96. The New Education Frontier and What it Means for Small Towns

My guest on today's episode is Scott Meyer, founder of Ed3, which is a digital company looking to scale education. Uh, when I first met Scott, he was a speaker at a conference that I was at, and he was working at the time in higher education. And, um, he was sharing about an entrepreneurial mindset, you know, how to innovate, how to iterate, and, and having that lack of a feel of fear of failure and what it will do for not only people that want to start their own businesses and actually be entrepreneurs, but that that's a skill set that's desirable across industries. And that's essentially what we're talking about. Ed3 is about lifelong learning. It's a little— it gets a little more tech nerdy than that, and he talks about some of that, but it's about the fact that, um, everything we're experiencing all the time is helping us grow and develop. And what does that potentially mean for our ability to get jobs? And so this isn't just about us, guys. This is about the future. This is about our kids. This is about how we can support them now. And furthermore, for all of us in small towns, how we can help our small towns continue to be places where people can work from anywhere and yet live and enjoy the small town life that we get to afford them. So this is a fantastic episode. Scott is so inspirational. He always gets my wheels turning, and I hope it does the same for you. Enjoy this interview with Scott Meyer. Well, hey, Scott.

Hello. Hello.

Welcome to the show, buddy. Good to see you.

You also. Thanks for having me on. It's a good excuse to catch up.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's exactly what we're going to do, man. So for our listeners, well, okay, so a few things. You were on our bus tour and at the time when you came on the world bus tour and you showed up in Oakson, you were working for higher education.

Yeah.

So do you want to tell a little bit about kind of where you had maybe spent the last several years? And then of course we're going to dive right into where you are now, and there's going to be cool lessons for people to pick up along the way about, you know, how you came to realize that this is where you wanted to eventually be and all of that. So just start wherever in your journey, I'm cool with it.

Sure. Yeah. And I think the— maybe the lesson is, you know, it's always easier to connect the dots after you look back.

Always.

I feel like I've been throwing a lot of dots out, but I think there is a through line, which is interesting. So super quick version is I had the chance to get my master's degree in Norway, thanks to Rotary Club. I thought I would live there forever and be an academic researcher. I was teaching, you know, hiking. I was a tour guide and a bartender, all this fun stuff. But what I learned is that I couldn't start my own company because I couldn't get a visa. I had to have an employer to stay in Norway. And so I moved home and started a company with my brother in 2009. So we both moved home. My brother had been out of college for a year and he basically promised my dad he'd work for 12 months for a real company, quote unquote. And he got, got to 11 months, didn't quite make it. But we started a company called Nine Clouds, eventually spun out a second company called Lemon Lee. And between my brother and I, we ran both of those for about a decade. And so Nine Clouds is a digital marketing agency. Originally we wanted to teach people in rural communities how to use social media to sell, which was a crazy idea before Facebook pages, before Facebook ads. Eventually, people came back and said, "That's really hard. You should do it for us." So we ended up becoming an agency, did that for a decade, was able to sell to my partner, which is really great. So everybody just kept doing the same thing, but I wanted to do something new, have a new adventure. And so I got into higher education with entrepreneurship as a way to bring entrepreneurship into higher ed. So the thinking was, how do we teach or prepare students for this world of creation, this world of building for yourself, of fast iteration? So I had a chance to do that—

Can I pause you right there? Yeah, um, because here's something I would love for you to expound on just a little bit, because I still am a fervent believer that, um, the, the core skills that you're talking about— iteration, having, uh, being open and flexible and adaptable and willing to test and all, like, all of those things, um, they often go with this concept of entrepreneurship, but Let's talk for just one quick— I don't want to take you off your timeline.

No, not at all.

But that does not only prepare people to run their own businesses. And because I think that's the thing that we're missing still is the connection of the value of that kind of thinking across sectors. You can work in— I mean, so then maybe is there places where it's not so welcomed yet, like maybe government or maybe higher ed, like, and without disparaging any whole industries. But I mean, your intention was never just like, we want to help kids start their own thing necessarily. It was preparing them for a world that those of us standing in today's world maybe don't even know or can appreciate is coming, right? There's a lot to this.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, a lot of times people call it the entrepreneurial mindset. But it's really just like surviving in this world now. I mean, if you think about what you studied and what you've been doing, and then think about your kids and how confident are you that whatever they study, they're going to do for 20 or 30 years? The chance is basically zero, right? We have to be continual learners and we need to learn how to learn. And so that's really what—

Woo! I love that.

—describing entrepreneurship, right? Is like, you're going to try stuff and learn from it and then try again. And I feel very confident that the vast majority of people listening to this will not be doing what they're doing now in 5 or 10 years. And if you're a young person, Whatever you study is not going to be the thing you do. And so you really need to figure out education is not a do it till you're 18 or 22 or 26 thing. It's K to gray, as they say, right? You're learning from kindergarten until the end of your life. And I think learning how to learn and just keeping that fresh mindset is so important. And so we can instill that at every age, right? Starting at incredibly young all the way through professionals.

I, I only wanted to touch on that because first of all, you gave me like 5 really solid sound bites there. So thank you.

