What AI Can't Replace | With J. D LaRock | Founder’s Office™ Lunch & Learn

Hey there, Todd Powell coming to you live from Lake Tahoe. We're actually on the California side today in South Lake Tahoe visiting with a friend here. This is where we have also held some of our Shark Tank scenarios at the Landing Lake Tahoe Resort Lakeside Dining. So we'll be talking a little bit more about Lake Tahoe. Joining me today, of course, we have Candice, our manager for our Founder's Office and longtime business partner of mine going on— she hates when I say this— almost 4 decades. So of course, been in my life all that time. And Jackie Kuiper is our general counsel. We have the Founders Law Group out of Minnesota where we help founders with their IP and all things founder direct. Related, but principally about how to protect the assets. And imagine, imagine if you could serve in DC with one of the most famous US senators as a young person, being able to do that. And it's partly because of the academic career that you've had, but also because of just the person who you are. And fast forward to a point where then you are in academia and you're helping to create people that are out there changing policies. So you were on the front line, and now you're creating the people who actually make a difference. And not only that, you are in the basic, basic, basic world of creating and growing founders. Well, that is my good friend and mentor and the person who actually named me doctor, signed on my paperwork, Dr. JD LaRock. JD, welcome.

Thank you so much, Tom. Great to be with you. And I must say, it's an honor because yes, you were my student, you were my advisee. It's a point of pride for a professor to walk someone through the substantial process of earning a dissertation. Not only did you do it, you did it with, uh, quite a bit of flair. And to have learned about you through the process of you being a student in the program at Northeastern and then learn this huge picture of all of your own entrepreneurial success and realize that it connects so powerfully to the other part of my life as a nonprofit executive. It's just amazing. So thanks for having me on the show.

Absolutely. I loved it when we first were going through and you're talking about, you know, when you were serving in there. I knew very much your time in DC, and so I was very interested about that. I was one of your older students. I think there was Harry and Martha and myself that were kind of in the older group of your students that were in the scenario, and so we knew some of your topics that you're talking about from real life time, where we had some of our cohort was in there, still in their 30s. Many are still in their 30s. So it was amazing and interesting to be able to do that. But then I found out that you were part of Nifty. And I found that out because you and I connected on LinkedIn. You didn't really talk about it at that time as much. So tell me, as, as Candice was talking about, Candice, this is Lunch and Learn. And so our people that are generally watching this are founders, and a lot of them are on the early stage. Some of them have been multiple ventures that they've done. And in almost all cases, they've got something that's going on in their founder life. A lot of times it's around raising capital or it's about a merger or it's about buying or it's about growing or it's about exiting. So it can be anywhere in that venture. But let's talk Nifty before we talk Northeastern. Sure. Because I think that's just such an amazing thing. You guys are going through a merger or just absolutely in a merger or completed a merger. Is that correct?

We are, we are implementing a merger. So NIFTY is the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship. It's one of the nation's and now the world's largest youth entrepreneurship education organizations. We were founded in 1987 by a Bronx school teacher named Steve Mariotti. And these days we work in about 25 states and about 40 countries.

Wow.

Educating young people, high schoolers and college students to become founders and entrepreneurs.

So you're, so Junior Achievement starts off at the teaching kids about civics and finance and now, but it used to be this kind of junior high school program where you could build a business and Nifty has really taken that piece and you guys are actually as old as Junior Achievement, but taking that as your primary focus. People build businesses.

That's right. So Nifty's particular mission is to serve the underserved, to reach out to communities that typically don't have the benefit of entrepreneurship education, even though these communities.

Where has the benefit of entrepreneur education? We were talking about this. Where does somebody actually have the benefit of entrepreneur education?

