The Dailey Edge Podcast
Join hosts Trent, TJ, and Todd Dailey as they explore the intersections of technology, culture, fitness, and personal growth. Through engaging discussions and personal anecdotes, the trio dives into topics ranging from childhood gaming nostalgia and cutting-edge fitness tech to the pursuit of happiness and lifestyle choices. Whether reminiscing about epic gaming marathons, sharing tips for staying on the forefront of fitness trends, or unraveling the complexities of modern life, The Dailey Edge delivers thoughtful insights, lively debates, and relatable stories for listeners of all walks of life.
The Dailey Edge Podcast
🎙️Episode 15: Learning in the Age of AI: How Should We Prepare Our Children?
We explore whether the traditional education system is still relevant in a rapidly changing world with advancing AI technology, examining how schools can better prepare children for future careers.
• A century-old education model may not adequately prepare students for jobs that don't yet exist
• Different school environments (public, private, specialized) offer varying benefits depending on a child's needs
• AI will likely replace routine tasks but struggle with contextual reasoning and relationship-building
• The education system primarily teaches problem-solving, discipline, social skills, confidence, and information retention
• Experience remains invaluable and cannot be fully replaced by academic instruction
• Secondary education may face significant disruption as alternatives emerge
• Teachers are critically important but often undervalued in terms of compensation
• Parents should consider what skills will be most valuable in their children's future careers
• Community and social interaction remain essential components of education regardless of format
Welcome to the Daily Edge where we bring you the latest insights, opinions and thought-provoking conversations to give you that competitive edge in life, business and beyond. Let's go, welcome to the Daily Edge. I'm sitting here with my brothers, tj Daly and Todd Daly, and today we're going to talk about education.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of stuff going on in the news with the Department of Education the reform, I think us with having, you know, 10 kids between all three of us. We're living in the world we live in, with technology and changes and understanding some of the landscape. From time to time we're asking questions like does the traditional education system that we've been on or I honestly I don't know if the education has changed the way they've gone about it for probably 50 years Is it relevant? You know, those are the things that I'm the questions I'm asking. I have one child particular that is begging to be homeschooled and so, as we go through and see our kids and what they're learning now, would love to start a little conversation around, maybe, the current education system and how we can, how we are preparing our kids for the future and what things we're missing, on what's good about school, what's not, and just have a good old debate around the current education system.
Speaker 2:You know, I'd like to start, I guess, by maybe giving a little bit of background, because all of our kids are in unique situations. Your kids, at least up through middle school gone to private school. You know, my kids have been in public schools since basically day one, and, todd, you've had a little bit of both and you have kids that are in kind of a, I would say, a private school with a very specific focus. So maybe talk a little bit about those particular areas of expertise, and I say areas of expertise only in the fact that we have kids in those systems. Not that we thoroughly understand all the nuance from an administrative standpoint or lesson plan standpoint, but maybe you guys jump off and kind of talk about what your situation is right now and then we can dive into the specifics.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the most important thing you said there is we certainly do not come into this conversation with a wealth of experience in the system. We're more consumers of the system. So our mom was probably the closest thing. Our mom was a teacher and a guidance counselor is probably the closest proximity to we have to those that are deploying the system. I know there's been a lot of hot topics around that and what some of the political administration is doing and not doing in that realm and standardized testing and all that kind of stuff. So we'll get into that One thing. Well, I guess I'll just share kind of my situation with our kids started at a local Catholic school, I would say our oldest.
Speaker 1:We started to see signs of issues with his proximity to failure. He's, I would say, one of his gifts, he's pretty cognitively gifted and what we were finding is school was coming very easily to him and he wasn't having to get any sort of proximity to things that challenged him or that he struggled with and that was starting to impact many areas of his life. The fear of failure was really building and that we felt was going to be really problematic for him just from a life perspective. So we made a shift to put him in a school another private school that really challenged him academically and gave him that proximity to failure. I mean, they're in school 40 hours a week during the or you know close to it during the week and so with that much time, anything that you're experiencing in that amount of time is going to be very important to how you're developing. Obviously that's not including the summers, but what we found with him in putting him in that environment is he did get much more comfortable with failure Because he went from everything coming easy to really having to think about things, having to be willing to try things that he wasn't going to be good at initially, and I think that unlocked some things for him athletically and just in other aspects of life. It really broke down that fear of failure, that proximity of failure.
Speaker 1:So we have kind of followed that trend for our other two. Kind of we stumbled into that. Honestly that wasn't our intent. We were going to have him do that, but we ended up holding our second back a year. He was an April birthday so he would have been very young.
Speaker 1:We held him back a year and we did have experience with Montessori school. He went to Montessori for a year, which is a little bit of a different school as well. But when we went to put him back in the private school, the Catholic school, there was a wait list and then he happened to test well into the other, and so we're now kind of following that trend and the logistics of having them at their ages in different schools would be tough. So that's our situation. Yeah, I have one kid in the public school system. All my kids went to a local Catholic school as well. I guess here in Grant County there's not a ton of different options. You've got a couple. You can either homeschool, there's a couple of private schools and then kind of there's the public school. So my kids are in first grade, sixth grade, seventh grade and a sophomore.
Speaker 2:So I'll touch on mine very quickly because I want to get back to some of the. I think you have the most dynamic differences between the two places that your kids are in school right now, so I'd love to explore that a little bit deeper. But, um, my three kids have been in public school. They went to a private preschool, but I think most preschools are private anymore. Um, they've been in public school since day one. Um, they are in a very large school system. So, uh, in our County there are 20,000 kids across five high schools, so the school systems are very large. They will have 1,000 kids in their grades going into high school. And still, my fifth grader has 150 kids in her school in fifth grade right now and most of the classes are that size. So it's very unique in that regard because of its size and is also very regimented. This was one of the first school systems, I think, even when we were kids, that started focused on the standardized testing. We also live in a community that is starting to explore homeschool a little bit more.
Speaker 2:So, with that said, I'd like to kind of go back to where I was earlier. You know, like you said, you have a kid begging to be homeschooled. I know we've talked through that kind of at length. There was a point in time where you were thinking about homeschooling everybody and I think that plays into what the landscape of the job market is going to look like and what's going to be important and what's not going to be important. So maybe talk through. I mean, there's a lot to unpack there, right. There's the difference and the juxtaposition between the Marion Public Schools and St Paul, and then there's the desire to be homeschooled and what the believed benefits would be there. So I'd like to just start there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let me just say one thing I don't. If we did homeschool our kids, or if we do in the future, it's not because I feel like the school systems around here are failing us. It's like, oh, I don't want them to go to Marion or we have five local high schools in Grant County. You guys have 20,000 kids. We probably have 2,005 high schools, so I would never. So I just wanted to be clear. If we ever decided to homeschool, it wasn't because we didn't have good, good options here. There are really good school systems here that are doing a really, really good job.
Speaker 1:I think for me in my profession and what I see and the jobs that I see, I'm always questioning what are the skill sets that our kids are going to need to be successful? Right To your point earlier in a different episode, it's like well, we don't have to memorize a ton anymore. We have ChatGPT or Grok or any of the other Gemini we do not have. So when school was developed into what it is today, which was at Thomas Jefferson era, like, do we have any idea? Like when the the traditional school model, which was to learn math and he wanted everyone to learn math and to write. Maybe you can look that up, but it's probably been 50 or 60 years and we were training everyone to have these basic skills. Not everyone could read or write right Like that's a, a communication skill that you would need to be able to communicate with people, and so, when that all started, they were equipping people for certain roles and responsibilities in society at that point in time. Well, here we are, arguably 50, 60, 70 years later.
Speaker 2:A hundred.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it could even be a hundred, I have no clue. And do you got a date? Go ahead. I'll share the background shortly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so I'm not sure that what the kids are going through and what they're learning is as applicable now as it once was. There are some really good things, I believe, in school that discipline, how to work with other kids, how to, you know, get on a playground and get hit in the head with a ball or, you know, get made fun of. Like there's some critical things of putting. We're putting our kids in a community, right. I mean, that's basically what you do and you're choosing your community of where you want your kids to spend time, and they're developing critical skills on how to work with other kids, right.
Speaker 1:I think that is one of the biggest benefits, regardless of what you do. That is something that I think you can't put a price on. So I think my whole struggle with all of this is trying to look into the future, 10 to 15 years, where we know where AI is now and they say every six months it's going to double or triple, with robotics coming into play. What are those different roles? What are the skill sets our kids are going to need to be successful, and what is the best way that I can prepare my kids for those situations? And and so, being in the role that I'm in and seeing what I see, I'm constantly questioning that.
Speaker 2:You mentioned community and putting our kids in community and working with different people and the other thing too, I think there is experiencing different, let's call it management styles. It's teaching styles, but you have all these different kinds of teachers. You have very passive teachers that just you know. You can tell retrospectively, looking back, that he's probably past, like Mr Kumar in Marion, he didn't do anything, he just kind of sat there and let you do whatever, and then you have teachers that are much more involved and engaged and whatnot. But we talk about communities and I'd like to explore briefly, just as we're, as we, before we move to this next segment.
Speaker 2:You know I talked earlier about your kids different environments. What benefits from a community and or social perspective, benefits and or detractors do you see between Cause I, I, we lived this right I had an eighth grade class of 12, and then I had a freshman class of 400. What benefits do you see right now, with your girls in Isaiah that are currently in that smaller elementary environment, versus the benefits that Roman's getting being in a much more diverse and even tense scenario?
Speaker 1:There is a very diverse. Well, where they go to school now is very diverse, both at the private school and at the public school, so they're both getting that, which I think is a really good thing. What you hit on is like when you're in a small class, you, depending on who's in your class you can get stuck with. I don't want to call it a bad class, but like when you have 12 to 15 kids, like there can be one or two dynamics that could really shape their experience.
Speaker 1:We had completely different experiences when we went to school, right, I was in a class that had a bunch of kids that were probably more like me and we had a lot more in common and we just had a good parent involvement and so forth. And so I'm noticing that with my kids as they went through St Paul. They are having different experiences based on who was in their class. So I think that is very, very real. I don't know how different that is from a much larger school system, but I do believe that the people there was a saying that they say you don't choose your friends because you're basically, when you're younger, they're whoever you put in your classroom, right, like there's. So I think there's some of that that I'm not 100% certain. You have a lot of control over, regardless of situation.
Speaker 2:I wonder, with the size of I think we've seen this in our community and I wonder about this At a high school with 6,000 kids, like a Carmel, you're going to be able to find your group to reinforce whatever it is, and I think there's good and bad and I'd love for you guys to kind of expound on that.
Speaker 2:You know, I think there's potentially a right size where there's a scenario. You know, when you're in with 12, it can be very difficult but you are forced to adapt. And even with 400, you know, if you have very specific interests or very specific personality quirks, there are times that you're not going to necessarily be able to find people that completely identify with who you are as a person. So you're going to have to maybe shift and learn how to blend and be social a little bit, versus when you have a school of 6,000. If you're into this very tiny little specific thing and you have this perspective on life, you're going to find five or six people that kind of share that with you. I wonder if that's a disservice or not. What are your guys' perspectives on that? Do you feel like part of high school is learning to adapt and thrive no matter what, or is it better to have a situation where you can maybe not experience as much adversity, because it's more like the internet right, when there's this infinite number of people that can.
Speaker 1:I'd almost step back and look at what I think the education system accomplishes today and then I think it'll be easier to answer that question. In the context of that, I'd be interested in your guys' perspective, but I was just kind of taking notes on what are the things that I feel like the education system accomplishes today, and I would say one of the last things on the list is actually equipping people with the relevant skill sets to actually go out and be immediately productive in a job. When you look at the things that are being taught in school even math and science and I would say probably the exception here is reading and writing although with video consumption these days and chat, gpt being able to write for you those are becoming less relevant I certainly can't think of any outside of very technical professions like NASA, space sort of things, where some of the science and math would come into play. But in the vast majority of your professions a lot of what's taught in school is not a foundation. Maybe at one point it was, but it's not a foundation for the skills needed to perform on the job.
Speaker 1:So in my opinion, there are a handful of things that I think the education system does today. One it teaches problem solving. It doesn't necessarily teach you a specific thing, but it does teach you how to solve problems, how to approach problems creatively, how to think differently about them. I would say. Two is a discipline. It teaches you discipline the ability to have to do things you don't want to do and listen to what someone else is telling you. Being able to follow instructions and execute on that for a long period of time in what is not often an ideal environment. So to me, problem solving, discipline, social you guys have touched on that a lot that's not just social with peer groups and just interacting with different people, but, to your point, you're the five people you spend the most time around. There's some different standards that are being set in those communities, working with different teachers, but there's just the general social skills I think it offers.
Speaker 1:Four, I would say, is confidence. I think it is can be a source of confidence, either in some of those social interactions or in when you're learning certain concepts and you can master those concepts or gain those concepts over time. I think that does build confidence for people. Now there's a, you know, if obviously someone's not excelling academically, I think there can be at least relative to their peers. That can actually have a counterproductive effect. But I think generally, as you learn things and you're learning to do things that you couldn't do before, I think it does aid in confidence in some fashion.
Speaker 1:And last but not least is your ability to retain information. We talked in a prior episode about generations back when you know, prior to Christianity, when they were incredible at memorizing like hundreds of pages at a time of different things. So the memorization side of it you brought up. Memorization is not so much actually what you're memorizing, but that ability to retain information. We were at a basketball training thing the other day and the coach the trainer was basically saying it's not the kids you know who have the most talent that win. It's the ones who can retain the information that the coach is giving them on how to get better and not to repeat those mistakes, because they're retaining that information and they're able to execute. In short, so when I look at what the school system offers to me, those are the handful of things that jump out and I would be interested in your guys' take on that, maybe to uh before we go any further, if you guys would align with that or how you would change that.
Speaker 2:I think it depends on the educator. And I'll say this I don't know how you solve this problem or if it's solvable. You know, I mean, one of the things that comes up ad nauseum when you talk about teachers is compensation, right, and the and we saw that firsthand with our mom Um, you know. So how do you resolve that? Or do you resolve that problem? I will say this so my daughter's fourth grade teacher, my oldest, I was taken aback during our first meeting with him because he made the comment he's like oh yeah, call me anytime, call the school on a Saturdays, I'm normally here, I'm like what you mean. You're normally here on Saturdays, like, and not just visiting, like. They're for hours upon hours.
Speaker 2:But when you talked earlier about teaching life skills, this guy is one of the most passionate people, driven people. He was a professional angler, so pro fisherman, and then got into teaching. But the kids pay rent on their desks, right, they have jobs to execute in class and they get compensated on those jobs based on how well they do them. There are penalties for certain types of behavior or certain other things. If you forget your charger for your iPad, you have to rent that charger, and if you haven't made money, then you go in debt, like a lot of those things.
Speaker 2:And he has gotten teacher of the year for the entire school system before and he's just like this sought after person. He's very, very it's. It's a very stressful environment when the kids first get in there, but after every kid has this guy it's mr donnard. Um, he is like you know, and every parent wants their kid to get in this guy's class because he is recognized. Yes, we have to prepare these kids for the standardized tests and again, at this point, when you talk about standardized tests, I know I go on tangents, but to what end? We'll talk about that a little bit later but I think it's educator dependent, as it relates to some of those relevant things you know as related to potential becoming a functional member of society outside of school.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's incredible. Yeah, what else would you change about what you think the school system, the value proposition is today? I can get behind those. I I mean doing things that you don't want to do discipline, the social interaction, memorization I I still feel like we're not teaching all the skill sets necessary, like to hear you talk about that and like the kids are learning finance and debt and basically responsibility, right, like life skills that people need.
Speaker 1:I think there's an awareness to it. I don't think it's as common. I think it's because the school system is so big. I think it's really hard to shift and they're doing the best they can to grade what they can grade Like. There's got to be some anytime the government's involved. There's got to be which I think the government does drive a lot of like they're saying if you don't do this, you don't get funded. I think some of the schools are probably more creative and more forward thinking and want to do more, but they have to check these boxes in order to get that, that funding from the state. That's the most frustrating thing. I think there are so many incredible teachers out there that have that creative genius and could be teaching things that are not only instilling these things but also teaching life skills.
Speaker 1:And unfortunately, with the way the government has regulated it and again, I'm not taking a shot at the government either, because I think you see this in any large company the larger you get, the more you have at stake and the more you're going to orient yourself not to lose than to kind of win. What I mean by that. The system's set up. We've got to prove that we're actually educating these kids, and so that's this form of standardized tests. When you do some of this other stuff, I think it either takes a very long time to develop and prove systematically that the kids are learning the right things, or it's just very subjective and hard to quantify. And so I think in those situations I'm not saying that, you know, I'm not going to sit here and say, oh, this is so easy. Why can't the government figure this out? Because it's very complex.