Yeah, there you go. We're gonna promote the crap out of this episode with those little—

like, I've never heard K to gray, but I love that. So, okay, so what you're, you're, um, you're like re-sparking in me, which is great because the spark's always there. This, this just love and desire to grow. Personally, I have that. I have a continual learning thing. I love when I hear something new and I get to think like, how do I make that work here? I just love it. I do think there's still a ton of opportunity in particular, again, in my, you know, my field at this point, it's all about people and people development, but specifically rural people and small town people. And, um, I love talking to you because you did this in higher education And I think even in small communities, there's still people that expect that, that that's where you're going to get all of your education. We'll put air quotes around that. So I think this is still a huge thing to try and instill culturally in people that lifelong learning is— and by the way, like calling it a survival skill set, I think maybe that's how we're going to get some things done because the entrepreneurial mindset is almost like too out there and ambiguous for people to— Yeah. And there's also people that'll say, well, I don't ever want to own my own business. So why would I need to, you know, but this isn't, that's not what we're talking about. No.

I mean, you're talking about if you live in Oaks and you have the ability to find and create opportunity, you can work for anybody. Right. And this is when we, when we tie it back to rural communities, this is a skill that enables the rebirth of rural, because if we really, yeah, if we really live in a world where geography is less important, that means that the people in the rural areas need to have the skills to find opportunity. And most of the time that's not being taught in schools, that's being learned by doing. Honestly, it's kind of funny to think back to college. I had a lot of friends who played a lot of video games, right? And I was like, "Oh, they're just wasting their time. They could be out learning." And then it's like a lot of the skills they actually learned from playing video games are what's working and what people need now in the real world. So You don't always know what the skills of the next 5, 10 years are. And it might, a lot of times it actually does look like a game, right? The ability to message people, to work on your own and post GIFs and to make memes. Like that's all stuff that seems funny until you realize some of the best well-paid writers and thinkers, that's what they do, right?

So what you're doing is you're giving all of us parents just a crap ton of hope, Scott.

A little heartburn, yeah.

Well, and hope, but like, oh, so my kids not just, not just wasting his entire life playing Fortnite and/or Minecraft or whatever. But I, again, I think— so you're talking to me, I get this, like, I get this at my core, and I believe these things at my core. I don't think that it's widely accepted yet. So at some point, I want to get into this, and maybe we just go here right now if you can come back to your timeline, because we haven't even talked about what you're actually doing. But, um, like, how, how does one on their own in a small community? How do you see a person like me helping to spread this message? In practicality, Scott, what does that look like in your mind? What do you think? Yeah.

Well, I think the quick finish on the timeline is just, I went into higher ed and tried to bring this skillset, helped launch an entrepreneurship center and accelerated learning program, but ultimately realized that I think we can do this that are outside of institutions. And I think the institutions will change when there's pressure, but the alternative ways of learning and building are going to come, you know, probably from things that look like games or little startups. And then once they're tested and proven, that's when higher education or high schools or whatever will actually adopt them. And you see some people doing this, so it's not broad brush, no one's doing this well, but there's a lot more that can be done. Yeah. And I think the way that people can take advantage of this or learn about it in a small town or wherever is you actually build stuff. So the big disconnect in the traditional higher education model is it's based on time and seat. It's what they call the Carnegie method of credit, right? So it's like, I have to be in a chair for X number of hours to get X number of credits. And then at the end, I have this knowledge, but we know that you don't learn by sitting in a chair and just being there. Like, you have to, like, take the information in and do something with it. Put it somewhere, right?

Do something with it. Exactly. Yeah.

And the model, the model we have makes a lot of sense for the world we lived in when, you know, it was— you had knowledge in one place and you had to bring people to that knowledge so everyone could get that knowledge from that person. Yeah. And that's why you have big classrooms and why you have universities that gather these knowledgeable people together. But We know we live in a world where that's not the case anymore. We don't have to go to the library to get the book. We can just go get the knowledge. And when we're a young person anywhere, we don't have to just listen or hear the information, but we can actually build it and do it. And so the people that I see doing really well in this kind of new knowledge economy are people who have a portfolio, not necessarily a credential. And oftentimes they're intertwined, but you don't need to get a credential to build a portfolio. You can start building portfolio today. And a portfolio doesn't necessarily mean— we often think of maybe an artist or an architect that has a book of things they've built. But the way that I see education going, and this will kind of tie into what I'm working on now, is that, you know, we ultimately are carrying around our work with us. And that might be, you know, something you designed, that might be a blog post you wrote, that might be a a nonprofit you volunteered for, might be a sports team you played for. And the way that things are changing is that in the past, a lot of that informal learning was not documented or captured or valued or valued. Yeah. And where, where I see things going is that we no longer have a registrar that's saying, here's what Rebecca knows, because I know she was in the chair for these days and we kept attendance and she did these assignments. Instead, it's moving towards a decentralized model where informal and formal learning can be captured and owned by the student, by the person. So just like you have a LinkedIn profile and you can put your experiences on there, whatever you want, right? That could be a class you took, that could be a podcast you made. It's, it's pretty open. We're moving towards that world where it's more verifiable. So instead of me just making something up on LinkedIn, like I'm an entrepreneur, which means maybe I'm unemployed. We can actually have ownership of informal and formal learning that is provable and that we take with us. And I've been kind of avoiding technical terms, but when we get to the technical words, that's essentially— the technology that's enabling all of that is what's called the blockchain, which is essentially a public way to share information. So it's just a— it's an Excel spreadsheet that everyone can look at and can verify. So, um, that's, that's kind of going to be what's empowering this new world. Um, and so what, what I kind of call it, what the big kind of catch-all term, uh, is Web3. Um, and when we combine Web3 with education, we have Ed3. And so what I'm doing now, I say I'm working in the Ed3 space, um, and then I'm also My company is also called Ed3 with a capital E, ed3.gg, and that's where I write and launch alternative learning projects to try to scale education. So we can dive into a lot of that. I know there's some jargon there at the end, but the essential takeaway is like, you can build a portfolio now. So whatever that means to you, whatever you want to get good at, start doing it. You can find someone online to help teach you, whether it's a YouTube video or an article., and you can just put it out there. And that's the beauty is like people will increasingly be hired for what they've done rather than what they've sat through.

