. So we have to take a little bit of this with a grain of salt. It's fear. It is fear. Um, what other, what other strong beliefs, opinions about education, education as a tool or education from a formal context. You just want to like leave the audience with things that like you feel need to be changed in how people approach education or need to be changed in the education system. Either, either, either end of the spectrum. You tell me, but what are some, what are some sort of closing ideas? Yeah. I'll give you, I'll give you three things. I end the book with an analogy. Um, it's, it's one I had for a long time ago. It's a story and a story about a young boy and a wise man and the young boy is going to, he's sick of this wise man being the wise man, the elder of the community, you know, and he's got to show him. So the young boy says, um, we don't, he comes down the hill because I'm going to trick him. I'm going to hold this little butterfly in my head and I'm going to ask him, wise man, is this butterfly alive? Or is it dead? And the wise man's got to look at me and he's going to pick one. And if he says it's alive, I'm going to crush that butterfly and say, see your wrong wise man. And it's the butterfly is, and if he says it's dead, I'm going to let my hands go and the butterfly will fly away. I'll prove him wrong. So little kids are going to show this wise man. What the world is all about. Wise man comes down to the little kids there and he says, well, what's in my hand wise man? And the wise man looks at him and he said, well, from the butterfly net in your pocket, I think you've got a butterfly in your hand. And he said, okay, well, is it alive or is it dead? And the wise man looks at the young boy and he says, son, the answer is in your hands. I end the book with that. And I do it on purpose because the title of the book, the subtype futures in your hands, I'm going to give you the answer from an individual's perspective. With the power of technology today, there is absolutely no excuse for anyone to not excel in an academic and an academic environment because you can take that formalized training and supplement it, Khan Academy with all kinds of free online tools. So the future is in your hands as an individual in school or even as an adult if you want to learn more and keep learning. The future is also in our hands as a society as a people. And that's why it was a double meaning in that title because if we don't pay attention to the future of education, then we're not going to be as a country competitive globally. And our very democracy that we hold so dear can't be sustained without an educated populace going all the way back to Jefferson or Alexis de Toteville people like that are founding fathers like Jefferson recognize the importance of an educated populace to democracy. So my call to action to individuals is take the power in your own hands. My call to action to society is let's stop the fear. Let's get reverse that cycle of ignorance, fear, anger, and violence and replace it with a cycle of knowledge, hope, understanding, and peace. Can I ask you something? I guess I guess we're on a podcast like it probably that's the question. I think that's all you're yeah. You see like very, very toxic news cycles and you see social media and I'm sure that you are obviously you're right because while you wrote the book you're worried about the decline of the institution of education and learning in in the US. Do you have an idea as to how to solve for people getting information from Twitter and TikTok and news propagating fear? Like it's a good message but very tactically what do you do maybe you do it in your own household maybe you have an idea for society because without going down the rabbit hole and spending as much time as you did putting this work together it seems like almost a lost cause like I don't know how parents even influence their kids more than social media know. It's very scary. What is that? I just happened as funny I just I've been using these when I do talk so I don't know if it'll love that. Yeah I see it I see it so wait so if you're listening it says the C-suite learnings there's a what how and why and actually I'll put this information in the show notes too wherever you send people so they can go check this out. Yeah if everyone would do this I put this is the foundation of the book if everyone would do this in other words understand what to learn how to learn and why to change is going to happen deal with it have confidence to be able to power through the change and have clarity of listening listening is so critically important and speaking communicating so being able to break things down into simple terms once you know those things you're able to deal with change you have confidence and you've got clarity mastered then you can really better under-address the how of learning which is critical thinking this is what's missing with social media we're taking face value something that's someone with zero credentials zero authority is telling us and we're listening to it as opposed to asking I wonder why that news source reported the news that way maybe they're making money off of an audience that wants to hear that yeah it's it's basic stuff and curiosity is what drives critical thinking and finally creativity Einstein called it intelligence having fun if you have fun with this thought process of challenging asking questions then it's not like you know it's not hard it's actually fun and then finally to your point earlier the why of learning the ability to collaborate and work with others there's just cultural literacy there's all this noise about diversity you talked about woke and anti-woke and all this kind of stuff and it's such beer driven noise the sense of cultural literacy is I will learn more from someone that's not like me than someone who is like me it's just that simple but surround myself with all my buddies we're gonna we're gonna keep being the same surround myself with people that are different I'm gonna be different I'm gonna I'm gonna take on the best of what they have that I don't and then finally character so I I've laid these things out as a roadmap that I hope people will take seriously because in my simple mind I do believe that the answer to the answer to a better world is a world that eliminates fear and the best way to eliminate fear is through those steps to improve our collective knowledge I love it okay where should people I'll do there's two more rapid fire to close this up but where should people go if they want to get the book learn more about you I think if I'm not mistaken I have your website up here somewhere it is jameswkeys.com okay perfect and then title on the book jameswkeys.com and then I'm sure on the social is social is at jkeys author so it's first initial name at jkeys author on tiktok instagram I've been having a lot of fun with social media getting a lot of friends out there I've made doing some fun little vignettes to help promote the book and just talk about these principles by the way you're doing very well on tiktok I'm very impressed I'm very very impressed with your tiktok doing very well very good I have my own little tiktok Yoda she's 22 years old and she's a genius she's amazing yeah no it's good I mean you're also instagram is awesome as well but a lot of people miss the mark on tiktok because it's very hard to figure out so you're doing very well it's not that I've been having fun without learning you know yeah exactly that's the thing that the thing that people don't get right like it's this is like this is like a forever principle right you did it with the book you're doing it with your social you've moved on to like the next season of your life and it's like you dive in like it's day zero again in whatever you're trying to figure out and it's fun and it's for a lot of fun that's the thing okay last two to close this out what would you tell what would be one less than that you would tell your 20-year-old self I would simplify it because my 20-year-old self wouldn't be listening I would take it right down to what are you afraid of stop being afraid replace fear with understanding and knowledge and you will replace fear with oh if you can do that um and the sky is the limit you can accomplish anything you want to do it's just a matter of time and effort putting in the time and learning at this age in your career had massive career success personal success um what does success mean for you freedom I answered a tick-tock question a friend named Gabe who was doing a little vignette with me and he said they started out with how much money do you make and I said I make a million dollars worth of freedom and I got all kinds of comments but I'm not go ahead what does that mean million dollars worth freedom it's very subtle point but the subtle point is not about the money money is an enabler it's yeah money is great it's wonderful um but really what matters most is the ability to to do anything you want to do be with who you want to be with and that comes from knowledge I I could be dirt or but I could mix with people from all over the world now because of the knowledge I've accumulated and probably if you've ever seen that show um undercover billionaire they throw these people back out on the street with like a hundred bucks and make them survive and I think that's the difference I've got the tools now I know how to learn I and that knowledge will help me survive under any circumstances so freedom really is the game that's not about I'm gonna stay on the hamster wheel and make more money I want to know as much as I can know be as free as I can be