Well, the problem is that not enough people have the benefit at all, right? I mean, NIFTY for 40 years has worked in the Bronx, in urban centers throughout the nation, now in places like Palestine, Ukraine, war-torn places. And what is common across all these places is that the entrepreneurial drive and spirit the entrepreneurial spirit is there in every situation, in every country, in every culture. And that's for a simple reason, because entrepreneurship is the, at the heart of any community at all. And what we were talking about is that it's kind of odd from my perspective that our education system has really never included a robust component that includes entrepreneurship when you consider how fundamental it is to the lifeblood of every single community. Nationwide, about 2% of people only ever try, even try to become an entrepreneur. And NIFTY, after 40 years of doing our work, 25% of the students who go through our program wind up making a serious try at entrepreneurship, either becoming, starting a business, becoming a serial entrepreneur. And we have some great— research that shows the economic advantages of entrepreneurship when people are able to get a proper education. And I guess what I would like to say is that, you know, that education right now typically takes place, you know, only in college and afterwards in business school. But, you know, most of the entrepreneurs we see in communities on a daily basis, they've never been to business school. Many of them have never been to post-secondary education, which is why what we do, we feel, is so important. And why this merger with Build is going to be even more impactful. Because the country, and frankly the world, needs a greater force that is organizing around the power of entrepreneurship to change lives and strengthen and empower communities and build new ideas.

You know, one of the— there's this concept that entrepreneurialism, when you look at— when you study basic economics, was that one of the inputs is the entrepreneur. So if you even go back to, uh, studying constitutional law, you go back to our Constitution, the right to file bankruptcy is in Article 1, essentially because our founders were founders. Yeah, not only— so we use that name as part of our whole conversation, is it's about being founders. And the founders of the country are founders of an entrepreneur organization or founders of a nonprofit. It takes the same kind of mechanism of, I see there's something we can build. Right? That is not unique to the United States. That has been around pretty much since the beginning of time. Anything has come through that. And one of the places I saw it most uniquely was in China. So here's China. It's a communist, theoretically, country. And no matter where you go in the world, including even in Singapore, there's a Chinatown. And in Chinatown, someone's going to sell you something because whatever they've got— and that's the basis of free enterprise. And so My concept where I say free enterprise saves the world is reality. But you earlier today when we were talking, you said, how did you get your start? Or what did— what kind of led you to the success? And I said it was through the kindness of strangers. It was all the mentors I had. It was all the tapes and books that I could read at the time. It was all of that education because other than Junior Achievement, there was nobody talking about being an entrepreneur. It was, you're going to go to college, you're going to get a 4-year degree. I barely graduated high school, so that wasn't going to work well for me. So, you know, how's that work? And so here you are in higher ed, not only higher ed, you're in the highest of higher ed, right? You graduated Harvard, you're, you're a professor at Northeastern University working with doctoral students, and yet you're also there saying we need to have entrepreneurial education.

Yeah, well, I mean, the same thing that I love about the doctoral program in law and policy that you were in is the same thing I love about NIFTY. Law and policy is like, it's an open playing field. You did your dissertation on ADUs, dwelling units. I mean, the students that I advise do things, every topic under the sun. And that's the same with entrepreneurship. The businesses that Nifty students propose and develop, it's every topic under the sun. I mean, the winner of our national competition last year, it's a high school student in Providence. And his business, which is an active business that he launched as a high school student, is AI-generated personalized coloring books. His idea is that to curb young children's use of screen time and to create more sanity for parents, wouldn't it be great if those young children got a coloring book filled with pictures of them? Oh, so what you do is with this business, which is called Color Your Life, simple setup. A customer will upload family photos to the site. The business generates, at very low cost, I should say, because it's all AI-powered, a personalized physical coloring book that then gets sent to the customer. And now that young child and the family has a new resource that they enjoy. And it's a simple little business, but it was something that, you know, this student is already making thousands and thousands of dollars off of with his partner. I could tell you, I mean, we grow from there to much more sophisticated.

Just a second. So they took something to market as a student and they're making thousands of dollars off of this, and they're far from the only one.

And I know that that resonates with you because I know that you yourself as a high school student launched a business and recruited your fellow students to be part of it, and that's part of your story. Yeah, we're trying to create—

it's also why I barely graduated high school, because I was making more than the teachers. I'm sitting there going, why do I need to get a college education? I make more than from these college-educated people that don't seem to know very much.

Well, I'll accept that in your case because we know how it turned out. But I think what we're trying to do is to join the two pieces.

No, I agree.

Complementary. And you know, the issue though, what's behind your comment goes back to what I was saying earlier. Students are all too often disengaged in the formal schooling they're receiving because it's too theoretical. The system never tells you what you're supposed to do with it, how to make it practical and useful for you. But students want to do that. And what is so beautiful about the act of preparing a business plan— think about it— what other process combines a need for literacy, a need for numeracy, a need for communication, a need for presentation, a need for law, a need for analytical skills? No other. I can't think of any other academic exercise besides possibly a doctoral dissertation.