Okay. So you— Pass back to you. Yeah. So my mind is a little bit blown and here's why. Because, okay, so a few things that I wrote down was, you know, that we're carrying our work around with us. We're carrying our life experiences around with us. And those things have taught us things. And I love this so much because it's like, I guess sometimes it's always great when really smart people validate things I've said, and you're doing that for me. So thank you. But I one time have said that I feel like everything I've experienced personally and professionally, which is just my life, right? Like every bit of life that I've led has prepared me to do the work I'm doing now. Yeah, like I've said that, but that's out in the ether and hard for people to understand. So, but what you're talking about is, is, is making it so that it is actually resume building versus— and again, maybe resumes become an entire thing of the past because that's not really the point. And I'm thinking about students that, um, that have to have community service hours. Like, I hope that one day that whole concept gets reframed around what projects were you a part of and what, what quantifiable, measurable skills, some qualitative, maybe some quantitative, right, did you gather from that? Because it's, it's not just about checking the box to say like, yep, I was in, um, Student Senate and I was National Honor Society, like thinking of a student, right? I was in all these things. It's like, what, what skills, what did you learn, how did you push yourself, when were you uncomfortable Those are the things, right? And it happens in day-to-day life. And so I'm thinking now, like, if I had to create my portfolio, there'd be a lot of stuff on there. And it is, they're marketable skills, they're real skills. This excite— this is super exciting. I mean, I— and again, I think, you know, thinking about rural places, you use the word decentralized. I've lately been using the phrase democratizing, like, because we're talking about overcoming the barriers for people that are in rural communities. Because if we can grow and push ourselves, and I don't ever wanna say without higher education, 'cause there's certainly a role for higher education to play. And I'm assuming you feel that way as well. Yeah. But it's not discounting all of these other things. I've often said, so I was a business major. I went to NDSU. I loved going to, I like learning. So I liked the whole, I loved the whole environment, right? Of being on campus. But I've often said that where I feel like I learned the most was because I had jobs. Like, I worked, you know, all the way through college. And so, you know, the two classes I struggled with the most in college were finance-related classes, and then I ended up being a banker. So it's funny about it. It's like without context, the learning, it's not necessarily learning just because you've absorbed some knowledge and passed some tests related to it. Yeah, right. Yeah, it's, it's, yeah, there's more to it than that. So anyway, just, this is super fascinating to me, and I don't understand blockchain technology, I really don't, um, and we don't need to get into the weeds on that, but I think the fact that you basically just said it's a public way for everybody to access it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just a way that things can be verified, you know. So it's your LinkedIn profile, but it's not you saying it, it's, it's verifiable. Like, I did this, and that's also proven by by another party. So yeah, and I think the education side, I always just think about a few stats always blow my mind. Roughly 40% of people with student debt don't have a degree. So it's the idea that a lot of people are trying this higher education thing, or they feel compelled to, or life happens, right? And it's just not built for the— alternatives very well. You know, it's a great option for people, but you know, less, you know, about half the people in the country have higher ed, so it's not reaching the majority. And the majority of higher ed students are actually non-traditional. So there's all these things we think about, like we think about the 18 to 22-year-old experience, but that's the minority experience. And what we need to think about is just how do we create more options, right? Like education is going to be a huge part of this. But the thing is, like, you're out there learning, but most people your age and my age probably need to relearn, right? Like, whatever they're doing in their jobs, they're continuing to learn. And so it is an ongoing thing and not a 4-year stop. So I think the exciting piece though is that you don't have to go to Fargo or you don't have to go to Minneapolis or New York or wherever to get that education and to get it from the best people. The fact— and you see this around North Dakota, I think, which is really interesting where You see schools who can't hire enough teachers to teach all the elective subjects, and so they're bringing in courses from Arizona State University, ASU Prep, which is like a dual credit program or outlier. So these students are learning psychology, economics, entrepreneurship, and that counts for high school and a dual credit to college. And so I think you're going to see a blurring of the line between what is high school, what is community college, what is college, because We really should go at our own pace, right? We should not be held back by our age or what everyone else in the class is doing. And this is just the idea of like personalized learning. But the exciting part is now the personalized learning can also be the input. Like you're not limited by your teacher, professor either, because you can go find the best person to teach you that specific thing and maybe even bring that into a traditional degree, right? So instead of taking your finance class, you go do your job and then you show them that I have these skills. So there's a big movement called the Open Skills Network. So if someone's really nerdy and wants to learn, look into that. That basically is trying to map all of the skills within a class so that you could say, hey, I did these informal experiences and that matches up to these skills that are in my accounting class. And so that, that can count for that. And even the state of North Dakota at the K-12 level has been pretty innovative on this, where the Superintendent Basler has been pushing that work experience, even things like Boy Scouts, et cetera, could count for some high school classes. So it's happening, but it's slow, right? So I think what's gonna happen is you're gonna see pressure from the outside and then you'll see traditional education adopt it. Same thing happened with online education, right? You had University of Phoenix, you had these other things pop up and say, "Hey, we'll give it to you whenever you want." And all of a sudden higher ed and even high schools now, right, have had to embrace that model because that's what people want. So I just think there'll be more options More options just mean that all of us can kind of get the education we need, even in rural communities.

