Choosing College

This is Future youe with Jeff Salingo and Michael Horn.

And welcome to Future youe. Today we have a very special edition of Future youe. Because I'm joined today as usual with my co host Michael Horn and his co author of his book Choosing how to Make Better Learning Decisions throughout yout Life with Bob Mesta, who is president and co founder of the rewired group based in Detroit, Michigan, and an adjunct fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute, where Michael is also associated with as well. So it's great to have both of you here and we're going to have Michael a little bit on the other side of the microphone this time and

try not to be intimidated or not

try to sneak in with your.

Yeah, exactly. For Bob.

But Bob, everybody who listens to Future youe knows a lot about Michael, so tell us a little bit about how you got started in this world.

So I started actually doing, if you go way back before I was seven years old, I actually had three close head brain injuries. And my mom learned that what I did is I memorized all the books that she read to me. And what ended up happening was is that at some point she basically said that if I needed to learn a different way, I learned a different way. And the reality is that what she did is she taught me all these hacks about how I learned, and she learned how I learned and helped me figure it out. So, for example, I can see words that are larger than seven letters because I see spaces first and I see the end of the word and the beginning of the word. And to be honest, I don't look linearly. And so part of it is that she taught me to read by circling the five largest words on a page and guessing. And so for the most part, I could look at something. And let's be clear, I wasn't very good at it in the beginning, but 46 years later, I'm actually pretty good at it. And so I can actually see patterns that other people can't. And so I'm a firm believer that for every struggling moment, there actually is, you learn to innovate a different way. And that innovation creates new progress for myself. And so part of it is that's how jobs to be done came about. And so for my whole life in education, I've been struggling. So until I was actually 35, I was taught primarily to actually work on my weaknesses. You can't spell. You got to learn how to spell. I literally would spend hours upon hours upon hours trying to spell. And at 35, I finally gave up. I said, I'm done, I'm not going to do it. And what I figured out is what I was really good at. And so instead of working on my weaknesses, I worked on my strengths. And the long and short of it though is that from an educational perspective, I've been learning my entire life, but the educational system hasn't really actually helped me do that. And so part of this is when I met Michael and through Clay, he talks about it in disrupting class, around the milkshake story of jobs to be done. And that was me. I was the one knocking on the windows asking people about basically, why in the world are you hiring a milkshake at 8 in the morning? And ultimately we came up with basically the, the breakfast smoothie.

So that's how you met Michael. So how did you come to Wright choosing college?

Oh, so I have four children. I had four children in five years. So at some point I had three children in college at once. And the whole experience of trying to get to and understand how to get into college and understanding what they wanted and the progress they were trying to make was so difficult. As a parent, one of them actually ended up doing a gap year, which I had never heard of. And it was a traumatic experience as a family to actually try to make that come figure that out. But the ultimate thing is I realized I was wrong as a parent. I had no idea. And the gap year was a really good thing for him. But the reality is, because I was so close minded at the time, I realized like, okay, I can't be the only one. And so part of this is Michael and I went off and we researched and talked to students to say of all ages, of all incomes, just the diversity of it to say what causes people to say, today's the day I'm going to go back to school or go to school. And again, what's happened is people kind of just mash it into saying one thing. Well, they're going to school so they can get an education, so they can get a job. But that's not about the decision point they really make. And if you really kind of narrow it down to say, how did you decide this school? And what was going on to say this school and what were you hoping for when you said, yes, I'm going to go to that school? You start to realize that it's a very, very different set of criteria by which people are choosing than are explicit. And so part of it was that the excitement to be able to understand these pathways by which students decide to make progress through college.

So it's kind of interesting to apply those jobs to be done in theory, to this choice of college, which we always thought was kind of an emotional decision. So why do you think this framework is helpful for students to think through this theory for?