Speaker 1:And again, large corporations. I was at a Fortune 100 company for almost a decade and there was all kinds of red tape. I mean, there was all these extra processes and you couldn't do this and you had to do this and you had to check this box and that box. Unfortunately, that's just a product of large institutions. You have to have some sort of control, because not every teacher's like Mr Donner. You have others that that may be given more freedom and autonomy might not take advantage of it in the same way, right. And then you get a lot of disparity on kids' experience and there's a lot of variability there, and that gets tougher, right, that's what they're looking for is control and consistency, as opposed to opening for some of those higher-end experiences, and incredible credit to him for being able to find a way to do that within the confines of some of the standardized tests and other things it's extremely difficult to do.
Speaker 2:You know it's it's it's interesting with and maybe again we're not saying it makes sense one way or the other you know a lot of the talk around the department, department of education stuff is bringing it back to the States and making it smaller. Whether that's the right thing to do or not, neither of us are here to say that. But, like you know, you talk about red tape and big organizations and it's it's interesting because again, we're going to make this, I'm going to make this a little bit political. We're seeing a lot of unrest right now about what's happening in terms of people losing their jobs, um, in government specifically. And you know, I wonder if that starts in school. When you have these very like I'm thinking of ours specifically.
Speaker 2:But even a school of a thousand kids, kids slip through the cracks and I don't mean that in a traditional sense, like our mom dealt with a lot where kids have parents that are bringing them to school and they're missing out on the education, foundational education but I think some kids learn how to blend in and then that skillset translates into the workplace and they learn how to blend in and do the least amount possible and then that spirals into depression because there's no fulfillment, but you get really good at that and then you can exist in jobs for decades and nobody even knows you're there. You know office space comes to mind right, and that's kind of a secondary learned skill set and probably a result of these institutions and this system being so big and so antiquated and not, you know, serving as well as it can, which I think you know. You don't see that as much you can't blend in when there's 12 kids, like you know.
Speaker 1:How do you feel like it should be in the age graded system? So just a little bit of history. So it was really in the late 1700s. Early 1800s was the first time that there was kind of any sort of education. It's happened very local. A lot of it sort of education it happened very local. A lot of it was religious-based. It was religious-based and then it evolved, I think and said in 1848 in Boston was the first concept of the age-graded school system, and then in the late 1800s and early 1900s that got formalized, kind of nationwide and then there became laws. I think in 1918 was when that happened.
Speaker 1:How important. So obviously at that point in time they implemented a curriculum that seemed appropriate for maybe some of the life skills needed at that time to survive. I'm not sure. But how important is it for you feel, like the educational curriculum to teach the life skills and or the job skills versus some of these more generic skill sets, right? So let's just say we're talking in, you know, 2030 or 2040, we think it's going to be more about relationships and being able to be intentional and so having curriculum that really lean into that versus again a system that teaches some of these underlying qualities and characteristics and then letting the job market itself teach some of those jobs, specific pieces Like is that, how important is it?
Speaker 1:I think it's a fascinating question because, prior to cities forming right, most Americans were farmers and they learned what to do on the farm when they grew up from from their family. Right, they communicated, they were farmers, this was their role, this was their job, this was likely going to be their job, and so, like then, cities started to form right, and so then it was like well, everyone needs to know how to read and write and do basic things in order. So now we're transitioning to a different society. I think the standard changes and so what was valued when everyone was farming is now not as much valued, or there's different things that people are valuing and different skill sets. I mean, think about, right now, the people using AI versus the people not using AI. Right now, the people using AI versus the people not using AI. Arguably, the people using AI are 10x more productive, more informative, can get more accomplished than the people that are not using AI right at this moment. And it's not even that far down the road. So I think there's a critical component of we have shifted based on the needs of what we felt was like.
Speaker 1:Typing was one of those things that we had to do. We had to become good at typing because in our jobs we typed all the time Like someone that did this couldn't do anything. This, it wasn't important to type when manufacturing was the backbone of society, right. Well now, how often do you type text messages? I hit the button and I talk to my phone. I don't type anymore. I still can type my kids video and talking. How important is typing going to be in the future? It may not be that important, and so I think there are some critical skills that do evolve as we evolve as a society, and one of those is simple. It's like you need to know how to use your second power, which is your AI module of choice, to be able to help you be effective, to answer questions, to give you a good place to start from a reasoning and in a base standpoint, and to understand something. So I do believe there's an opportunity to adjust how and what we're currently teaching within the school.
Speaker 2:You mentioned something earlier and this is another really weird take. I've been all about weird takes in this episode, but you mentioned confidence right, and there are very few things cognitively that we can, very few paths cognitively that we can proceed down to generate confidence with the way the human brain is wired. Communication is a foundational piece of our existence. Mathematics has been instilled since the 1500s as a foundational element of the universe. So here are two things that we've proven our brains are wired to understand and succeed in.
Speaker 2:So, while those particular disciplines may not necessarily be required from a day-to-day functionality perspective, like you said, we're not going to necessarily. We're not going to need to continue to write cursive. We're not going to need to continue to learn how to type. We're not going to need to continue to learn how to do mathematical equations. All of those are going to be done for us via these mechanisms. But when it comes to different ways that we can build confidence in cognitive capabilities, what else is there? What other paths can we proceed down? So that's kind of. My question is like maybe it's not relevant, but if we're going to build confidence in the again, cognitive capacity, what else do we use? And maybe it's interaction with your AI model of choice.
Speaker 1:Well, I would say one of the things that I didn't touch on, I felt like from the time we graduated or maybe it was mid-95s, to you say the date I don't know when it ended, but it was like college was what everyone was supposed to do. They really pushed college and, boy, if you didn't fit into that college box, it was almost like you were shunned. What I'm seeing more now, which I love, is there's a ton of tech and trades and I think the school is starting to a really good job of that. Like man, if you can figure out how to get concrete finishers or welders or, you know, plumbers or electricians, like the trades man, they're always going to be a need for people in trades and I think those are going to be some of your higher dollar valued people, because here's the deal You're going to be able to replace, I think, lower level white collar jobs.
Speaker 1:I was talking to one of my good friends and, like an attorney that just focuses on estates isn't going to be as necessary because there's certain things that attorneys do that are going to be automated. Now, if you're a specialized attorney and focusing on more complex deals, you're going to so there's going to be some lower level at administrative stuff that's going to be replaced, but you're technical, like everyone lives in a house and things are going to get more technical and being able to understand that, and so I think there's a huge opportunity for continue for schools to continue to find pathways to place people into the trade programs, and what I love about it is I don't believe there is a stigma with it. I think people are like this is a viable opportunity and this is a viable job and it's a needed thing, and I think that's one area that schools can continue to explore and some have done a really, really good job. How does AI impact over time when you think about electricians, plumbers?
Speaker 2:I have actually not to cut you off, but I had this conversation the other day.
Speaker 2:So a good friend of mine we mentioned a number of times a unicorn.
Speaker 2:He's an engineer and one of his frustrations with some of the younger people in his world is that you can put whatever into a CAD system and you can. You know you can create CADs or you can utilize other again, I use the word mechanisms or software programs to calculate, but he's like they don't understand how things work together in the real world. Like you can, you can draw this and you can draw this, but you need to understand fundamentally how this would work if you created it in the real world, and that is where things are missing. So, in terms of AI impacting it, like, I think, those types of things where you can't just use the dimensions or the technical specifications to solve the problem, you need to have an understanding of, you know that as it intertwines with physics, or that as it intertwines with other disciplines. I think that's where it gets hard. And then the other piece of the puzzle that I don't think AI can fix is you mentioned it in a prior podcast is the transfer of excitement or sales.
Speaker 1:I just I to answer your question, todd. I don't believe maybe AI comes into place in training some of those other roles, but I don't believe AI is going to come in and and you need someone to put in a outlet in your wall, right, like you're going to still need those people to physically show up. I was listening to something the other day and it was talking. It was a lady who was a seasoned pilot and she had, you know, a young pilot and they're like they, this pilot, this young pilot, has never flown a Cessna and there was something about flying an actual Cessna that gives you this experience and this feeling. All of his training was done on a simulator and because and so he was asking her, like, how to like basically land a plane, in some essence there was some AI and simulators were to your point. They were missing critical experiences to help them fully understand a job.