Okay, so a couple things that are kind of cool. So we are actually full-on going into PCBL, or personalized competency-based learning, here in— yeah, folks, in a small— in our small town. So it's cool, and, and I get that, and yet I know there's pushback against it, you know, because it's so non-traditional that it's very hard I— so, okay, so where I see the— some of the biggest challenges with, with, uh, more of the formal education, the traditional education model, whether it's higher ed or even high school, adopting it is because parents were raised differently. Yeah. You know, and so I, I mean, and I think that's so important. I'm pointing out a challenge. I don't— the solution, I don't know. It's also maybe to help them realize that your learning doesn't have to stop. You know, like you said, it's, it's not like education happens between the ages of this and this, and once you're past that, it just stops. But it's like, at any point, if you want to decide to write a book, you can learn from the best of the best to learn how to do that. You know, like, whatever, whatever it might be. And I just— but when you talk about pressure, Scott, where, where do you see the pressure Is it going to be private industry driven because they need those skills and they're not seeing, like, the people that are available to do their jobs don't have those skills, so it's like an actual skills gap? Is this— is it— is it market— I mean, it's market-driven, but like, where is that pressure going to come from, do you think?

Yeah, yeah, I think edtech and employers. Uh, and so I think you're gonna see, like you said, that A lot of employers, and you see this with big tech companies already, are saying, hey, if you have the Google Analytics certificate, we'll treat that as an equivalent to an undergraduate degree. You can apply for this job. And so I think what employers have been doing probably for 50+ years is really been outsourcing hiring to higher education. So by saying, hey, if you have an undergraduate degree, that means at least you can show up to work, you can be a good person, we'll teach you the other stuff. But it's kind of like A minimum entry. I know I'm going to weed out people that are going to be bad. But the problem is there's degree inflation, which is essentially is about almost 50% of jobs, something in the low 40%, require an undergraduate degree. And the majority of those jobs don't require an undergraduate degree, if that makes sense. So you have to have the degree to get the job, but really none of the skills you need are from that degree. And so, like you said, a lot of employers need workers, We can't just push people through college faster, and also there's actually a drop in enrollment, prices going up, so lots of barriers. So I think what you'll see is that employers either offer their own or they offer alternative, like if you've done these things, you can apply. I like to think globally, so globally, 93% of the world doesn't have a higher education degree. What is enabled in this decentralized model is that You can go online and do activities. You could start a community or you could work for an online community. You could do these things that are traceable, so that we would call it on the blockchain. So essentially, you've done stuff that's provable, and anyone who's done those things could then apply for this job. So you could start to see employers saying, if you've done any of these 5 things, you can apply for this position. That could be an undergraduate degree, that could be you have some work experience, that could be you've done something in an online community. I think you're going to start seeing alternatives to get into positions, and then edtech's going to step in to offer that because they're looking for how do I do a coding boot camp to get more people hired by a company, right? So you've seen like Emerging Digital Academy here in North Dakota, Lambda School is a popular one nationally, or General Assembly, and those are essentially places where you go for 16 weeks or 20 weeks and then that experience qualifies you to get a job and you don't have to have any other formal education. So I think you'll just see that kind of spread out from the tech world into other spheres. And it's always going to be limited. Like some things are going to require, you know, specific training or geographic location. Sure. But we know that in the knowledge economy, the majority of jobs are not that, right? Most of us are looking at a computer, you know, and that's stuff that we can do from a lot of different places, including small towns.

So then, you know, and you've thrown out a few stats, which I'm going to have to have you tell me where you got them and then we'll make sure we add them in the show notes so people can, you know, see and verify that information. But What, what do you have any stats on what percentage of, um, the actual economy is knowledge economy? Because I think that's, I think that's an interesting thing to consider, right? Like, I, when you say the knowledge economy, I totally, I get what you're saying. That's technically the world that I live in and work in, right? It's because I technically could do the work I do from anywhere, um, right? It maybe wouldn't have the, you know, obviously I do it in Oaks because I have a lot of pride for what, you know, and I want to help. I want to help Oaks be just like the most innovative little community, the most progressive, innovative community, small town, right, in the state. Like, that's, that's my personal goal. Um, and you're gonna have plenty of people that are like, uh, we don't want any of that. And so that's my challenge, you know. But yeah, I think, I think there's, there's still like a gap in— maybe it's people only will act if they believe that something is true. And I don't know that the average, at least again, in my, in my community, a lot of small towns, I don't know that people actually appreciate or understand how big the knowledge economy is. Does that make sense? Like, it seems this stuff still seems like pie in the sky out there, tech nerd stuff. And I'm totally just saying the things that I've heard people say. Yeah. And they don't think it's super relevant.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just think how many people were farming 100 years ago and how many people were working in a job 50 years ago. And the thing is the people you surround yourself with is what you think the world is. But when you go out and look, you'll find it. And I think we know that service economy, if you want to say that, is a broader, more easily understandable— that has become the majority of work, right? And the needs in our state of North Dakota are service economy jobs, whether it's nurses or whether it's, you know, someone at the grocery store or whatever. And it's, uh, the change will just keep coming. And I mean, obviously, the last couple years have taught us anything, it's that the digital expansion is just going to continue to accelerate. And, um, so those— now what I would call a knowledge economy job, essentially, you know, using your brain instead of your muscles, like, yeah, that's gonna just keep keep continuing to be a huge area and also like a well-paid area, right? Like if you're thinking, what should my kids do when they grow up? Or what should I do when I grow up? I still ask myself that, right? Like, yep, me too. Most likely you're going to have better economic results by using your brain and being able to connect with people anywhere. I think the thing that people underestimate is how globalized the world's becoming in the knowledge economy. So we think about globalization as like trade, or maybe, you know, in the ag sector, you think about ag prices because of weather in Ukraine. These things all affect each other. But what's happening as more people around the world are able to log in and do work is that you're going to be competing against people everywhere. And so it's not just, am I the best tech person in Oaks or North Dakota? It's if I can hire people from anywhere in the world and I don't actually have to work in the same time zone because we have asynchronous tools and I can verify they have the skills I need from decentralized education or proof of work. Now, that's really great for people who haven't had economic opportunity, and it's probably scary for people who have been in a position of economic success just because of where they were born.

Right. Interestingly enough, this podcast is engineered entirely by a company in Thailand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's because they're really good at what they do.

I mean, it's all they do, right? I love working with them.

So it's— and most people would be like, what? I mean, I was referred to them. I didn't just pick them out of, you know, the air. But that's a clear example. Like, there are people that do podcast engineering locally. I went with them because of the recommendation I got from a friend. Yeah.

And you didn't ask them what their degree was, right? You asked them to like send me free podcasts that you've done. Right. So exactly. That's the concept of like any, anyone, like you could be a 13, 14-year-old person listening to this. You can start editing podcasts and it wouldn't take you that long to be in the top 10% in the world. You know, like just get some reps and it costs probably $100 in equipment. If you have a computer already, you get, you know, a little, I get a good mic or you just start editing and doing other people's audio. Like, So that's the world of proof of work. Just show me what you've done and get people—

Proof of work, exactly.

Yeah. Get people to refer your work. And when I am looking for a job, I can go on Fiverr, I can go on Upwork, I can go on these places and all people are gonna ask is like, show me something you've done, show me your portfolio, right? So I don't think, I know from having taught and I still like adjunct and do guest lectures and stuff like that. Sure, yeah. The biggest barrier is that people are afraid to fail. They're afraid to start, you know? And it's like, We have to get our kids and our students to start making stuff because until they realize that the first time they do something, it's going to be the worst time, like they're never going to get better. Right. And I struggle with this with my oldest is getting her to do something she's not good at. It's really hard. And I think that's something, you know, we're all probably really bad at is like we're embarrassed to fail and we just need to remember that like it's not about sitting through and listening. It's about doing. And we can't do better until we do worse, I guess.

Oh, I agree. I agree so wholeheartedly. And this yet for me is— and I've done a lot of crazy stuff and kind of failed at lots of it, actually. Just didn't get the results I was hoping for. So I think this is a muscle that with intention people can develop. I do. I think you can strengthen it over time. I think I've gotten a lot better than I was when I was 18. Oh my gosh, when I was 18. And I think about how much when my body was stronger and the physical things I should have tried, like water skiing. I got up on skis one time and I was always like, oh, I don't want to try because I don't know what I'm doing and I don't want to— it was like, I don't want to annoy the people on the boat. It's like I just missed a ton of opportunity. Like I said, when I had a stronger, healthier body. And I, my oldest child is the same. He, I think he's getting better. Yeah. But it's like the idea that you expect to just be really good at anything out of the gate. Where did that, where did that belief come from? Yeah. What is that?