Yeah.

That pulls together all of these important strands of learning in a powerful way. That's been missing from K-12 education, and that's the gap that we're filling. And now this merger with BUILD fills it on an even greater scale.

So we have some young entrepreneurs that I'm sure are listening, Candice, but, you know, out there, I love what you asked the question of, how did they get started? You've done entrepreneurial ventures. Jackie's been involved in all these entrepreneurial ventures working with us. We also talked about entrepreneur adjacent, right? So as all of our team would talk about, even in our family office, everybody that's working with an entrepreneur, that takes a special person.

That was, yeah, our call you and I, Dad, earlier this morning talking. Um, I've got a— it's a long-winded question, as is my usual, uh, cadence. Um, I kind of feel like entrepreneurship is one of those things you've got it or you don't, right? However, I also recognize that as an entrepreneur, I have to have people around me who actually do things and actually make greatness. And I know every entrepreneur on this call can probably relate to that, right? And so do you think, and this is where my long-winded question comes from, do you think entrepreneurship is one of those things that we are born with or we can learn. And if we can learn it, isn't it for, for us, for my dad and I, we have surrounded ourselves with incredibly, just the most incredible team of people who are the get it done. They get it, they get it done. And they have at least entrepreneurial understanding sympathy, empathy, patience. So they have learned this, like this thing, but do you think that's like we have found those people or do you think it's something you can actually learn? And if you can learn it, is there a window? Is this something we have to get my 5-year-old to understand this now? Like how to get her inspired to be an entrepreneur now? Or is it like when you, when you're 40, you're probably not gonna learn how to be an entrepreneur. That was like 5 questions in one. I took all the questions. Nobody worry.

But I have answers and I've got clear answers. Point 1, we at NIFTY and I personally believe that entrepreneurship absolutely can be taught. That is literally what NIFTY and Build exist to do. Yes, certain people have an inclination toward entrepreneurship, but it can be taught. And think about it, anyone who becomes an expert in anything, isn't it generally better when they've had an opportunity to formally learn the discipline and test it out in some way instead of just jumping into it?

The reason it's painful to do it that way, it's painful, but because I have a lot, I have a lot of those pain and scars and everything else, and everybody thinks those are fun stories. I think I came to academia later because I was so curious about how stuff worked. Right. So yeah, if you can get that upfront, you save a lot of pain. That's what we're trying to do with Founders Office, right, Candice? I mean, is, is we're really trying to say, don't you don't have to have these scars.

Absolutely. And what you need to learn is, you know, the baseline of what you need to learn to be an entrepreneur is it's not all that complicated. But if you can take it on board in a structured way, really. And to your question, yes, we at Nifty, we work with high schoolers, we work with middle schoolers. We've even now begun to work with elementary school students. And you wouldn't believe the capacity of these young people to come up with great ideas.

There's nobody more entrepreneurial than my 9-year-old.

Yeah, so what is your 9-year-old, uh, interested in?

Uh, making money.

Bracelets.

Bracelets. So we are— we're on a 5-week road trip. You will be hard-pressed to find anybody in Canada, in any of the Canadian parks, that doesn't— has not purchased a bracelet from that kid. Because she was out schlepping bracelets on trails.

Yeah, she also, let's see, she started a band. She had no music. I mean, it's like, okay, so she put together a band and then she's like, we got to have merch. So they came up with a band, they made stickers, they did— talk about just an entrepreneur. But yeah, being able to guide that. Now fortunately she has parents and grandparents, an entrepreneur 'Cause if she'd been born in a family—

'cause that happens. Yeah.

Where a kid wants that and there's no one there to help them.

And this is exactly the gap that Nifty and Build are trying to fill. So Candace, you said earlier what— that you said earlier that there is this— you spoke to the power of the network, your network, right? Being engaged with the world, being out there collecting a community of people who can really rally around a certain thing. That's the—

on that point, JD, that's some statistics on that. The entrepreneurs and their small to medium enterprises currently comprise approximately half of global GDP and roughly 8 to 12% of the global population, which is over 600 million people. They're entrepreneurs. That leaves about 1 in 15 people worldwide as an entrepreneur. So to your point, point about the network and the community. I love that for our audience, everyone on here. It's like, don't be afraid to kind of reach out because very likely you've got friends, acquaintances, family, others that are in this same type of situation with you. And we can kind of all help each other calibrate around all of the nuances and the unique challenges of being an entrepreneur and the excitement And so what Nifty and Bill do is, is create the connection to that larger world of mentors and access to capital that is lacking in underserved communities.