Speaker 1:So I think AI can be dangerous in training, but I think it's the first place that's going to come in is how do we train people or how can we make this simpler? Oh well, how do I hook this up? I put it in AI and it says oh, you put this wire to this wire to this wire and it helps train. But I think anytime you take a shortcut like that where you don't have to do the research, you're not as confident, you don't know as much. Um, when you're going to talk about something or actually do something feels like to me that's maybe more of the, the threat which would be on very simple type jobs, that someone could ask ai how to do it and then do it themselves right, as opposed to potentially engaging someone. But I I think there's going to be a threshold of complexity there.
Speaker 2:Hey, eventually we're going to have I mean, we've seen them already the autonomous robots are there. You know, maybe a hundred years away, until those are available at a scale and everybody has a robotic assistant in their house. But it's not out of this realm of, it's not out of the realm of possibility. I mean probably 100 years.
Speaker 1:You know what's interesting I want to talk about. You talk about how far things are away. I think one of the things that some of the futurists and things talk about is how much faster things are changing. Now the rate of change is accelerating exponentially and we've seen that in literal exemplifications of technology when you look at like a 56k modem and versus the gigabits of internet that are forget.
Speaker 2:There's a law that that is somebody's law.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a it's yeah, there's, it's basically an exponential yes, um. And so what's interesting about this is, I think, as I look at institutions to bring this back to education a little bit and I look at companies, companies had not had to deal with that sort of pace of change and so it wasn't important, there wasn't a change, culture was not really established in a lot of these large companies. They could continue to do what they've been doing for very long periods of time and continue to be successful at it, because things were not changing that fast. Now I can tell you in probably some of my latter time at Liberty Mutual and the last 10, basically the last decade their larger institutions are trying to accommodate for that by going to a much more experimentative approach, having teams within the companies that do a lot of the research, development, testing, experimentation. You've heard things about fail fast, fail quick, learn quick, and so I think that's one of the things that we're going to have to see in some of these other systems, education being one of them. I think it was formulated on the basis of a very slow change and that stuff was implemented in the 1900s. For the first hundred years of that system, not a ton changed relatively.
Speaker 1:I think you look at the change from 1920 to 1980, and then you look at the change from 1980 to 2025. I mean, it's a whole different scale, and so to me it's going to be interesting to see how quickly these institutions can adapt to changing. How quickly can we swap out curriculums? How quickly can we keep up with the pace of change? I think it's going to take a completely new mindset, a new philosophy, culturally, within some of these companies. Again, this is just not government institutions. It's happening in actual enterprises out there and you see some adapting better than others. Some, like Facebooks and Googles and Amazons that have came up more recently, are a little more adept at adapting to the pace of change and they're incorporating that.
Speaker 1:So I think to me that's going to be a thing we need to learn as a society and some of those larger institutions, to see how quickly, because it's just going to change faster. But how do we create these new standards? You know, when the internet came out and they hadn't settled on a new protocol, everyone's got to be on the same protocol. It's even like with all the electric cars, like can we just agree on one charger? Like do we need to have different stations that only work with certain cars. So, as we look to maybe making a shift, how do you create a curriculum or standards, and who? Who would do that? Because, like right now, a lot of that still is being driven by government funding and government regulations and you check these boxes. But I'd be curious of your thoughts on that.
Speaker 2:I think the first thing to potentially fail not fail but be overturned is secondary education. So college we're already seeing pushback there. You're talking anywhere from $150,000 to over a million dollars for a college education, depending on where you're going. Secondarily, it's becoming like everything else. It's this giant juxtaposition where I saw something the other day on a site and it was somebody asking what their percentage chance was to get into Harvard, and it was like I have a 4.67 GPA, I scored perfect on my SATs, I have 1400 hours of community service and the response was about 25%. Is your chance so like for what? Right?
Speaker 2:So you know, with the advent of social media and all of these other platforms and the internet, we, as the adults that are in the workforce, have the ability LinkedIn to maintain more relationships across our industries where back in the day you really couldn't, right, you know, for you to maintain a relationship with somebody, you had to physically fly across the country or drive to whatever. So now we have all of these immediate resources, which is where I'm sure, when you're in, still are thinking about educating your kids at home. It's like well, I have all of these relationships across the United States that I've maintained through all of these different mechanisms, I can just hook my kids up with an entry-level sales job. I have a buddy whose son just graduated from. He went to play baseball at school, he graduated from this college and he's calling me up. He's like, hey, dude, you know of any sales jobs. So he spent $150,000 on secondary education and he's going to the same place that you could potentially put your son, based just on those relationships.
Speaker 2:And then once society recognizes that 80% of people are going into roles that can be facilitated via those relationships again the balance between who you know and what you know then what happens? Because I think a lot of the measurements at the high school level were created based on college admissions requirements and a lot of those KPIs were based on how many people you were sending to secondary education and funding that system. So you know, once that's up, what is middle school or high school, what is even elementary school, what are they measured on at that point? And then that's maybe when it starts to change.
Speaker 1:My thought is on this. It's a matter of balancing innovation and regulation. That is the trick here. The quicker you try and put standards in place, the more you stifle innovation and the more you suffocate creativity and so giving the innovation and creativity enough time and room to breathe to figure out, for example, the electric chargers, which one's the best one. Let some of this play out until you get to a point where there's a clear leading standard. Right, you jump to that too soon and put in regulations. You could stifle some of that innovation, creativity and end up with an inefficient solution because you kind of jumped the gun there. So to me, I think it's an art, and you just got to walk the line as best you can, of balancing innovation and regulation.
Speaker 1:But what I wanted to say, what I think might happen it's a hypothesis is, I think your traditional education system may shrink drastically and you might see new education systems pop up.
Speaker 1:What I mean by that is, in this AI world, I think you are going to need only for 20% of the population maybe 10 or 5% of the population is going to have to be very highly trained in order to outperform or add value to what AI is going to do so when you talk about, like a Dan, an engineer, very, very highly trained, technical, sophisticated one of the things that AI is bad at is contextual reasoning, right Understanding kind of the context and how things fit together and how it works in real world, I think there are going to be a certain number of jobs that, in order to add value and be really be meaningful in an AI type environment where they're doing a lot of that middle of the road type stuff, you're going to have to be very highly sophisticated and highly trained.
Speaker 1:That would be my hypothesis and then weigh in on this. But my thought is, as you look at to your guys' point, the sales and the trades I'm not sure that our system is set up for that. I mean, when you look at sales and I think about some of the things that our chief sales officer teaches and has kind of educated some of our interns, I think there's a very different curriculum, even going down to the high school level that really gets people to start to pay really finite attention in how to develop relationships, how to read people, how to interact with people, how to notice some of their what he would call hot buttons, and there's some really important tactics there that can make you much better at sales and developing those relationships, which obviously we've thought was going to be a challenge. So I could see the current education system remaining intact to an extent, but really narrowing and then some new, whether it's from homeschool curriculums or otherwise. But what were you going to jump in with?
Speaker 2:Oh no, I was just going to say you just brought up different education verticals and I think back to like Khan Academy or Peterson Academy, which is newer and I know there's some political sides there, but like Khan Academy was kind of the first out there to utilize the internet to provide high level education, especially, I think, on the mathematical side of things, for free to people across the world, and so as more business owners give more credence to those types of educations, you know, I think a lot of times people have written off some of that, like we were around for the first, the University of Phoenix's right, the WGU's of the world. I don't know Cause I I'm in the the small, middle, medium sized business world. You know, if those degrees are taken seriously. But I think as as larger organizations or organizations in general, because I think what you're seeing is again, middle-sized businesses are kind of vanishing because they get bought up.
Speaker 2:So it's these gigantic organizations and small businesses, and so as the gigantic and that's where this gets so complex, right, because you know what do they always say? It's hire the best people. And now, you know, I was like I'd have to look up the statistics, but the number of applicants that Google gets. Now I'd have to look up the statistics, but the number of applicants that Google gets or Apple gets on a regular basis is just astronomical. And how do you get to the top of the pile? And as those companies start to value these other education approaches more than the traditional way of and maybe they do, I don't know, but that's a question to answer.
Speaker 1:One of the first companies I always think back on this that didn't really care about education was Microsoft. Like, when you went to Microsoft, it was what you knew. You had taken an unconventional path. They're like this guy understands it, he knows his stuff and we're going to hire him, regardless of degree. You know why? Because Gates didn't. I mean, he dropped out of school, right. So I I believe secondary education I think you kind of nailed it with secondary education and what.
Speaker 1:What's fascinating to me is you're seeing a lot of small colleges closed, christian colleges, um, they're struggling, for enrollment is for them to find their place and the value that they're adding because enrollment is for them to find their place in the value that they're adding, because you could arguably say, even in in high school and middle school, they're teaching you the basics, the fundamentals, like it's good for everyone to know how to add and subtract and do basic math and and be able to reason. But when you get to college, what it's supposed to prepare you with some real life experiences, trying to get internships, trying to really give you the tools to be successful, I would say, as one part of college, the other part of college and we've talked about community. A ton is to be around people without your parents over your shoulder and to make decisions and you know potentially find a spouse or like, cause you know when you get out of college, if you went to college know potentially find a spouse or like, because you know when you get out of college if you went to college like trying to find a significant other. I think there's some social aspects that are really really important at the collegiate level, but I think a lot of the reformation is starting to happen and we're going to see that, at least in some of the smaller institutions are going to shrink and people have to be able to find the value in what they're offering. On the flip side, I think there are some colleges that are doing a really, really good job. They are able to pivot on what they're offering. They're offering new degrees, they're innovating, they're trying and they are potentially preparing people to learn more things that are relevant. So kind of both sides of my mouth on that one. I think certain institutions that don't pivot are going to fall and the ones that are going to grow and trying to find the relevance there is going to be important. I think that's what you said there about college.
Speaker 1:I think it's something I've always contemplated is at what point do you start to teach people relevant skills for what they think they may want to do? Because I think a lot of times some, some of the people may not know what they want to do until after college. I mean, heck, 23, 24, 25, you don't know. Some people may know they're going to get into the trades in high school and you've seen more programs kind of come into the high school level where there's apprenticeships or even when I was there, service learning where you were out in high school doing things, and I think that has continued to increase. I think that's always been the challenging thing At what age do you know if you're going to be in sales or you're going to go a trade or you're going to be a very highly sophisticated technical mind, and so I think that's the other challenge of this from an education standpoint is you don't want to start to teach things too much too soon for people that may not go down that path. Now, some of those skills obviously would be foundational your ability to communicate and interact with people and relationships and things but to me that has always been something I've struggled to identify.
Speaker 1:At what point does it make sense to really specialize in? And is it college? Well, I don't know what the exact statistic is, but most people don't actually use the degree they graduate with anyways. Right, like I graduated with an IT, computer information systems, with a minor in communication. Right, so, like, a lot of people will graduate with a degree and then they'll go get X job. So, again, spending that type of money to go to college for those types of experiences? I've learned more in my 10 years of owning IMGs and probably spent more, and sometimes it's in a dumb tax and sometimes it's going to seminars and education. I've learned more on the streets actually doing than I did in college. You know what's interesting about that is it starts to you made the comment about Bill Gates and Microsoft.
Speaker 1:The reason people are paying for degrees and going to get degrees is because companies are still hiring on the merit of degrees. Yeah, and so until that stops, until companies stop valuing that at a high extent and whether that's right or wrong, I shouldn't say I'm not saying they should stop valuing that because there's an element of problem solving and discipline and ability to retain information and social skills, teamwork, things that if you've gotten through college with a very high GPA and you have a high standard of excellence and you've been able to do that at a very high level. There's something to be said for that. Now, whether or not that individual has the relevant job skills needed to perform on the job, you know I don't know. I mean you hear a lot of companies say, gosh, you know I really enjoy hiring fresh out of college because we can teach people exactly how we want them to do this job right when you're talking about.
Speaker 1:In some cases it's like someone that's been in the industry for 10 years. You may have to unteach them certain things bad habits, bad behaviors, unlearn. So depending on how far you try and pull the relevant job skills into the education training, you could end up with the same problem. Do people really want that? Does an independent insurance agency say do I want some school teaching someone how to be a good account manager or do I want them to have some of these foundational problem-solving skills and then we'll teach them how to be an account manager of?
Speaker 2:these foundational problem-solving skills and then we'll teach them how to be an account manager. Yeah, that's an interesting thought on how you blend those particular things. I just kind of lost my train of thought. I had something there, so I'll kind of pass it back up to you guys until that pops back up in my head.
Speaker 1:I would just love to dive more into. We've kind of identified sales, trades and some of this highly technical work as kind of the realms. I remember the other day I looked up on ChatGPT. I was like, what are you bad at? And it talked about the contextual reasoning and some of the things that it is bad at. So I'm curious as to what you guys think some of the other highly valued, let's say, at least for a few decades or more, because it will change and evolve. What do you think are going to be some of the?
Speaker 1:And I'd also like to not to throw too much out there at once, but I'd also like to talk about the challenges within the education system of people using chat GPT to plagiarize and like how I'm sure there's someone out there, you know professors and teachers that are way more educated, but gosh, that I I don't envy trying to navigate. You know essays and maybe you go away from that and it's like out of the you know known book tests and homework as they start to really curate it around. What can't be done on chat GPT, but maybe that is or isn't in a efficient based on. You know you're writing a curriculum. But that's a whole nother animal we haven't even got into.
Speaker 2:I wonder right, can chat GPT recognize its own work? As a teacher, can you get and upload a paper into chat, GPT and say did you write this?
Speaker 1:So I have a 15 year old son. We actually had this debate the other day, so I got a little bit of context here. So, um, in in his group I mean, let's be honest, if chat gbt was around, I would have at least been one of, and you probably too that would be having it trying to write my papers like there's. No, there's no question about that. Um, they have ai checkers. There are patterns and things that the teachers can submit a paper to and say did AI write this? So they have ways to kind of check for certain patterns and certain things. Have they proven to be pretty accurate or, do you know, like false positives and things?
Speaker 1:I know people are getting caught for it. I don't know how often. I was talking to another kid in his class that said you know, I don't use it to write my paper, but after I've written my paper, I tell it to grade my paper. So, like here you go, where you got to turn your assignment in, and you say, hey, this is my assignment, this is what I wrote for. And they said, oh well, you need to do this, this and this.
Speaker 1:And now, all of a sudden, you've just you've almost cheated to a sense of, like you've got it graded before the grade and you know what to change to make it better. So like I thought that was a fascinating way to use it to like if you're trying to do something and you want to do the best at it and you put your best effort out there and you can get it to a teacher before the teacher, that can really increase your, your ability. So I know there's ways out there. I'm sure, as they got AI checkers, there's another tool coming out. It's just kind of like a virus right right, as soon as you get the virus blocker, they create a new virus that you haven't blocked it. So there's going to be ways that people are going to continue to evolve and try to think creatively on how to get around that. But there are ways, I think, now for teachers, especially on the english front, to check, check for that stuff I just think the more deep your original question, I think, the deeper you get contextually.
Speaker 2:Again, it knows it's bad at. Knows it's bad at that. The specific example Dan was giving was he makes a. He very important. He engineers airplane parts that hold the engines on the wing, so not the kind of thing you want to mess up. But he was saying he had somebody engineer two parts that went together but the way they went together would not allow a tool to get in to that area to work on those particular parts, because they don't think of that extra context Like, well, if it breaks, somebody is going to need to fix it and this tool doesn't necessarily exist because it would have to look like, like whatever. So I think the deeper you get contextually, in situations where there's layers upon layers to things, um, things, there is going to be that struggle. So that would be areas where I don't think for decades it's going to be able to get things right. And then I'll go back to what I said. I just you know I think we talked about this in the AI episode. Potentially I don't think it's quite got it yet and I don't know how soon it will understand again how to transfer passion or how to transfer excitement.
Speaker 2:You're seeing people nowadays like I don't know if you guys have felt this, but I've kind of felt social media in certain instances, especially from people trying to start their own personal brand. We're doing it a little bit right, but I feel like some of it is losing its personality. Like hey, okay, chat, gpt, I need you to tell me what to post, when to post it, I need you to tell me the tags to use underneath it. I need you to tell me the captions, who to tag and what. Like you know, and I feel like it, being an LLM, it's utilizing all the information.
Speaker 2:It has to tell you how to do those types of things, but then it's also maybe it's becoming regimented across the larger landscape there. And so what are we better at than anything else? Recognizing patterns, and we're starting to see these consistent patterns. And what do we do when we see consistent, overwhelming patterns? Is we tune them out? So it kind of is in that same conversation that you were talking about, where, layer upon layer upon layer upon layer, of refining a paper. Now it's layer upon layer upon layer upon layer, of understanding how we're going to react as humans when patterns become so prevalent that we begin to push them away.
Speaker 1:I would take this down a little different path, because this has been a hot topic and I think every something that I'm just interested in your guys' thoughts on this is compensation.
Speaker 1:When we talk about teachers and education, I think everyone would agree that teachers are one of the most important jobs that exist, and the same, the same dynamic, goes for firefighters and police officers and and others other very critical functions that are responsible for very critical elements of our society Safety, educating the next generation, that sort of thing In the current market, which I would say is more of a free market it's kind of supply and demand I would say is more of a free market.
Speaker 1:It's kind of supply and demand Right, and I think you know people, institutions, whether that's companies or governments, are naturally going to pay as little as they need to in order to get these positions filled and educate the youth, right. But I think there's been a question of that, of is that you know, obviously, to go away from that, there would need to be some sort of regulation. There's been a lot of discussion around. Okay, if education is as important as we say it is and we want to compensate the unbelievable teachers appropriately for that and or attract additional talent to that space, to the educational sector? Does AI or technology or any of this, or the evolution of the education system, does it in any way, do you think, impact that challenge that I think we all feel from a compensation perspective, are there any elements that might change that over time?
Speaker 2:I don't know. I mean, I think the best teachers out there are masters of empowerment, and I don't think AI can solve that problem. They can empower people through creative methods, kind of like what we talked about earlier with Donner, and I think that's something that can't be replicated through AI in any way, so I don't think it necessarily does affect what could potentially be compensation. You know, it's just. This opens up such a can of worms for me with what we reward monetarily in the world. A lot of times we reward people that take the shortcuts or people that are good at manipulating, as opposed to people that you know. One thing that I've noticed and this is kind of interesting, parallel with our races with backyard ultras, the best backyard ultra runners are teachers. The world record holder, you know, the one who won our race last year they're teachers, and what I think is unique about that is I think we all have said this I don't know how you guys do it. How do you deal with 30 second graders all day, every day, like I can't handle three and we won't talk about. You know what we've talked about in a prior episode with grit Holy cow, 20 years of doing that. I'm sure you learned the shortcuts. I'm sure you learned the ways to do it, but that's, in my opinion, who we should reward, and I think as a society, we're opening our eyes to that.
Speaker 2:We're seeing again it's going to get a little political, but we're seeing the recoil at the loss of jobs that are presumed to be purely bureaucratic. People are freaking out like uh-oh, they're finding me out. I think we were all raised with values that if we weren't doing our job and somebody came in and fired us, we'd know like oh yeah, we weren't doing our job, we deserve to be fired. Um, and I think so long we've rewarded that, and now people are realizing oh goodness, you do need to put forth effort, you do need to be gritty, and and I wish we as a society and hopefully the trend continues where you don't get rewarded unless you, you know, at some point in time have put forth the kind of effort, and I'd love to see compensation based on those types of things versus how it can be at times today.
Speaker 1:I would say to answer your question, I think AI could play a role in some of the more practical educational stuff. And I think to your point, should the educator be a master communicator and someone that can empower, someone that can come in peak state and bring energy and motivate and inspire the kids both of those and then go into education? Right, because if you have both of those skills, you're going into business or something else and making three to five times more. So could AI play a more? Because I think to your point, I don't think AI is going to ever be able to come in and inspire a room, get in peak state, bring energy, bring transformation ideas and have that passion that moves somebody in a room. But if you can have those type of charismatic people leading children and inspiring children, I think that's the critical skill and if AI can play a role in some of the more technical stuff so that teacher doesn't have to be able to be technical and good which would be a unicorn in our world, because most people aren't technically savvy and very relationally savvy that's just like a very uncommon thing to have both.
Speaker 1:I know we're in incredible amounts of debt, but we've talked about at some point, as things get so efficient, there would be a universal income potentially, and I would just love to see some of that universal income as we're starting to come into it, whether that's 50 years down the road or 60, to be disseminated down to some of these more key roles in our society, because I think what happens naturally this is my understanding of it I'd be interested in your guys' perspective on the economics is there are, there is sometimes a lot of fulfillment in some of these roles, and that's why people are willing to do them for lower, lower costs.
Speaker 1:I mean, even amidst the dangers and the risks, which are incredible, and the amount of grit it takes, there's some fulfillment that allows people in the importance of it, which to me it just it it does feel bad. It feels like there are people out there that know how important it is to educate kids and so they're willing to do it for the prices that the government entities are pay, and that increases the supply and it drives down the market price. And to me, that's some of me, that's some of the challenges with free market. It just doesn't always seem to land fairly, if you will, in terms of the criticality of the job and what the compensation is.
Speaker 2:It'll be interesting to see. One thing I'm surprised we haven't seen yet is One thing I'm surprised we haven't seen yet is teachers leveraging technology a little bit more to expand their again. We referenced a couple of Khan Academy and Peterson Academy earlier, but teachers using technology to expand their sphere of influence. That would be great, but again, I'm sure there's conflict of interest with day jobs and things like that. So if you're a teacher at an elementary school, you know creating your own um online entity or you know free offering, there may again maybe a conflict of interest. I'd love to talk to somebody in administration or you know a teacher um, as it relates to, uh, you know some of these questions, cause I'm super curious.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the one thing that I want to make sure is clear on this podcast is that we think teachers are vastly important and do an incredible job with the tools they're given and the framework they're in. And I think the challenge is is the framework that? Does the framework need refreshed? How are we equipping our children? And I think there is a little bit of difference depending on the, the um institution that that you're part of. But, critically, teachers are a very, very important part of society and it a lot of times I think to your point, todd it's a selfless thing. It is where they are feeling called and they're doing a role that's so critically important and I don't think we value that enough as a society.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree with that. What are the things do you guys think could be utilized as tools of measurement aside from secondary education? I say that because we talked a lot about the secondary benefits of college, right. I say that because we talked a lot about the secondary benefits of college, right, and I remember we had a friend who was interviewing I believe it was with McKinsey at the time or seen them at a job fair, and they made the comment to him that they didn't hire 4.0 students typically because that was an indicator that they were not very socially savvy. And so even utilizing college and utilizing that insight to generate perspective on a potential hire, like what other things in the future, if, let's say, secondary education continues to shrink and focus very specifically, like you said, on a five or 10% of the population that needs to be highly specialized and highly trained in particular things, what other things do we think employers, as yourselves, could utilize to measure potential candidates in the future if, let's say, an immediate referral from a close friend isn't readily available?
Speaker 1:It would be cool. I haven't really thought about this until you mentioned that I think AI could start to play a real role in interviews. Think about putting someone in a position where you are having them interact with an AI bot and having some sort of conversation to evaluate their communication skills. I think technology can help us measure some of those things. Obviously, in an interview today, you just have a gut instinct on that, you communicate them and you you can kind of feel or see that I mean certainly, I think, problem solving skills, especially for that highly trained, sophisticated technical position, I think problem solving skills are going to continue to be really important to measure and I think technology does give us an ability to measure that a little more easier or a little more easily. I would say maybe you'll see. I think we've been doing case studies and things like that for a long time in some of those positions and those companies. I think you could see more simulations in this day and age of how people solve problems, approach problems. I mean not just a problem on a paper, but giving them a virtual reality headset and putting them in a room not necessarily like an escape room, but potentially like that sort of flavor and see how they solve problems. I think some of that will be really interesting. How AI plays a role in that, yeah, I think it's going to be fascinating to think about.
Speaker 1:I think the employers here's a thought the employers that are really really good at developing training to be able to train their employees will be able to kind of write their ticket. And I'll tell you why. I have a good friend that's in concrete and there's no concrete finishers around. He has a concrete finisher company. He brings in apprentices. They're part of that company and then the other places that can't or don't have concrete finishers are now taking his apprentices and then can we have them for the summer.
Speaker 1:So if you think about in the trades, if you can develop a program and this would be after secondary if you, if we figured out the way to train producers, it's game over not only for us but for everybody, like if we found a way that that worked.
Speaker 1:So I'm wondering how much of that training will come under the umbrella of the actual employer and other people that are not willing to put in the energy and effort to develop that, which you could arguably say a lot of people won't, because it is hard, hard work to develop a training program to equip people with the skills to be successful in a particular industry. I even think about sales and I think about James and the intentionality. There's not too many people that are going to teach it the way that he would teach it to get those details to make them successful at what they're going to be a part of. And so, regardless of industry, if you're willing to take the time to develop a specialized training program for your industry, not just for your company, I think it would be invaluable and I think more and more people are going to start doing it, and the ones that are doing it are going to be able to grow their footprint and their companies a lot faster.