I think part of it is that at some point in time, one is most of the time, I don't think as a student, you know where you're coming from and where you're going to. And so a lot of times it's. You're making out on a lot of outside type of influences. And what we find is that, again, the jobs have done framework takes both functional emotional and social drivers or motivations, and really tries to kind of hone it down to say, what's the causality behind you deciding today to go to that school? And so I always say that when somebody picks something irrational, it's typically because we don't know their context. Context makes the irrational rational. And so part of it is we dug very, very deep to say, like, what are you really trying to do? Why are you doing this now? And really spending the time to be the detectives to truly understanding causality, the dominoes that have to fall.

Yeah. And the only thing I would add is just to emphasize, frankly, that the emotional and social components of why people make choices, I think we weigh undervalue in the higher education conversation. We talk a lot about the functional considerations. If you go, you earn this much money and you can get a job. And all the data and stuff that we're trying to collect right now is around these functional considerations. But when you really drill down to it, the functional piece, I would say, is actually a pretty small slice of what we found for most students outside of maybe one job that we uncovered. It's much more emotional and social. These pressures that are pushing people to make a change, that are pulling them toward a future they've been led, that they should expect, and so forth. And what's interesting, I think a lot of people know the job to be done theory from the milkshake story of why do you hire a milkshake? And so forth. What I've really come to appreciate in working with Bob is how much the art and science of discovering jobs and seeing jobs, if you will, is through these interviews where you. You basically recreate the story of how students made these decisions in these mini documentaries, we refer to it in the book. And not seeing what they tell you that they want, but seeing what they actually do, not what they say. Because people, not just students, people Lie all the time, not out of ill will, but they just, they don't know. And to Bob's point, context gives meaning is a really important, important point. It sort of bounds what is actually an opportunity and what trade offs you're willing to make.

So can you talk a little bit more about those interviews and the stories and kind of tell us a little bit about who you interviewed, how many. But more importantly, what did you really learn?

Yeah, so there's a, there's a big difference between, let's say, a survey and basically hearing somebody talk about it. And so all these interviews are basically set up in a way to basically understand what caused somebody to say, today's the day I'm going to go back and get my mba. Today's the day I'm going to go basically to community college. It didn't matter. It was a very wide range. The thing is, most people are collecting data and the data is the answers they have to put right. And so it's like what happens is you give me the survey and then pick 1, 2, 3 or 4 or 5. And those are predetermined questions. And so when you pick, it's very different than choosing. So it's like, for example, you know, did you go back to school so you could actually figure out how to get a job? Everybody's like, well, I should say that, I don't know if. And they'll write that down. But when you actually probe to it and say, like, what was your time horizon as you were choosing this school at, you know, in February of your senior year in high school, what were you really thinking about and what were you really worried about? And you start to realize some people just have the time horizon of September. What was September going to be like? Right. And so you start to realize that even though they'll say they were thinking of the future, the reality is that the decision of going to one school over another was decided of what their life would be like in September. And so this is where we actually started to uncover, like, why in the world are people actually really choosing to go? Is it because of the pressure from other people? Is it the fact that it's like, I don't like where I'm at and I want to get out. There's all these different kinds of situations. And the cool part to me is that context and outcomes are connected. So we're just down at a conference, conference, and they kept talking more and more about, well, we got to get to these outcomes. And most people don't understand that outcomes are connected to where people start. Value is not the outcome. Value is based on if I start at this point or low point. And I basically, value is the difference between where I start and where I end. And the reality is, if I start at a different place, then the reality is that all of a sudden I value it differently. And so when we start talking about value and affordability, the aspect here is value is only in the eyes of the beholder. So school can say it's worth a million dollars, but the fact is, at some point, who's willing to pay a million dollars? And so this is the big thing to me of what we found is where does value lie?

So, Michael and Bob, can I press a little bit more on that? Right. Because there's a lot of discussion right now around inputs and outputs. Right. And the rankings measure. People largely think they don't measure outputs, they measure inputs. Right. Like the top schools are taking the top students and basically not causing any damage to them for four years.

I would actually beg to say that they are. But that's a difference. That's a difference. Not causing damage, causing damage like they, they come in with one intent, but they actually never achieve it.

Right, so. Right. So what is the intent of people? So we think that, well, those are the most prestigious, best schools. But the value that you were just describing, right, from where they started to where they ended, as many people say, they started on third base and they barely made it home.

That's right, right.

Instead of starting, you know, at home

and all the way around.

Right. But yet those are the highest ranked schools. So why is that value? The delta of that value is pretty short or small. But yet those are always the best ranked schools.

Right? Because I think, because most of the time you find that the ranking is a function of people who are worried about how other people perceive it. And so the reality is the majority of people are going to school for themselves. They're not going to the school for other people. And so what you find is this rating system is what we would call the social, social, emotional and functional pieces of a job. Some people really care what other people think. And some people really value. Basically, how are people going to perceive me because I went to Yale versus I went to Macomb Community College. But there are other people who are like, no, I just need to get this. I need to figure out how to actually do this programming language so I can get this job so I can work this CNC machine. And so prestige and where it sits really gets back to what do people what does the consumer, the student, believe is going to actually help them in the future? And are they willing to pay the premium for it?

Yeah, the only thing I would add is, I mean, I do think that there's an enormous amount of social capital that comes out the other side of the higher education experience that we don't talk about a lot, but it pays for the people who benefit from that social capital to reify that social capital. And so even though it's disconnected from the reason you came in, that's right on the way out, you realize the benefit. I mean, so you said Yale, my undergrad institution, and one of your son's undergrad institutions. You know, we benefit significantly from that network and the doors that it opens, and we benefit from it staying in that class and being recognized as such.

But I think at the same time that in some cases, some people don't actually know it or value it going in. I had no idea, and only value it on the back end. And so part of this is when you're actually choosing is very different than what you're doing afterwards. And so part of this is being able to understand at that moment of truth, at the choice of when I'm saying, like, which school am I going to go to? How do people make these decisions? This book was written to help people understand. Like, you need to actually think about the context you're in, the outcome that you seek. And here are some pathways of people, here's some stories that you can see. In all the interviews we did, which was over 200 different stories of people going to school, we could actually find a pattern of five different pathways that people took. And from that we're able to say, like, hey, you might think you're this way, by the way, your parents might actually think you're in a different job. And all of a sudden now you have to have a conversation to say, what are the trade offs you're going to have to make in order to say, how are we going to get to school?

We're going to talk about those five pathways, but also the overall organization of the book and a little bit more on the book when we come right back on Future.

This episode of Future youe was made possible with support from the Academy for Innovative Higher Education Leadership. The Academy is a partnership between Arizona State University and Georgetown University and is the premier training ground for those who aspire to senior leadership positions in higher education and those who want to lead organizational change at colleges and universities in the future. This episode was also made possible with support from Entangled Solutions. If you want to shape the future of education, Entangled Solutions would like to hear from you. Entangled Solutions is hiring smart, mission driven team members interested in helping world class institutions solve their most vexing challenges in learning and education. Learn more at Entangled Solutions.

And we are back here on Future youe with Bob Mesta and Michael Horn who are co authors of Choosing College how to make better learning decisions throughout your life. So Michael, tell us a little bit about the book itself. How is it organized and who is the core key audience for you?

Yeah, so the key audience I think as we suspect will be parents who pick it up. We would love students to read, but we're not always so naive on that. But parents of college going kids I think will be the first audience and I think the second will be parents that then as they've read it, they all of a sudden realize it applies to themselves right now in their own journey of and then it sort of takes on a second, if you will, breath of life that all of a sudden, wait a second, this is actually describing anyone's learning journey throughout my life and it's going to apply to a lot more people. And then the back half of the book is advice to institutions. So in terms of the way it's organized up front, we sort of describe the college choosing problem, if you will rely a lot on your work to help architect that. And then we walk through the five jobs to be done, if you will, of what, why students are hiring school and with advice in each chapter for them and their parents about if you're in this job, this is what it means for you. And then we sort of, we offer a chapter at the end where we talk about Bob's life, living life through, through the jobs we call it, where we, where we do that just to show that you're not going to be in one job your whole life. That's not where you just stay. This isn't a static view of the world. It's dynamic. You're, you might enter college in one part, you might midway through college be at a different part, you might 10 years later be at a different job. And then we jump over to the institution side and talk about how they can use this to design better experiences. And it's a couple chapters there where we give concrete examples for both jobs and how Southern New Hampshire University has used this and so forth. And then we offer a conclusion at the end and an appendix that talks through the 200 plus stories we collected and so forth. The one thing I'll say, by the way, Jeff, it's interesting. We collected, you know, hundreds of stories for this. We did surveys of thousands of data of students and so forth. When, when Bob does this for corporate customers, where he spends most of his time, he does 10 to 15 interviews and gets, and get. And you know, he's, he's, he's not going to say this because he's modest, but he's responsible for creating billions of dollars worth of products and services. Because it turns out these patterns emerge really strong in very small end sizes. With higher ed, obviously, we were trying to capture lots of different segments and we also wanted to be exhaustive because we knew how the academy would view it. But a lot of these patterns actually emerged pretty quickly.

Pretty quickly.

So talk about these five patterns.

Five jobs. Sure. So the five jobs that we found. The first one was the names of these are always tricky because once you name it, people think it's all about that, but helped me get into my best school. So these were students who were really. College was its own destination for its own sake. They wanted to tell people that they had gotten into the best school. They wanted the classic college experience they'd been led to expect. They had put in the work to be the best. They now expected and felt like they deserved the best.

They also had like a plan. So it was like, I knew I wanted to be a nurse, I knew I wanted to be an engineer. This is the best school for. This is what I want to do. They were very clear. But the notion was, is that it was just about getting to the school,

that the success was the arrival, the

success was the arrival. So the whole thing was is this is where I talk about the notion of time horizon. Their time horizon was literally like getting just like, well, what's going. What's going to happen, like when you're there? I don't know, but it's just going to be great. And it's like they had no concreteness wrapped around what it was, but it was again, more one of those goals. And they're usually pretty strong academically and they're very realistic about kind of what their best school is. So this isn't about getting in the number one school, but for them, they would say, you know, it's the best school. For me, my standard is this and trying to get there.

So the second one we found was what I say is the other side of the coin on this, which is help me do what's expected of me. So these were students who were going because someone else in their Life effectively demanded that they go. Their parents said, you're going to college next. It's the next logical step in my life. Their guidance counselor, their teacher, society, employers, friends, peers said, this is what you're doing next. And very little energy and excitement about this decision. They were extremely apathetic.

So this was me, actually, when I went to school is like my, I wanted to go to Purdue, which is kind of funny because here we are in Indiana. But Purdue was my school. And because I was dyslexic, I got almost perfect scores on the math and science. I virtually barely passed the comprehension and the reading. And the reality was, is like, they were saying no. And then like, okay, second choice was like Michigan. And then my third choice was Michigan State and they accepted me outright. And so I ended up going to Michigan State, kind of going like, yeah, I don't really want to go here, but I'll go here. And it turned out to be great. But it was one of those things where the expectation was, you're going to go where you got in, and this is what it is. And there was no big enthusiasm for it in terms of, as I was so enthusiastic for Purdue and wanting to be an engineer.

So the third job was help me get away. So these were students who were running from something, but not necessarily towards something. So they were running from an abusive stepfather in the home, they were running from a bad job, from a town that didn't understand who they were, things like that. It was all about getting away. Talk about time horizon. This was extremely short term because the moment you got away, you had accomplished your job and then you had four years in debt that you might now ought to take on.

But these are, these are, these are students where, where you, when you. And again, the whole focus was getting far enough away. And so it was far enough away that they could actually start anew. But the reality is they, they had no experience of starting new relationships. And so it was very, very difficult. And so. But you find, for example, you know, if you take it just to, to like the, the like an mba, it's like, I'm an investment banker and you know, I don't really want to be an investment banker. I want to go change the world. And you get in and all of a sudden everybody's like, you're going to quit this job? It's like, no, no, I'm going to go to get my mba. Oh, that's okay. And you go with the intent of like, wanting to move somewhere else. But most of them don't actually have the chance to do that. And so all of a sudden you find this whole notion of trying to escape, it's a very easy way in which for people can say, like, yeah, I'm going back to school to do something different.

So the fourth one was help me step it up. So this is the one that most closely connects to get a job. These were people who looked around in their lives and they liked a lot of what they had, but they, but generally in their work experience, it was sort of a low paying job or something about it. You know, they didn't like the boss, they didn't like the line of work, whatever. And they looked around themselves and they said, this isn't who I am. It's time for me to step it up. It's now or never. I got to do it now. And in terms of the time horizon, you know, whatever they were stepping it up to do was sort of the time horizon, if it takes two years to go be a nurse, well, that's my time horizon.

And it was very clear on where the job was. And it was, it was almost like they could see through college to the other side. And so, and they were motivated because there were circumstances wrapped around them that made them feel like it was time. And if they didn't do it, there would be consequences.

Pass them up.

Yeah, it would pass them up.

So the last one was help me extend myself. So I refer to this as the lifelong learning job, but that's probably not quite fair. But these were students who, life was good, but they had always wanted to learn something. They had a yearning. It wasn't just sort of like fun for its own sake. They always wanted to be something, do something more, be challenged in something new. And now they had the time and budget to go pursue that. When we found this job, I joked to Bob that I had never had this job in my life because I have a mortgage and two kids under five. And Bob said, sure, you have. But your version of education to fulfill this job is a podcast or an article or something like that.

That's right. Or a workshop or a boot camp or something like that. And so this one is where again, people have, they, they almost feel like they're not challenged enough, but at some point they're not willing to kind of disrupt anything. And so this is where they're going to go back to kind of feed, feed that knowledge base where they, they're trying to connect some dots or build some skills that they have. And this is where it's like, I think it's a crime where we say, well, everybody's got to get a degree. These people don't care about degrees. These people are really trying to learn and build the network and basically get some expertise. And it's really, they're very, very happy just being able to get the knowledge.

Yeah.

And they were quite comfortable if they, if it didn't work out because they could just go back to doing what they were doing.

I'm shocked that you were able to get this down to five pathways.

And I think we have like almost 30 different variables around how we played it out. And I mean we used some very advanced kind of math. I'm a math guy. Right. So. But we were able to get it down to five. We had a few more, but we figured how they collapsed down and it's really down to these almost like five starting points. And if you have these five starting points and you realize you're more in one than the other, it'll help you make the decision of what's best for you. And that's really the purpose here is so for the, for 30 years I've been actually building, helping people build better products for consumers. And what I'm really trying to do now is I'm trying to help consumers be better consumers. Like, I feel like this is a very big parallel to the, to the healthcare industry where the fact is that I think it's a two sided problem where I think the healthcare system is built in a way that's very hard to interact with. But I think as a healthcare consumer, we're actually really bad consumers. We actually don't even know when we should go to the doctor.

No. Or you know, every time I figure out I need a doctor, I ask a friend, should I go to. Right. Who's your dentist?

Or you go to the pharmacist, you're like, hey, but I think my arm's broken. You know, I'm going to go to the minuteclinic and see if they should tell me I should go to the. Like how do you not decide? And so what we realized.

But we're overwhelmed with information.

Exactly. And so I think part of this is that helping consumers be better consumers is really what this book is about. And being able to help them be awakened to kind of the context they're in, the outcome that they seek. And if they are in this situation, then how do they actually figure out what's the best school for that situation?

Well, so Bob, this is a great analogy because again, we think that if we provide consumers more information in the healthcare industry, WebMD was supposed to change everything, right? People were gonna self diagnose themselves and then figure out to find the best doctor. The same thing with college, right? Let's just keep giving people more information and then more rankings, more government data. All this stuff was supposed to help people make better consumer based decisions, but we're overwhelmed with choice.

That's right. This is very, very similar to buying a mattress. You know what I mean? Like, the hardest part here is like when you finally come to the conclusion you need a mattress. By the way, it's usually about a year, a year and a half before you've taken Zquil and you've exercised really late at night and you've done all these things that kind of compensate for the fact that your mattress doesn't work. You're like, maybe it's the mattress. And then you go like, oh my God, I gotta walk in the store. And you walk in that store and there's like nobody there. There's four, 400 options, right? That are all described in language they talk about. This has got interspers, this is a hybrid, this has got phone. Like, what does all that mean? And then all of a sudden, if you know, to me, my partner is like, hey, I don't have a problem with the bed. Like, yeah, but I do. And it's all this negotiation and so you start to realize more information in the wrong way doesn't help me choose. And so when you start to study again how people actually make the decision to buy a mattress, and it's through these patterns of context and outcome. And so being able to understand how to design a better mattress is just like how we have to design better education.

So not necessarily more information, but better information at the right time.

Right time. And in the right language, you need to do it in their language. So for example, we talk about this aspect of, you know, traditional people would say, well, when you sleep, do you get hot? And it's like, well, sometimes you do, but I don't know. The better question is, do you stick your leg out at night to cool off? And people go like, yeah, I do that. Well, when you like there's this language difference between when are you hot and what hot means and when is it too hot and are you sweating? It's like, yeah, but that's me, not the mattress. But if you stick your leg out, that means that you've got a thermal problem. And so part of it is being able to speak the right language that resonates with the consumer, not the Fact that it's like, well, it's 38.7 Celsius. That actually causes people to, you know, nobody wants to educate themselves so much about a mattress because you only buy one once every 10 years.

But it's the same way with college, right? You're probably. Hopefully for most people, if they only get a bachelor's degree, they're going to go to college once.

Yeah, no, I mean, it's the same phenomenon. And yet we're using language around credits and credit hours and office hours and all these things that do not resonate at all with the individuals themselves and the progress that they're trying to make. That was something that really jumped out for me was, you know, so you said it amazing that we distilled it to five, you know, jobs. But what was interesting was the people that said that they needed to step it up, that they were hiring school to do that. They almost all use the language that this isn't me right now. They almost all use that same wording

and it's now never. And there's this again. There's. There's this little. So I think of it as a set of dominoes that have to be on the table to play. And when they pick them up, they all come up in a pattern. And so when these four things happen and those five things is what they want, they're now in step it up. And so when you hear them talk about urgency, that's pretty close to that. Like, they're not get away. The urgency here is like that I have to go do something. It's typically they're getting.

Yeah. And so then as a, as a college, right. If you're listening, designing and using the language of the consumer to explain what you're trying to offer them and what you will help them do is really, really important. Important and not something that they think that they're doing it, but they're not actually stepping inside of the language and the causality that individuals are actually experiencing.

And what's interesting about most colleges, Michael, is we, we see it from our end as well, is that, you know, colleges want to be differentiated from their competition. Right. Because that's how they think they get the advantage. But there's also a pool of commonality in higher education, Right. You don't want to be too different than your com. Than your competition. So this idea of, I think if I were running a college, I would want to develop services or products to appeal to some of these other pathways, but somebody's going to pull me back. Well, we don't want to look too different from Harvard.

But here's the thing. This is what Paul LeBlanc did. He heard me and Clay talk about this whole concept in 2010 and he realized that his online learners were just different and most of them were in the step it up job. And he basically said, like, we don't have anybody like this, so fine, we'll keep the 18 to 24 year old

the way it is.

And he had a kept. And then he basically put people in their own, a separate business unit and said, like, we're going to actually go after these people who want to step it up. And here's the criteria. And to be honest, he had to add new features, he had to add new processes that he didn't have to do with the 18 to 24 year old. But he graduated, what, almost 39,000 students. He has 130,000 students now. He's going to be at 200,000 students by 2021. It's crazy.

Well, we're running out of time here, so why don't wrap up a little bit about what you each individually learned on this journey of writing a book. I've written a couple authorities and I've learned not only something about myself in writing these books, but I also learned something about the topics that I thought, wow, I know everything about this topic going into it. And there's always something that really surprised me. So anything you learned personally on your journey and more about the topic itself.

I think the reality is that I don't believe that learning is a one time event or that it's just that you're getting. Learning is a lifelong thing. And we basically have lots and lots of options between boot camps and books and everything else of how we want to learn. And so my thing is this is not exclusive to just college. This is actually basically how people make progress in their lives and where they want to go. And so to me, the competitive set is way broader than just colleges and universities.

Yeah, I guess my takeaway is twofold. One, Clay and I have written articles for years and we would say, well, we speculate that the jobs to be done are to get a job, to switch careers, to all this stuff. And that's not at all how people actually live life. And it was, that was humbling. Bob has always told us, never assume that you were that smart. You actually have to do the work. And so that was, hit me in the face. And then the, the second one was, you know, I think personally I learned a lot about why I went to School, which I had, which I didn't understand at the time. Both times for bachelor's degrees, mba. But also as I've navigated my career journey, it was. It shed a lot of light on the decisions that I've made over the last five years. And we've had a heck of a lot of fun where, you know, we do the research together and. And then Bob generates these insights and then I get to translate them. And it's just been a heck of a lot of fun to sort of take these learnings that have been humbling and then put them into paper that hopefully are helpful.

So Michael had to basically, we. We do the research, we'd hear the stories, we'd get all excited about the stories. We then co. And we'd do the analysis. And then he'd be like, oh, my gosh. Okay, there's an is. And then what we do is sit down and talk about it. We just record it. And then Michael would write about it. And Michael would get so excited about what he wrote. He's like, okay, I have to read it back to you. And so he'd send me these emails or these voice notes of like, okay, here's chapter three, section two. And I was just like, oh, my God. And it's a very interesting relationship because the other part is he had to read almost out loud everything he wrote. So I have to think that you actually had to write a little differently.

Yeah, it's actually. I mean, you know, this. Jeff, with disrupting class, I had the opportunity to read the whole book forwards and backwards, literally to make it a really good book. My subsequent works have not had that time here. I was forced to because that's the only way Bob could understand what I had, what I'd put out in paper, so to speak. And an incredibly, I think, important experience. Daniel Pink talks about this. He reads it to his wife, and his wife reads it to him. Just relying on the written word, making sure you read it aloud, is so important. And this was a really cool process to make force that to happen.

Well, it's a. It's a terrific book. I had a chance, thanks to Michael, to read it before it. Before it came out. And it's been really useful to my work around admissions. And so I encourage all of our listeners to go out and get a copy, order on Amazon, go to your local bookstore, encourage libraries to. I always tell people, encourage libraries to take it on choosing college. How to make better learning decisions throughout your life. And thanks to Bob and Michael for joining us.

Thanks for having us.

Thanks for having us.

And that's it for this episode of Future youe. And thanks to all of you, the listeners, for tuning in. And please take a look at our next episode coming up soon.

Hey folks, Michael Horn here. Hope you enjoyed the latest episode of Future youe. And just a reminder to please subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform and if you like the podcast, rate us so that others can find us and find out about the good conversations that we're having here. As always, thanks so much for listening.