Yeah, it's what's lacking, and what we provide is access to information, access to mentorship, access to capital. At the end of the day, the three things, essential things you need.

Well, so let's take it down a different way, but I'm glad Jackie's there because I want to come back to Jackie for just a second, uh, on IP. So, but we're going to put a pin in that for just a second. If you think about it, so when, when there was an old, old Harvard study about the people that had the best vocabulary, a lot of people would think they're professors. They're not. They have very finite—

No, this professor, exactly.

This professor, exactly. No, you have a phenomenal vocabulary. But, but no, it's on average, it was the CEOs of major corporations. And it's because they have such a diverse, generally, population that they're dealing with. They need to be able to communicate with that. So, and the ones that had the least communication with the imprisoned people, which if you think about communication as a way to see and their vision is limited, then they don't have very far to go, right? So you take that in, in an extrapolation of that, what happens with the entrepreneurs is that I think that it is a base of population that says, I've got an idea. And when you're in an impoverished community, you're limited on what those ideas might be able to be. And sometimes it can be drugs or it can be other illegal activities or it can be whatever because that's what they— And so some of our best drug dealers and criminals are phenomenal entrepreneurs if they had just found something else to be able to do, right?

I have a colleague, Kenny Turner, who worked for Nifty for many years who has made this point many times. But I also think it goes back to the point you were making about the founders. What were the founders of our country? Once they declared independence from Britain, they were, they were all criminals.

They were all criminals.

But what were they after? Um, what, what is, what is free country about? Freedom. Freedom fundamentally. And freedom of what? Freedom of the human individual.

Yeah.

The founders of our country were motivated by Enlightenment philosophy that had a view of human beings that was different from every view of the individual person that came before. That view was that we, each of us as individuals, essentially are made in the image of God. That's what enlightenment philosophy tells us. So their idea about creating a country and a society based on the idea of freedom was that those conditions promote human flourishing, basically unleashing the freedom, that creating a situation of freedom for us to express the fullness of what we can bring to the world. Then by creating a democracy and a republic, you bring in, in a governmental way, the mentorship aspect of entrepreneurship. You're creating a society that is not about, that is not about being in conflict with one another, but being a pluralistic society that works with each other to understand each other's differences, to reach across them, and ultimately to create a more powerful society. This is why the United States has established itself as the premier entrepreneurship society in the world. Even though there are competitors now, no one disputes that this country remains the place to be. Capital.

And I will argue that the number one reason is because of access to capital in this country. You can't be anywhere else in the world that you get access to capital as easily and, and risk capital as easily as in this country. And that's why most recently, even last year, on Wall Street, we had more foreign corporations going public in the United States than we had domestic, because they recognize how big that is and it's a stable market. And you had almost 90% of cross-border companies that went public going public in the United States.

And this is connected to the reason why NIFTY is pursuing merger strategies with Build, a family of brand strategies that will, I hope, take on board additional organizations over time. And as I mentioned, we've gone under my leadership these past 7 years from a primarily national organization to a fully global organization. The reason why is related to what you just said. We need, in order to really prosper as entrepreneurs, we need to open up young people's minds to the reality that the world should be open to them and that the network is really a global network.

Well, so, and to back— hang on just a second, Kance, just for a second, just to back it up for the, um, I said about China and that it's free enterprise. Yet when you're in a system that doesn't allow for free enterprise, it stifles it. And what is great about the United States is it— that's the freedom. People have the freedom to work 100 hours a week, work 100 hours, uh, a week here and make nothing, but doing exactly what they want to be able to do type scenario. The idea of the early stage entrepreneur, right? So, but we have that foundation that you can do that here because that That freedom feel is why so many people that immigrate here become successful entrepreneurs, because they have that already within them.

So many societies today still operate on fundamental organizing premises that are different from the United States. There's room for entrepreneurship in each of them, but no place really creates that complete— near complete climate of freedom, and that frankly the system of private enterprise, not government-directed enterprise, which is key to the thing. So look, Nifty works in China. There are, there are obviously businesses in China, so we work under the rules of the game there. In Singapore, so interesting, you know, a state that's very much a social, social, um, safety net state. The reasons that, um, they are, uh, interested in working with us, and we've worked in Singapore for about 20 years is because it's a very risk-averse society. And the educators have recognized that ultimately that stifles the advancement of the country. We've begun to work in Saudi Arabia.

Why?

Now, they're not— they're trying to literally reinvent the whole society. They haven't needed entrepreneurship under the monarchy that has existed up till now. Now they need to develop roles in society. Women are getting an expanded role in society. Things are changing. Business becomes an important avenue for everybody in this regard. So the reasons that we find that people are interested in entrepreneurship in different countries really vary. I find that to be one of the most interesting aspects of what I do. I agree. But the desire is always there. Last point, Ukraine, right? You're like, how is it that Nifty is working in Ukraine? Because I got a call one day from some people in Ukraine who said, you know what, One day this war will be done, and when this war is done, we are going to need to rebuild. And the first thing we are going to need to rebuild is the economy.

Yeah.

Which means that we need to teach people how to launch.

So just because you're at Davos and giving a speech at Davos, which, by the way, I just am so, just so proud of that, to know you, because I know, you know, I just think that's great. It's also just putting it out there in case you guys ever want to invite me. That's something I want to do.

This guy right here, put you into the Davos network. But NIFTY has been, uh, I, I'll, um, I'll attribute the perspicacity of our founder, Steve Mariotti, who 30 years ago saw fit to engage with the World Economic Forum because he recognized that this global confab of really business leaders is mostly what it is. It's a global, the world's premier convening of global CEOs and entrepreneurs.. And as the progenitor of entrepreneurship education organization, our founder said, well, we need to be there. And so we're there.

And now I'm there. So Candice, I'm going to jump back to you. Sorry, it took so, so far off that you were going to jump in there. And then I want one more point too, before we end up on that, which is going to take back into Jackie.

So unless we have questions, perfect. Perfect. So we've got a lot of entrepreneurs obviously on the call today and being entrepreneurs ourselves, we talked a little bit about the incredible team we've surrounded ourselves with who Maybe they're not entrepreneurs themselves, but they have the entrepreneur understanding. They have some of the entrepreneur, like, like the backbone of that. They, they get it. And I will tell you, while it looks really great now, it's taken us decades to collect this team. And we hang on so tight to that team. We, they are family to us. Um, and I would say in a lot of ways, that has been one of the biggest challenges for us was developing that team. We spent a lot of time with team as we were building businesses that didn't have that entrepreneurial spirit or education or understanding. And so for anybody on this call today, and it, it makes sense cuz if 1 out of 15, I think is what Jackie said. I can't remember where that came from and you gave some great stats. That, that means a lot of people that are going to come to work for you maybe don't have that, that skill set. How do we collect those people? How do founders on this call who maybe are struggling with somebody on their team— they're trying to build something and, and they've got a team member who doesn't have that founder mindset, who doesn't have that entrepreneur mindset, um, how do they collect that team?

You'd be surprised perhaps to hear that I, as the leader of an entrepreneurship education organization, have this same issue. I'll take it back to the education system and the culture around entrepreneurship. I think in too often people, educators, political leaders, they talk about the world of work as something where The idea is you get educated, you get some expertise, and then you apply that expertise. And it's kind of like a closed set. It's this sort of a narrowing. Entrepreneurship, as we've been discussing, winds up being a process of starting out with a very specific notion and then broadening, broadening, broadening, broadening the idea, broadening the network, building a team. Two pieces of advice, because I've been trying to do this as we implement our merger with Build and— and we are now literally in the moment of trying to coalesce the very best global team of entrepreneurship educators. The first thing is don't compromise your standard of having a team that is bought into what it is you are trying to do. The mission is everything. The belief is everything. And you need to really have conversations at the point of hiring and recruiting that go deep. Skill set, yes, it's important. Mindset, much more important. And Nifty, we talk about the entrepreneurial mindset, and that is what we try to cultivate. The second point is you still, even if you do hire the ideal team, you're still going to have to grow people. You know, no one comes fully formed. I didn't come fully formed into the role that I have.

I'm always learning.

