Education is Freedom, The Future is in Your Hands with James W Keyes

0:01Light that spark fire nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Hustle and Flowchart. Today, we'll be breaking down how education is freedom and the future is in your hands. To drop these vibe bombs, I brought James W. Keys and the EO Fire Studios. James is a global business leader, bestselling author, philanthropist, artist, musician, commercial pilot, and modern renaissance man. He is the former CEO of two internally recognized Fortune 500 companies, 7-Eleven Inc.

0:33and Blockbuster Inc. His other business interests cover a broad range of industries from retail, consumer products, technology, new space, and advanced nuclear. He sits on several public company boards, and today we'll be chatting about a lot of cool things. Learning to learn, change equals opportunity, confidence is a characteristic for your nation, and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to James and our sponsors. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolfe and Nathan Lanz is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

1:07Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. Jim, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. It would not be about wealth. And that's what a lot of people think. When you get successful, you get rich. It's all about the money.

1:45And for me, it is about freedom. And money is a way of keeping score. It's nice to have. Yes, It gives you some freedom. But success to me is really about being able to do whatever you want to do with whomever you wish to do it anywhere in the world. And to me, there's nothing better than that. And Fire Nation, that dovetails nicely with the theme of today's episode, which is education is freedom. The future is in your hands. And I want to talk about growth and taking responsibility because, Jim, you're talking to Fire Nation. That's our listeners of entrepreneurs on fire here. They are entrepreneurs, small business owners, side hustlers, you name it.

2:31They are looking to gain that freedom that you are talking about. So let's talk about taking responsibility for our own growth as individuals or, as you call it, learning to learn. Take it away. Exactly. Well, that's why the subtitle of my book is literally The Future is in Your Hands. And I do mean that quite literally because I'm chatting with you today on a mobile device that is truly a portal to unlimited learning. We can access virtually any information about any subject anywhere in the world in our hands, literally. So the importance I've found in being able to unlock true freedom is the ability to learn and to learn how to learn.

3:17And that's where I think if we can take first, as you said, individual responsibility, because a lot of times we say, well, I didn't have a good teacher or my school wasn't good or whatever. it really doesn't matter. If we can take the personal initiative and responsibility for our own future and our own education and keep learning using whatever tools are available. Today, the tools are virtually unlimited with technology. Before 7-Eleven, before Blockbuster, take us to a moment in time when you learned to learn and it benefited you. I've had so many of those opportunities, but in my case, it started out literally in a three-room shack without any running water where there really wasn't a role model.

4:04There wasn't a clear path to education. Certainly college was beyond hope even in terms of the economic realities, et cetera. But I found that the harder I would work in school, the more I would learn, the more I would study, the more success I would get, whether it came down to being in an advanced class because I had proven myself through learning or even when it came to sports, learning the game of baseball caused me to be a better baseball player because I learned the sport and worked at it. So, yeah, I found so many examples of how learning to learn could put me head and shoulders above the pack because I made that commitment to knowledge.

4:57Jim, a lot of people are scared of change. They're just terrified of whatever's not status quo in their life. But you believe that change equals opportunity. Tell us more. I do. In fact, the acronym change equals opportunity, I stumbled on that when I was writing the book, and I said, you know, that is the role of CEO. Change does equal opportunity. And change, that fear of change is the enemy of progress. It's the enemy of individuals. It kills careers, our insecurities, our fears. It kills corporations because corporations are resistant to change. The people within don't want to respond to change.

5:36And so if you can turn that equation on its head, and it doesn't matter whether the opportunity is a good one or a scary one, if that change could be a soul-crushing, devastating, macro -environmental change that you go, oh my gosh, why me? if you can find the opportunity inside of that change while everybody else has their head down, that's the very definition of CEO. The definition of entrepreneur is to be able to find opportunity in the worst of situations. Jim, over the past 12 years, I have interviewed 4 ,682 entrepreneurs, including you today. You're number 82 there. Confidence is an absolute characteristic that I have found present in every one of these entrepreneurs that I've interviewed over 12 years.

6:30Can you tell us more of your perspective on confidence? Confidence comes down to, I believe, in fact, I'm going to give someone credit for this, Harvey McKay, the author of Swim with the Sharks Without Being Alive. I was telling Harvey about my book, and I was telling him I have a whole chapter on confidence and the need to overcome fear. I said, do you have any advice? And he said, let me tell you, I've put this concept in every one of my 12 bestselling books. And he said, I've never actually written this as a title, but I'll give this to you as a gift. He said, three words, prepare to win. I was like, well, great.

7:11Thanks, Harvey. What's that mean? Prepare to win. What's that have to do with confidence? And he said, everything. preparation is what builds confidence tom brady doesn't walk into a game and go yeah i'm really the best i'm the i'm the goat i'm the best in the in the in the in the business no he spends hours and hours and hours reviewing game tapes and working on his game working on his strategy when he walks onto that field he is prepared and so that prepare to win is such such a an important element of success. Fire Nation, so few people listening right now are doing something that's so key that winners do.

7:54It's called win tomorrow today. You're preparing to win tomorrow today. You don't wake up that day and say, okay, what am I going to do today? Let me just ho-hum, go along and see what happens. Because the reality is that it's called reaction, not pro-action. And you want to be pro-active in your life. You want to win tomorrow, today, Fire Nation, by planning, by having the confidence to prepare to what you need to do so that you can execute, you can be a disciple to that plan and make it happen. And we have a lot more to talk about around these topics and more when we get back from thanking our sponsors.