And I think it's the, you know, it is kind of the, I always, in my classes, I wanted people to earn points rather than lose them. Right. So like, yeah. Most of our schooling, you start with 100, right? And then you lose points, as opposed to earning points while you do things. And that's really more how young kids probably could think if you frame it as a game, right? Like when you are doing a video game, you're earning gold or you're earning points as you go do quests, right? And that's essentially what we're talking about is like earning experiences. You're earning your XP, right? In gamer talk, like, As you go do stuff and you build up your character, it's the same thing in life. Instead of thinking like, don't fail because I'll lose that A, like as long as I— Yeah, right. You got to build up towards it. And I think the, you know, the frame I really like, Scott Adams, the cartoonist, has a really good point where he talks about, you know, I was always pretty funny, but I was never the funniest person. I was always a pretty good drawer, but I was never the best drawer. But he said, if I— when I learned that I could put comedy on top of drawing, I could be the best at that intersection. Right. And so for a lot of us, it's— yep, you're not going to be the best podcast editor, but you could get really good at podcast editing. And maybe you speak two languages, right? And so then you're the best podcast editor in a bilingual podcast, or you know a lot about farming and a lot about podcasts, and you can be the best ag podcast editor. Like, that seems pretty doable, right? And a lot of times that second Yo, might even just be our location. Right. So it might be, I'm the best, I'm the best podcast editor in North Dakota and people want to work with someone local. So I'm going to be the best choice. So just thinking about, you don't always have to be LeBron James, right? Like you can be a good basketball player in Oaks and all of a sudden you're the high school basketball star. So it's like, how do you find those like two things and make an interesting or weird combination? I think for me it's always been tech and education, right? Like I love teaching, but I never wanted to spend all of my days doing it. Even when we had a company, I was selling by teaching. I was teaching people how to do this stuff and then they'd say, I don't want to do it, can you do it for us? So combining those two worlds has been really good for me. And I think like you've talked about, like you have obviously combined interests like community plus tech or community plus, you know, entrepreneurship. And it's like, that's how you stand out, I think, is finding multiple passions that you can overlap.

Right. Okay. So tell us a little bit more about in practice, not just in theory, but what does your business currently do? What, you know, what are there products? Are there, are you looking for partners? Like what? Because you, how long ago did you launch this?

Month, a month, right?

I was, I knew, I knew.

On one hand and on the other hand, like 11 years, right? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. 11 years for building this or whatever. Yeah.

You've been building this for a long time, but I am really curious because I'm guessing if there's a way for people like me to work with you, people listening to this are going to want to know what I— at least some of them will, right? Because this just speaks so much to how I want to help people. This idea of creating and innovating and being iterative, it's 100% just like, it gets me so excited. Because I love— isn't that one of the best feelings in the world? When either something you thought you knew gets presented in a way that sheds completely different light. That's one of my favorite, when new light gets shown on something that I always thought I knew or understood, and then I understand it in a new way. I think that is one of the coolest feelings in the world.

Or you thought you were weird and then you realized, okay, that actually is okay to think that or do that. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's great. So the quick version is Ed3. So it's ED, and then the number 3. Ed3 is an edtech studio and we're trying to scale education. So that can mean a lot of things, but I think about it as a studio because we're both building our own products as well as helping other people do that. And so the primary, the first thing that we do is that we're, and when I say we, it's like the royal we, it's basically me, but I partner with—

I say it all the time.

Yeah. But the first thing that we do, and probably the easiest way for people listening to get involved is like we write every week on the emergence of Ed3 as like a space. So basically decentralized education. So that's at ed3.gg, like good game. So that's kind of like gamer, old gamer talk. So ed3.gg. So I just launched a post right before we jumped on, which is why I was 5 minutes late. That's great. Like frameworks for thinking about decentralized organizations. And we've talked about the transition from traditional education institutions to decentralized. So you can read a lot about that nerdy learning stuff there.

Yeah, well, we'll for sure link directly to that in the show notes so people can—

Yeah, so check out the show notes there.

Yep, yep, yep.

In terms of like services, we get hired often to help people scale online education. So people who are teaching their own courses online, how do you make those more engaging? How do you make a better reach? And maybe even how do you create them? So curriculum development, curriculum scale, and then actually implementation. So sometimes I'll run courses, so I'm working with a company called Makerpad that teaches about no-code, essentially how to build stuff online, and I help them run their month-long cohort, right, to learn those skills. So basically helping people do non-traditional education. Okay. And then we're looking at a lot of products around kind of the stuff we've talked about. So how do we formalize informal education? So trying to build, build products that might be used one day in a university or a high school.

Very, very cool. Very cool. So thinking about, um, and this maybe just kind of comes off of what you just shared, so thinking about me, right? I'm here, I am, yeah, 18 town, 1,800 people. Um, I have formally created an organization to serve 7 counties with the intention that there's more people out there like me than maybe it seems like at first glance, right? And I, you know, furthermore, I really want people that do have these kind of alternative view of the world to know that they could have a home here. Like, they, yeah, you know, and so, and I get that that's lofty. I don't, I don't even care. I'm just like done with caring how big and out there it seems. But I physically created a space where it would feel different. I mean, that, that was— I didn't do it like everyone needs to come here to get it. It was, it was— there's something about place, there's something about space that, that I think matters. But how does a person like me who cares so much about this and would love to see the growth and trajectory of every person that is willing, right? And I work with the willing and I love the rest. That's a really big deal to me. I'm not forcing this on anybody, right? But there are people out there that are going to grab on to this and love it. So what do I do? How do I— what's an easy way for somebody like me to start?

Scott, to start doing it or to start making money on it, or not even making money, um, just spreading the idea.

Like, what, what kind of a thing does a person— do other people have to experience basically for them to go, oh, I, I get it, right? Because we talk about these things in theory, and then again, it's like the learning happens when you do it. So what kind of an event experience thing could I offer —people in my community that have that desire, but, and they're maybe still a little scared when they come in, and then my job is to host them well. What does that look like? Yeah.