So you need to have a team of people who are open-minded, who wants to learn, And as leaders and as founders, I think we have to take the posture of a coaching mentality and a supportive mentality. If you can balance those two things, having high uncompromising standards at the time of hiring, but also once you've found a pretty good person, someone you can grow, someone who can be a leader or really do well in the role that they have, taking that coaching posture, I think that that's probably how you did it over time. Am I right?

Yeah, I mean, we have people that it's really, it's almost like if you can find people that have that level of flexibility, that nimble, they can be nimble, right? They can, and they don't need the structure and the coaching because an entrepreneur is probably never going to be the person to be able to do that. They need people around them who can be flexible, call you out. Figure it out, not exactly even know sometimes what you're talking about, but they'll run with it. And that's not something everybody has. And we, we truly have like, just like hands off everybody because we, we found like the, the best of the best people in our, in our group. But it took us decades to get there, and we needed to be faster. And I think like what you said, we need to be faster about the people who weren't the entrepreneurial fit for our organization, we needed to be faster about like letting, letting us all go and finding, finding the people that are, because there are those people out there and having that higher standard. And it doesn't mean they're not great. It just means they're not great for that type of organization, right?

Beyond the functional components of the NIFTY curriculum, like, you know, how to build a business plan, we also stress what we call the entrepreneurial mindset. Some of these things are things we talk about all the time. Critical thinking, communication, collaboration. Build calls them spark skills, and these are very important things. There are also things that are much less often talked about that we talk about when we speak of the entrepreneurial mindset. There are things that you mentioned, Candice. There are things like ability to manage risk, ability to spot opportunities, the ability to navigate through complexity and ambiguity. You know, we're in this moment in education where we're grappling with this, you know, current generation of AI and, you know, what's happening next. All sorts of conversations going on about the skills that people need today, particularly as workforce changes. I think that components of the entrepreneurial mindset, what you, what you spoke to, Candice, what you've been trying to build in your, in your enterprises, what we're trying to build at Nifty and build through our educational efforts, If we can cultivate a society that begins to lift up this sort of next set of skills, I think we will do a great service to individuals in the whole country.

I think it's awesome. I mean, I think this is amazing. I think we could talk for hours on it. I want to make sure, as these bikes go by us, we don't have any sound going on, or at least I can't hear anything. Um, another thing that the founders brought in the United States, which actually goes back to the Magna Carta, but it was property rights. And property rights is something we talk a lot about because what founders oftentimes have in the early stage is the idea, and the idea is intellectual property. And Wall Street— intangible is almost all the value of Wall Street at the end of the day. And so in Nifty, are you guys teaching how to get trademarks and intellectual property, and where is that? And Jackie, I think we have a program that helps even with that in how to get people going through that, that process for that intellectual property. I think it's key to that factor.

Yeah, I think that as we do this merger with Build and as we build toward a family of brands for Nifty, we'd like to see a future where that type of activity takes place at a much larger scale. We do have it. We have an alumni community. I mean, we have served about 1.5 million young people at Nifty over 40 years. Build has served, I believe, half a million in their 20 years. So it's a, it's a big universe of people. So there are things that we can do. What we find is that alumni come back having participated in NIFTY in middle school or high school, and they say, you know, okay, I kept with this, but now I need, I need legal, I need audit, I need real accounting, I need incorporation, I need all of it, I need greater access to capital than what I've been able to do. Can you help me? You know, up till now we've been a primarily middle school and high school thing. And the greater vision that we're adopting with the Build merger and with the family of brands idea is to go even more firmly in these directions.

Well, what, uh, Jackie, I'm going to bring you up on that is how early is too early, or is there such a thing as too early when you've come up with an idea and that it should start going through a trademark or intellectual property or a process? Where does that fit in and how can someone find out more about that within even the NIFTY organization or any of our founders that are sitting on here now?

Call us, email us.

Call us, there you go.

Yeah, there's no, no, we love to talk about it. We love to educate. We love to help. There's no, I wouldn't say there is a too early. Obviously we all have a lot of ideas, right? You can wake up in the middle of the night and jot down 84 ideas. But if one of them is moving toward something that you plan to put into commerce, right? That's actually the threshold. Have a lot of great ideas, but if you're, if it's, you know, building a pergola in your backyard, you don't need to really be thinking about IP. But if you're putting something out into commerce, a product, a service, a slogan, a logo, a thought, a model, an assessment, a framework, whatever, worthy of considering an IP protection.

You know, I'll spotlight here one element of our merger with Builds that was a moment where I was like, oh, I think I really should pursue this. The Buildz model is somewhat different from the Nifty model in the sense that it really spotlights real prototypes and as much as possible active businesses and getting students inculcated into, into the act of Silicon Valley, right?

Yeah.

And so when you go to a Buildz Buildfest competition, you'll enter a room where you have typically middle schoolers, high schoolers who are all selling things. It's much like, you know, bracelets and often simple products. NIFTY, um, we have that, but we also have more conceptual businesses. Um, our students oftentimes will have these types of businesses, but they'll also have technological businesses and things of significant interdisciplinary complexity. We need to have it all. But I really like the aspect of the BUILD model that emphasizes the idea that the student can and should drive their entrepreneurship toward a tangible end as soon as they can. Because to go back to your question, I personally believe that the sooner that you can get to a good prototype means the sooner you can get to a launch business means that the sooner you can get to really proof of a viable concept that then opens the door toward the access to capital that you need.

Well, an interesting thought here, Jackie, which we could kind of put together and come But so theoretically, someone under 18 can't own anything, but they do own their thoughts, right? And so, but what we oftentimes help our founders do is we don't think that they should actually own their intellectual property directly. We help them hold that through a holding enterprise, and then forever that keeps it protected, and then it gets licensed to the various entities. So this is one of the ways that we do it because we try and keep the entrepreneur founder off the chessboard, as we oftentimes see, because the risk— they're willing to take that risk, but the risk oftentimes is unnecessary. They didn't need to do that. So protecting that, that property right there. I'm gonna stop it here. We've got so much more we could talk about. I do want to make a shout-out. Another person out there that, if you don't know him already, we need to get him involved with this, is a guy named Connor Boyack. Now Connor wrote books called The Tuttle Twins, which is about teaching young people how to be entrepreneurs. And he's building these entrepreneur fairs all across the country. And it's a nonprofit that's doing that, that helps these, these young people, Scout and others, to be able to build these things. The kids run these fairs, and I think it would be a good natural thing. So Connor, I'm doing a shout out to you.

You heard it, Connor.

By the way, 6 million books.

Oh wow.

Yeah, so we're not talking a small network. It's got, it's got TV shows and different things out there. But I think that that'll be another good, you know, potential partnership that we can get going within there. And it is all about networking. Angela, thanks for being our host on this. Do we have how you get in touch with Nifty and how you get in touch with Professor LaRock, JD, as we affectionately say here? Actually, you were the first— I think you were the first professor that we hardly ever called you professor afterwards because you're like, JD, just call me JD. Yeah, it's all good. So Nifty's code that you get on there, find JD on LinkedIn. Generally, when you're following them on LinkedIn, you're gonna see all the stuff that's what's going on with Nifty. That's how I get caught up to it.

All this stuff that we've been talking about. Can I just say before we wrap up, because I think your viewership needs to know how special you are. It's pretty amazing that I have a former student and advisee who has prevailed in a Supreme Court case. Can I just say how amazing that is?

Albi SEC, everybody.

Keep watching this guy because it's remarkable. I'm so delighted that we have continued our personal and professional relationship.

Likewise.

Because it was so clear that when we got deep into your student work that you had, you're offering so much to so many people and you care about people and the communities you're involved in.

Thank you.

And I appreciate that. Thank you. You've taken that ethic and spirit Thank you.

Well, I am very thankful to my doctoral experience, as my sister who went— Jackie was also there, and Candace was there, and Katie was there at the thing when you hooded me, right? Yeah, so which was super cool. But my sister's sitting there going like, I didn't think you were gonna graduate high school.

I never had that thought, for the record.

He's like, really? I would never have thought that. So you were a great student, but that was not what any of my high school teachers would have said at that time. But it was because I was, I was hungry and cold and figured out that we— the only way that I could get out of poverty at that time was through free enterprise. And then, and that's why I'm so passionate about this. But it does not mean that just because I didn't graduate high school that I wasn't educated. I found mentors, and I have so many people that have helped me along the way, yourself included in there, where it's just finding the most gifted, the most talented, the people that do the things that I want to know how to be able to do, and surrounding myself with just the most talented people. And as Candice was talking about, that's our team, uh, that's the friends that I have in the world, that's the nonprofits that we serve, uh, the ability to be teaching at Northeastern now, which is amazing. I have 3 candidates going through now where I get to at some point have them be doctors, which has got to be the coolest thing in the world.