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11:48Jim, we're back, and I want to talk now about the topic of clarity. Talk to us about your experience with this word. I've always wondered what it was that allowed me to be successful. And I didn't realize it until I stumbled on this shortly after being named CEO for the first time. And I actually discovered this concept in a dream. And I said, you know, wow, what is this? I've got these three things that are rattling around my head. And I wrote them down when I woke up. Change, confidence, and clarity. And I started asking people, what does this really mean? I had this really crazy dream about how this was a gift.

12:28And to a person, they all said, yeah, duh, you've had the opportunity. You've demonstrated the ability to embrace change, the most horrible change you can find a silver lining in it. You have the confidence to then do something about it. But Jim, the real secret to your success is to then have the clarity of communications and understanding. So both inbound clarity, listening, trying to comprehend, and outbound strategy. So explaining, being able to articulate in very simple terms your strategy. and really what it came down to is i had to simplify my understanding of very complex things think about it as the algebra of thought you know algebra teaches us take a complex equation break it down into simple pieces and solve for the parts and so i try when it comes to any problem i try to figure out how do i break this down into simple terms that i can understand and then to be able to turn around and articulate the solution in very, very simple terms.

13:33And I'll leave you with one thing as it relates to clarity is that Einstein once said, if you can't explain something to a six-year-old, you probably don't understand it well enough yourself. And it's so true. So yeah, clarity, critical, critical element of anyone's success. Fire Nation, how are you embracing simplicity through clarity of inbound communication, which is listening, of outputs, which is speaking. Think about how that applies to your life. Now, you believe deeply, Jim, that education is critical to the future of democracy. What do you mean by this? I do. It goes all the way back to Jefferson, Alexis de Tocqueville, who came over from France to observe our republic.

14:19And they all said, our founding fathers said, that the key to a sustainable democracy is an educated populace. And what that means is we can't self-govern unless we can understand, unless we have the power of critical thinking, of curiosity, of constructive debate. And that comes from a lifetime of knowledge, from continuing to build one's knowledge. So yeah, I do believe it's fundamental to the sustainability of democracy and to global competitiveness. There's a trend now for people to say, well, college is not as important anymore. It is more important than ever before in my mind, because our ability to compete on the global stage, particularly against those from other countries that we've taught the power of education too, and they are taking it very seriously, our ability to continue to compete globally will depend on our citizenry, our people, having that knowledge, being an educated workforce and continuing to use knowledge to separate us, to differentiate us both individually and collectively from everybody else in the world.

15:30So Jim, we talked about a lot today, but I want to really dive and dial it in into the solution. After all of this, after everything we've talked about. What is the solution? I believe the solution, both individually and collectively, is for us to harness the power of technology. It is here. It's at our fingertips. We've used technology to transform entire industries, retail. My experience with Blockbuster, to transform the way people consume entertainment. The one thing we haven't used technology for in a big way is to transform the way we teach and the way we learn. Tools are there with AI and the ability to harness AI and curate the lesson to an individual based on the way that individual is learning.

16:22It's called machine learning to enhance human learning. And all of these tools are available. What's important is that individually, we recognize the power of technology and leverage that power to keep learning ourselves, but also collectively that we help, that we come together. And my call to action is for the business community to come together and do what our leaders, our business leaders did a hundred years ago when they created the public school system, the Roosevelt's, the Mellons, that said, we need an educated workforce. So they built the public school system. Today, it's time to harness the power of technology to transform that school system so that we have an educated populace like we've never seen before.

17:08The tools are there, time to put them to use. Jim, who did you write this book for? Why did you write it? And why do we need to read it? I set out to find a way to help young people like me realize that you have virtually unlimited opportunity. Once you learn to learn, then you can do anything in this world and you virtually have the key to unlocking opportunity across the board. And that's where I started to help a guide for young people. And then as I wrote the book and I researched the book and I started looking at the implications on democracy, at the implications on humanity, and I discovered that so many of the issues in our society today are rooted in fear and uncertainty.

17:53And I even found a quote from Yoda that I love in Houston and Star Wars. It's actually an ancient philosopher that first said it, but that fear and ignorance leads to fear. Fear leads to anger, and anger leads to hate and violence. And how do you reverse that? Well, you reverse it by using knowledge as the antidote to fear. And then with knowledge, you can have a world of understanding, and understanding leads to hope, and hope leads to peace. So my original target, yeah, was young people, students. My ultimate objective is that this book is a self-help guide for humanity. We can all do a better job as collective people on this planet Earth to use our intellect to solve problems and to eliminate that cycle of fear, replace it with a cycle of knowledge and hope.

18:47Jim, what is your call to action for Fire Nation today? Where can we go to learn more about this book? There are a couple of places. The book itself, educationisfreedombook.com, is a place that you can learn more about the book and order it online. There's also a free copy available. I'm putting out a series of$10 ,000,$10 ,000 scholarships for young people. If they read the book and post up a video saying why education is freedom to them. But also my website, jameswkeys.com has more information about me and the initiative. And bottom line is my mission with this book is to help all of us individually and collectively to use knowledge for a better life and a better society.

19:37Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with JWK and JLD today, so keep up that heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Just type James in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up. And Jim, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we will catch you on the flip side. Thank you for sharing the fire. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and James for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation, what can 4 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs teach you?

20:15How about how to achieve financial freedom and fulfillment? My first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, is a revolutionary 17-step roadmap that will lead you to the lifestyle you've been dreaming about. This book took me 10 years of accumulating the genius of the world's top entrepreneurs, and you can get it all in one place when you visit UncommonSuccessBook.com. I will catch you there or on the flip side. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolfe and Nathan Lanz, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

20:52Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts.