Lessons - The Man Who Ran 7-Eleven and Blockbuster Reveals Why One Survived and One Didn't | Jim Keyes - Author of Education is Freedom

In this lessons episode, discover why education can be one of the strongest antidotes to fear. Learn how knowledge creates understanding. Explore why emotional intelligence and character matter beyond raw intelligence. And uncover how true education builds the wisdom to navigate challenges and work with others. You've 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. 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. And 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. 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. It literally goes all the way back to the fight-or-flight nature that we have that's in our brain that protects us from danger so that if a 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. In a white-collar world, we'll carry that same fight-or-flight instinct into the office, and if something makes us afraid, we react. And that reaction, maybe we don't fight, maybe we don't run away, but it's a variation of that same impulse to react to that fear to protect ourselves. Now, the reality is today we don't really have that much to fear. 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. um and so by the way it's very that's very important like that that skill set in and of itself because i i think about what you just said about fear and that has side that sidelined 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 antidote to fear is education because you're solving that problem that a lot of us can't even articulate. Exactly, exactly. And 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 the amygdala or something in your brain. That portion is... of your brain that is programmed to protect yourself. But there's so little to protect ourselves from. But 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 Or as I said, societies can be real, they're a whole 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 who 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 into super simple terms so I can understand this. In 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 boogeyman under the bed. Even though I thought there was, I was convinced there was a monster in the closet. But you turn on the closet, there'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 conquers the fear. It's understand it. 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. Yeah. 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 to anger, leading to hate, leading to violence? How do you reverse that cycle as an individual or as people? Well, you take the fear part and you obliterate it with knowledge. Can I ask something in your career? Because you chose to focus on education as this thesis for solving so many problems. which 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, we'll 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 F500 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 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 and had a 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, in this modern age of technology and reason and logic, that we still are blowing each other up with tanks 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 tackled 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, well, you know, intelligence alone isn't enough. There's something called EQ, right? The emotion 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 for myself. And then you still get people with IQ plus EQ still doing some things that make you pause and you say... I don't understand why. Why does this person think that way or behave that way? Well, then there's something 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 to understand other cultures. But then the most important element of the lie, I think, was character. So character is that integrity. Can I trust what you say to be true? It is humility. 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. 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. 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 CQ, 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. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.