You can, you can correct all the mistakes as I made an advisor with them. I had a cautionary tale to show you what a good advisor does.

I don't think it'll be that at all. You've been my lead on teaching federalism. Dr. Thomas J. Powell.

So can I just say, all the things you just spoke to, right? Education, entrepreneurship, mentorship, and the network. If we brought these things to our education system, we would actually change the viewpoint of what education is. Absolutely. And we would give young people and all other people, um, just a very different view of how to approach knowledge and their own self-development. And we could unleash human potential in a much better way.

You know, I know that there's some great specials out there because of hitting 250 years on, on our founders. It's a great special out there about George Washington. And so he was surrounded by, you know, Thomas Jefferson and, uh, John Adams, uh, and others that had gone. So you had Madison, you had all these people that were highly educated, and he felt bad about not being educated. Yet in many ways, because he studied the Stoics and other readings that he had done, he was incredibly incredibly educated, and he was also the first president of the United States, right? And he was a fantastic— not just founder of the United States, but he was a fantastic founder of the businesses that he ran. And he was really— I mean, he took, you know, uh, uh, surveying and turned that into a whole nother land accumulation, early prospecting business scenario. So, I mean, fascinating study. Anyway, way off on tangents. Yeah, he's going like, oh my God, we got to get to WTF. I'm going to talk about that. WTF, Women Talk Finance. So your women that are in Nifty need to check out our women here at the founder's office that have their podcast, Women Talk Finance. You guys are there. It's where all you can have all your podcasts and different pieces. What is the interesting guest we're doing today, guys? Get to preview now.

Yeah, today we actually are talking to the two women from Minerva. So I'm really excited about this because they are, um, it's really focused on women's health. They are in the middle of a capital raise themselves and they are looking to really transform the way we focus on women's health, making it really accessible, getting live data on how women's bodies are performing and being able to address things that are really core issue, core holistic point. So really looking forward to that conversation. And they're, yeah, they're in the middle of a capital raise, I believe, as we speak.

Well, I can't wait to see the show. By the way, the joy of being an entrepreneur means a lot of times you can be anywhere you want to be. And even if you can't, you certainly still can. Candice, you're traveling today. You're in You're back in the United States. You were in Canada and you're in—

no, I called in with a case of Lake Louise last week. So thanks for, uh, holding down the fort, you guys. I really appreciate it. We are in Grand Lake, Colorado. Next week I should be back in my, um, my home office.

That's what I love about what we do. But you're actually out there again meeting with a number of our friends and families and different things that are out there doing business around the world. And Jackie was just in Spain and Portugal, I believe, and back to the United States.

Yep.

Yeah, so that's fun. And I'm headed out to do some snow skiing here for the next 3 weeks of my life, so I will not be on one of our Lunch and Learns. I think I'll be on 2 of them though from there. So I'll be down in Chile, which if you've not checked the weather report, it's their best potentially record snowfall that we've had. So yes, I'm going to go do my passion of skiing out there.

The mountains called and you had to go. You had to answer.

I don't know, it just was a, it was a have to go.

So yeah, I'm glad that you've played up this sort of, you know, nice aspect of entrepreneurship. You know, even being the head of an entrepreneurship education organization, it is a rather flexible lifestyle. Of course, I've got to go to all these global sites that we manage, so I want to tap into that too.

You have to go. I always love that.

But you know, that flexibility is it in that sense. You know, I'm here on vacation with my family, or trying to be anyway, but we're doing a little business now and catching up, promoting Nifty. This is what you do. I guess that we shouldn't downplay the real hard work that also comes with it though.

Nope, nope. As we said, one of my friends has a billboard in his thing, so it's like, "F of F, yay!" That's the life of an entrepreneur as well, and we do try to help work through that. Nifty doing that great work of— we can smooth out some of those big hiccups in there. JD, thank you so much for joining. Candace and Jackie, thank you as always being on there. Lots of success with WTF in the show. And Angela, as always, thanks for being our producer on the show. And everybody have a great week. Thanks for joining us at Lunch and Learn. Take care.

Thank you. Bye.