What would be a way to start? Yeah. One of the things I'll take from my experience building online courses is you want to have as quick of a transformation as you can to show them what's possible. So what that means is, like, Unlike maybe a college course where it's 16 weeks long and at the end you've learned something, how do you atomize that into a single experience, an hour, a half hour, 2 hours? And at the end I have an artifact, meaning I walk away with something. And that might be a physical thing. It might be that I've uploaded my first YouTube video if I'm teaching someone how to do video, right? It might be I edited my first podcast. I wrote down 2 things that I want to do in the next year in my community because I was at a charrette with you and had a good conversation about it or something. So it's like, How do you create an atomized transformation for people that you interact with? So I think getting people to that is like the shortcut, right? Get them to whatever the quickest way, you know, in entrepreneurship we call it the MVP, the minimum viable product. But what's the quickest way to show a change? Because you need them to, if they say no to that, they're not going to say yes to everything else. You know, they're going to just like disregard. So that'd be one framework. And then I think the other thought, like a quote that I heard that I always think is so true, is like, you're never a prophet in your hometown. You know, like Jesus didn't make it in his hometown, right?

Ah, we were just talking about this yesterday. I'm always like, I'm the coolest person alive about 60 miles from here. Yeah, exactly.

But sometimes you need that. Sometimes you need that external validation. And so totally.

Yeah, yeah, it's so true. Yeah.

How do you How do you maybe use your work that you're doing in and around Oakes as something to share with others, right? So when you go to Missouri or whatever, like you're the expert 'cause you've done it in rural North Dakota. And then you get that validation that people in the community might value. So you probably know like it won't change your work or your, how much money you're making or your business, but it might get other people to take you more seriously, which is unfortunate but true, right? Like sometimes we need the New York Times to say, hey, Rebecca's cool, for people who have like been at the coffee shop next to you and haven't talked to you to realize it, right?

And I wish there were a way— I wish there were a way to change that. And yet I think, you know, we can resist against things or we can work with them. And I've just come to realize that it's still, you know, for everybody listening, if that hits you between the eyes, like it, and in the gut, like it does me all the time, you know, just you go, like, you just don't get it, you know, like, I get paid to share these ideas elsewhere. You know what I mean? When you, when you feel that way, I think it's just to remind yourself that we become a fixture in our communities. And so you become all like a blend of all the other roles you play and your professional credentialing, credibility, you know, your portfolio that you've built. It's not the thing that, that they lead with in their mind when they think of you. And it's okay, you know what I mean? Yeah, it hurts though. It still sometimes hurts. And it's okay to talk about it hurting a little bit or stinging a little bit.

But yeah, well, and also thinking about, you know, the— when you grow up in a small town, I grew up in a, you know, fairly small town in South Dakota, Brookings, like You can play basketball or football or maybe soccer if it's a bigger town. There's not a lot of options. You can't join the curling team. There's probably not a snowboarding club. There's not these things that we're watching on the Olympics, but these people are finding these weird niche sports and then becoming awesome at it. And the promise of the internet is that we can find weirdos like us. You can go find people who are passionate. You can go find Deb Brown in Iowa, or you can go find I forget her name down in Oklahoma. Becky? Becky McCray? Yeah. Becky. Yeah. You know these people, right?

Weirdos. Weirdos on the internet.

Yeah. There's weirdos like us. And I think what's freeing is that you might have more success bringing your ideas to welcomed ears around the world rather than people next door. And I think what I'm doing is a great example, right? Yep. It's not like there's a lot of people I'm meeting even in Fargo that are talking about decentralized education. I'm online in an online community talking to people in Philippines, in New York, in London, in India. I just helped a school, a 5th grade class in India last week to create online, what are called NFTs for their class basically. So it's like, you can do this with those people that want to work with you. So, you know, it's hard because what you're doing is a local geographic, you know, we want to improve our physical community. But I also think you could think about what's the digital equivalent of that and build that too, because I do, I do think about it all the time.

Because at some point to like going where the energy flows is important. Yeah, you know, and the connections I get to make because of the internet. Like I said this, it's so cool. Like I've said this a few times, I graduated over 20 years ago from high school. You know, I'm in my early 40s. And the way that I work now didn't exist just 20 quick years ago. So that's where I want to say to people, like, you don't think that 20 years from now it's going to be like a completely different world? Think of what's changed in the last 20, you know. And it's, it's, it's— so to me, I struggle sometimes with how can you discount that this is happening. But I know that a lot of it just comes down to worldview. Like you said, where you spend your time, how many people outside of any given community you might interact with, it limits what we know if we're not kind of— we're all citizens of the world, but sometimes we don't fully participate in that. So it's super interesting.

Yeah, no, it's really fascinating. I think the The people who can use pixels to move atoms is going to be a superpower. People who can use digital to make physical change, that's really hard. And that's something that a lot of people online don't have the patience for, or maybe even the buy-in for. They don't have a place that they call home that they want to make a change in. And so thinking about if there is a change you want to make in South Central North Dakota, How do you get pixels, people who have a connection or just have an interest to somehow contribute? So maybe you're not going to get 50% more people in your county to join, but you can probably increase 50% from other people who want to help. And I think about tomorrow is Giving Hearts Day in North Dakota, where it's the largest one-day fundraising event in the country, and they'll raise somewhere between $17 and $20 million in one day. That's not all coming from North Dakota. Right? Absolutely not. Those are people around the world supporting it because they care. And I mean, if you want to take it to the super nerdy extreme, the example I'm so fascinated by is the city of Miami has actually gone into the cryptocurrency world and they're making their own city coin called MiamiCoin. And as people buy that, a percentage of that goes into the city coffers, and then they use that money to pay for roads and to pay for schools and to pay for hospitals and all the stuff that they need in a city. And so people outside of Miami are in a way paying taxes for people in Miami. So there's starting to be really interesting models where you can use the pixels to move atoms. And I think that will be a fascinating space to watch, and you're perfectly positioned to be that person. You know what I mean? So Thinking about it in a big picture, I think, is always kind of exciting too.