Speaker 2:Is that? It's funny because right now we do this for sports with kids, like you know, and it would be interesting to see if secondary education becomes that. Let's say hypothetically that you know insurance agencies nationwide, or a subset of insurance agencies, decide on okay, look, we want to. We want to create an institution that delivers the found, these foundational things. We're going to polish the individual when they get to our company. But we've agreed on these couple of things need to be, you know, if you recognize at 17 17 that this person has this, like they have the james qualities and this person is going to be a brilliant salesperson. We want these things foundationally laid so this person can go to this institution and that becomes, you know, kind of what is in place with vocational stuff today and then they are. That gets them to a particular point, a kind of what some of these companies have done with, like the program you went through at Liberty Mutual, but it becomes a little bit more broad than that.
Speaker 2:That would be interesting to see if things evolve that particular, in that particular manner, because again, we do this for sports. 10 years old, oh, we're going to, they're showing this, this capability or this aptitude. We're going to put them in this academy program at 10 or 6 or 7, and then this is the path. It's crazy that we don't do that Again, like you said, until somebody's 25. We were sitting in the service operations center, a guy with a 1.7 GPA, a guy that damn near failed out of college, and I was sitting next to a guy who had a master's degree in some subset of biology, making the same amount of money, who went to University of Washington and graduated with a 3.7. You know, very interesting.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I have always found fascinating.
Speaker 1:I don't know when I stumbled upon this it was maybe a decade ago at the reality that we were talking about learning here.
Speaker 1:Right, with education, we learn at an unbelievably exponential rate.
Speaker 1:When we have a purpose for what we're trying to learn and it's in an area of passion, right, like if you're playing a video game and you need to figure out how to get through that level and you pull something up, your ability to like, digest and retain that information is exponential, as if you had never played that video game and you went down and watched that video and you were trying to retain that.
Speaker 1:It literally like there's something neurologically that happens that engages us and allows us to learn at this hyper accelerated fashion. What I've always hoped is that the education system over time, as it continues to evolve and develop, is that there is more engagement of students at younger levels just to experience and experiment the job, to build an understanding of why they're even learning some of the things that they're learning or some of the traits that they're learning. I feel like to give them the opportunity to be in some of these positions and see why that's required to make a living, and make a successful living, in my opinion, would really help kids' ability to digest and accelerate the amount of information they're taking in and, it's probably most important, the amount of information they retain.
Speaker 2:Do we feel like there is a we're missing tension in education. What I mean by that is you said something very like. That kind of brought me back to when we were kids with video games and, like I feel now I made this comment maybe it was in an AI episode or another one where we had gotten an email on something for Eternize and you had responded in like 10 seconds with AI. I don't know about you guys, but I remember feeling so much more gratified when we would solve a problem in a game and we did it on our own. And I'm finding that I've coded a few websites exclusively using ChatGPT and I just don't feel that satisfaction action. I am more proud of the Sid Posse website coded on ComTechcom and basic HTML that I taught myself when I was 15, versus building out Cam's website with a live GPS tracker of his run around the United States, which is way more complex than that ever could be, because it just did it for me and it was you know. I felt way more like a data entry technician than I did somebody who acts at you know.
Speaker 2:So is a side effect of AI in an education space? Kind of back to the comment I made earlier about building confidence. Is that doing the next generation a disservice? You know, it was so much. It was so much more gratifying to beat final fantasy one on our own, with a little bit of help from a guide, than it was going on to game faqs when another final fantasy 7 came out and just reading step by step what we needed to do. There was still fun there, but there wasn't that sense of accomplishment. And I wonder if you know somebody who figured out a mathematical theorem. They're going to be so much more fulfilled because it's a it's more of a philosophic approach to it than somebody who figured out a complex equation by putting it into a system Like I don't.
Speaker 1:I you know you know what's interesting about that? Cause I I can tell when people respond to me with AI, and I don't even want to read it right, it just doesn't. But here's the irony in that I'm okay outsourcing something, I'm okay hiring a Sammy to do a website or a logo, right. I'm, in essence, kind of doing the same thing. I'm outsourcing it to technology versus I'm outsourcing it to a person. But I look at those vastly different at this point in time in my life. I wonder if that'll shift over time.
Speaker 1:I do believe, for personal satisfaction of you, as you have indicated, that I'm much more satisfied when I'm solving a problem on my own than when I have to tap into AI or it's doing something. It just doesn't feel the same. But over time, outsourcing something through Fiverr or some other thing I've learned to be okay with that. It's like, oh, it's just helping me get to the problem, as long as it's not solving everything for me and it's just a part of it, then I think it changes a little bit, for at least for me.
Speaker 2:It's like what kind of value do we put on human touch? Because I'm similar if I have it A lot.
Speaker 2:And we know that right now, ai still struggles with things like logos. Some of the models that are designed specifically for that are a little bit better, right, but, like you know, we just redesigned a shirt for Fulmo and I did it on Fiverr. You know this came out of AI. This was a complete fluke, or no, this wasn't. This one was actually designed on Fiverr, but we have another design that was out of AI. But if I have something that I want done me personally and I wonder how the younger generation views it Me personally I will go to Fiverr because I have an artist I trust that I feel has the right perception on the area of society that I'm targeting. But it'll be interesting to see how the value of human touch comes in the future.
Speaker 1:I think it's interesting to know like you know, we like to do it a certain way how much of that is just generational comfort versus actual value. Right, you see, a lot of times again, we can look at the older generations and there's certain things that they do just because they feel comfortable doing it that way, they've done it that way and they sometimes we would argue that they put a unreasonable amount of value on that just because that's the way they've done it. So it'd be interesting to see if that does hold over time. And if there is, we're maybe overvaluing the contextual reasoning that we're able to do. Or, yeah, truly there is some gaps in AI's ability to actually be effective at this stuff. Now, that's going to evolve too over time. Right, ai is going to continue to get better and better and better and that'll be interesting how fast that changes. But what you said, I think it was interesting.
Speaker 1:How much do we value human touch? We've talked about both aspects, from a consumer and a developer of the content, because you've got from a consuming perspective. How much am I valuing this? But also, what's the fulfillment level of developing this? I mean a lot of the reason you know, a lot of the reason we can continue to work at very high I would say high amount of effort 40, 50, 60 hours a week and continue to do that week a week, a week over week over week and year over year over year over year is because we do get fulfillment out of that.
Speaker 1:And if we get to a point where we're doing things that are you know, we're robbing ourselves of fulfillment. I think sustainability maybe by that point we're only going to need to work 20 hours a week. I don't know, but it's going to be interesting to see how it evolves. To bring it back, I'm probably put a bow on this. I wrote down the word experience and I'd love your guys' opinion. I don't. So we talked about training and schooling and everything, but I don't believe anything takes the place of experience, actual experience doing something, and I would love your guys opinion, but I don't. Where do you feel like that plays into this whole model?
Speaker 2:Because I think that, at the very end of the day, is what I think experience is kind of an interesting I don't know if you'd call it a paradox, because when you're younger you don't see the importance in it. You know it's like again, you kind of said generational comfortability. Oh, this old guy he thinks. You know. I remember as a 25, 26, 27, looking at these older guys that are in their 50s and be like, oh, they're over the hill, they're stuck in their ways, they don't understand. But then as you get closer to it, I think we're in this very unique window. I was listening to LeBron James and Steve Nash talk about it.
Speaker 2:Lebron has probably been gifted with, at least in the modern generation, the most athletic ability of any human ever and he's one of these unique people that still has the athletic skill set to that and he can complement it with his experience to a level no one's been able to do, Because normally in that sport, by the time you're 40 and you have all the experience and the knowledge necessary to be super effective effective you don't have the athletic ability to complement that anymore, which I think he credits, and it's a good example of how important experience is he can.
Speaker 2:He's still one of the top 10. He's been only for 22 years and he's one of the top 10 contributing um talents in the NBA still, and you have to think that a large percentage of that is experience, and so I think experience is undervalued immensely and unfortunately, you know, and hopefully fortunately for us, because we're living longer and we're taking better care of ourselves, we're in a situation where we have the vitality and we have the excitement and we have the passion, we have the drive to continue to implement that experience. I think in years past, when you may have been forced into a job that you weren't necessarily as passionate about, there weren't as many options, you couldn't do as many different things, that by the time you had the experience, the passion had died. And I think we have the ability in today's day and age. So experience is invaluable, I think, over and above everything else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it takes all three. I've always been a proponent, as we've done, growth and development plans. You know this. There's three components to learning One's education.
Speaker 1:You have to have kind of the fundamentals and the foundation to even make sense of how it's being applied. You have to have exposure. You have to see someone doing it, watch, observe and then experience it. And I think if you go in and you try we've seen people kind of sit down and try and do a job and they have like no idea where to start. It's so overwhelming. If you don't have those fundamental educational pieces, you can't make sense of the experience in many cases, or it takes a lot longer to make sense of it. And then I think exposure, your ability to watch someone do that, I think just accelerates the process. I think experience is where you fine-tune it. We've talked about the details that absolutely matter and we've talked about this in several different aspects of that fine line between everyone else. And then the best of the best, and I think experience is where you fine-tune that and where you truly separate yourself, um, you know, from a performance perspective.
Speaker 2:I think that, well, I think the top level performers have an element of stoicism to them that comes with experience, right? So, like I remember, even six or seven years ago, uh, working with an individual and I I came in um with a product and I'm sure you guys have dealt with people like this, whether you are, whatever side you were on right, you come in and you're on fire about a project and you're all ramped up and you have all these ideas and this person because they've experienced that and through so many different lenses like just takes a deep breaths and says a sentence and you're like there, holy cow, there it is yeah and that all that is is, you know, just vast experience and exposure.
Speaker 1:So I would say I line I. There's certain things like, especially being an entrepreneur. It's like you can take a class on entrepreneurship, but until you feel that pressure like, until you feel what it's like to risk it all, until you can feel like there's certain things that you learn through experience that I think are more passion, tangible, tangible, emotional, like you said, the education part is important, but the experience, I think, ultimately trumps all over time, because you're living it, you're breathing it, you're feeling it and I think that is something that we have to continue to focus on. Let me ask one more question just to wrap this up Homeschooling we talked a little bit about that and there's a little bit of a trend there. I'd love to go back to that and see if there's anything at any point where you guys would actually consider making that shift and, if so, why.
Speaker 2:I'll start because my answer will probably be shorter than his. I've always wondered I don't know where we're at societally in terms of being able to assess, like, the long-term results and I'm not saying good or bad, I just when we were young, homeschool was extremely rare, so I don't know any people in their 40s or maybe one that was homeschooled and what that results were, and they may have been phenomenal. Uh, we have quite a few kids homeschooled in our neighborhood and again, I think there is enough access if the parent is cognizant and I'm not saying again wrong, right or indifferent of like, maybe social exposure, Because I think if you look at it through that lens you could say, oh well, maybe homeschooling limits social exposure and that's a problem. But I think there are solutions to that problem. And then there's the benefits.
Speaker 2:A good friend of mine homeschools all of his daughters.
Speaker 2:There's the benefits to exposing them to other things that they don't get exposed to in that rigid environment in school, so taking them to places to see and learn and have cultural experiences, tailoring the lesson plan to their specific learning style. So I think there's a lot of benefits there For me. I don't know if I do it yet, but as I start to see more success stories and I start to see more well-developed kids, because I see kids now that are teenagers and I can see shortcomings in certain people and I can see strengths in certain people that have been homeschooled, but I don't know even kids that go through traditional school at 18, there's still a lot of shortcomings and strengths. So for me, when we start to see and I meet somebody in their 30s, well you know, oh yeah, I was homeschooled and so were my brothers and here's, you know, like if we were all homeschooled and we were friends of mine, then I'd be, maybe a was homeschooled. There was a stigma or an association of social awkwardness right?
Speaker 1:I don't believe that exists today. For me, I think one of the most important things, our existence on this planet, is community. If we're not meant to be together and live life together and do life together, I don't even know why we're here. So community is so important to me and I think there's a fundamental part of that that comes in schooling. I do believe it can be recreated, but you better have someone in your household you or your spouse that is organized enough to pull it off, because I know people who have homeschooled and you can do a day's worth of work in three hours of actual schoolwork. I mean the kids have passing periods, they have recess, they have lunch, they have all these things. So like you can educate and give your kid and there's programs you can sign them up for and put them in front of a device and they're done at noon and then they could go live out a passion. But you better have someone that's driving that train, that is talking to the homeschool community, that is making sure that they're getting some social hours, that they're engaged in sports. So I believe by homeschooling you can create some unique opportunities.
Speaker 1:But it goes back to we were talking about meals and fitness and the amount of effort it would take from a parent. I mean, it's probably a half or a full-time job, so I don't know. We've talked about it. We were at a point where we almost did it. We were pretty far down the pipe. But again it came back to community for me and keeping those communities solid. And me and my wife are both I people, which we're idea people, and there's this thing called tenacity and the working genius. That is like someone that falls through and gets stuff done. Neither one of us have the gene, so for us to make it work we'd have to hire a teacher, because neither one of us like to stick to anything. So that's how I would answer that question. Good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I mean, you know one of the things. I think I really liked the effort comment because, again, like the individual, one of my good friends at homeschools, his daughters there's effort there. They're involved in sports so they're getting exposed to, they're involved in dance and running and so they're getting exposed to different types of people in different communities. Cause I think, if you don't and you just put them in front of an iPad and you take them to the zoo once a week, like you said on numerous podcasts, how much I value the exposure that we had and a lot of it was through sports, I mean, there was some through school. But yeah, I think you're you're right on with with the effort and I think it can be done the right way.
Speaker 1:So ending with a fun, fun question you brought up LeBron. Me and my son have this debate all the time. Who's the goat?
Speaker 2:you go first because I'm gonna be a little more long-winded well, I've always answered this question depends how you define go.
Speaker 1:I mean lebron's done incredible at lond. I mean his longevity and what he's accomplished over such an extended period of time. Nobody has rivaled that at all. I think jordan is obviously if you are going to. I think a lot of people when they say go, they think all right, if, if I can put together, uh, if I could pick one of those two people in their prime to be on the team, of course it's Jordan. I don't think there's any question about that.
Speaker 1:His level of intensity and level of competitiveness, I think everyone knows, was toxic to a point of just ridiculousness that people hated to be around him. But that's why he was good, so I would pick him on the basketball floor if it was life or death and I had to win. I good, so I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I would pick him on the basketball floor. If it was life or death and I had to win, I'm not sure I'd pick. He would be the guy that I would pick to be around as a, as a human being, um, but I don't, I don't. I think that was uh that worked out for him, that insane competitiveness worked out in his favor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean, he burned the brightest, for sure, um, but I think he also benefited from some things. I think there's some other aspects of the game that LeBron has had to deal with, and dealt with in a masterful manner. If social media was around when Michael Jordan was around, we would have had some real problems. I mean, he was, you know. There's all kinds of speculation.
Speaker 1:I didn't ask who was wholesome. I asked who was the best basketball player.
Speaker 2:Well, when I look at which, when you say go right, like I take into consideration a ton of things. I could take into consideration how they conducted themselves from a um, from a social perspective. I take into consideration the impact they had on the game. Nobody had more of an impact on the culture. You know, like jordan sticks out there right with his brand. Iverson sticks out there when iverson was playing like long shorts, baggy clothes. You know stephon sticks out there when Iverson was playing like long shorts, baggy clothes. You know Steph Curry sticks out there, the way that he's changed, the way the game is played. So I look at all of those things. Again, I would align with you. Lebron's longevity is next level. The way he's carried himself in all of the scenarios that he's been placed in with an absolute microscope on him since he was 16 has been pretty ridiculous. But again, yeah, jordan's killer instinct, similar to Kobe's, but Jordan just had more athletic gift.
Speaker 1:Same thing with Tiger.
Speaker 2:I think Tiger had that same killer instinct and when Jordan in the last dance, when he gets choked up, he's like talking about like I never asked the guys like you could tell how much he cares. I never asked the guys to do anything that I would do and if you can't, he starts to kind of cry. It's like yo, this guy is a killer. I don't think he's a great person potentially, but he's a killer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean. Lebron's still married. He's got a family much more wholesome, but like Jordan, one of my favorite stats is that it's only been done four times and it was Jordan every time. It was all. Defensive player of the year, leading point scorer, won the trophy and was the MVP. He got all four of those and he did it four times and no one else has ever done it Like he's like. Oh, you said I'm not good at defense. Okay, next year I'm going to lead the league. So his competitiveness to win. So I'm going to go with Jordan, which is no shock, especially to my oldest son, roman. But I thought that'd be fun to have. That debate Sounds good. Thank you guys for tuning in Great great discussion around education.
Speaker 1:Like you said, none of us are experts. We all have opinions. We know there's a lot of positivity going on and the people involved in the school systems are doing an incredible job, and we always like to challenge the status quo and think about what it could be or what it should be. So hopefully you gain some value and we'll see you next time.