That's— I'm, that's— I'm so— I'm, I'm not— I'm sorry for, um, your higher education, the universities that you were with and no longer are. I'm sorry for them because they lost a, a really brilliant mind. But I am so thrilled that you're back out on your own, um, because this is the stuff you're talking about. It's exactly where I think this goes next. And one of the things I would love to ask you about is kind of our final wrap here. And by the way, just congratulations on coming back home to entrepreneurship. I think it's totally where— feels like Scott Meyer's brain is supposed to be. Um, what about people skills? Where do they fit in this, this new world economy? Because, okay, so I just want to point out something you just said, and maybe that's something you can jump off of, is, you know, $17 to $20 million gets raised in the state of North Dakota, and it's not all by people that live here because they care. So there's still a compelling case for being human in all of this big discussion, right? So talk me through a little bit, like, what, what you see in that, because that, again, for me, people people are where it's all at, right?

Yeah. So I would say, yeah, like jumping into that, I think it's the most important skill. And I think it's misinterpreted because people doesn't have to mean shaking hands. And in fact, you know, writing is one of the most important skills because how do we communicate 98% of the time is via text, via email, through written word, and being able to succinctly communicate and inspire is a superpower. But I think the people skills, what's exciting, and we've seen this in what people are calling the Great Resignation, is that people have choice. Employees can go elsewhere and that globalized idea, when I have the ability to go online and find jobs or work with people around the world, all of a sudden I have a lot of choice. And so the biggest differentiator, the biggest moat, the biggest advantage a company will have is its people. And you have to keep them, right? They're not going to stay with you just because it's a job. They're going to stay with you because of whether it's mission, people they're with, being treated well, giving interesting challenges. And so being a people person or having interpersonal skills, and especially being able to do that digitally, I think is going to be so important. So how do you manage the mental health of someone that you don't see in person, right? How do you make sure that they're okay virtually? How do you work with people in different time zones? How do you communicate to someone who speaks a different language? Like when you're talking your podcast company in Thailand, you probably have to be a lot more explicit and a lot more clear than you might be with someone that you're talking to across the cafe. Right. So learning those people skills, both in person so that you can get the stories and tell the stories, and then also virtually so you can communicate it with other people. I think that's really where people skills are going. So we think about people skills as like, you know, being nice to kids in our class or getting along in the workplace. And I think that's now just half of it. Like, it's taking those skills and being able to apply them into the pixels as well, which is really challenging.

Oof, it is. Yeah, it's really challenging. And yeah, it's something I think about a lot. Yeah. Because when I think about what Growing Small Towns is about, it's an emotional connection to the place you've chosen to live. It's, you know, being proud to call where you're at home. And helping communities that we serve be that for people. So that's all— it's all rooted and grounded in interpersonal skills, you know, communication and storytelling and all of that, but recognizing that it doesn't have to look the way it always did because we're in this new economy. So I, I find this all just so Fascinating. And I, I can't wait to bring you back to Oakes. I really can't.

It was the first place I went when I moved to North Dakota. And I still use it every time I give a talk. I tell people, it doesn't matter if you're in Oakes or Oakland. That's always my line now. I love it. So people around the world gotta, gotta respect. But I mean, I think that, you know, as a final message, just like be weird, right? The weirder Oakes is, the more people want to go there. You know, you think about Someone will put something on Instagram and all of a sudden thousands of people go visit that place because they want to see that thing. We're not in the 3-channel world where you want to be palatable to the most people. It's the opposite where you want to be the most interesting place to do ag tech or the most interesting place to do community online development. So the weirder you get, the better or easier it is to stand out because there's weirdos like you everywhere. So I think Oak should just keep getting weird and You know, I think every time I've gone there, it's been weirder. So I love it. I'm excited to come back.

I love to hear that. There again, I think what you said earlier, that it's not just kindness and being nice. And I think sometimes we're trying to lump the entirety of social-emotional learning and concepts into that one statement. And we're missing nuance and we're missing you know, conflict management. Like, how do you actually work through disagreeing with somebody in a way that both people can still love and care for each other? Like, there's so much to people development, but what you just said is where it's at for me. Like, if we can learn how to just celebrate differences and embrace our inner weirdness and make it safe for everybody else to do the same, that's, that's to me like the sweet spot of community development.

Yeah, I love it. And it's different. That's what you got to be. So, well, I'm excited to help however I can. So excited for anyone listening. Great to meet you virtually and definitely reach out if you have questions or ideas. Happy to collaborate as much as I can.

So thank you so much, Scott. Come on back to us like a year from now and we'll see where all of this is going.

Yep. Keep growing rural communities. Love it. Thanks, Scott.