EP:60 - Entrepreneur Inspiration - Creative Solutions in Education with Ali Kaufman

Ali Kaufman is the innovative founder of Space of Mind, a coaching company turned schoolhouse designed for students dealing with disorganization, inattention, and anxiety. Allie's journey began with assisting CEOs and hoarders, recognizing that the clutter they faced was not just physical but also mental. Her vision expanded as she observed families struggling with school-related stress, leading her to establish an educational model that emphasizes creativity and problem-solving over traditional rote learning.

Host Jason Hill  and Ali discuss the challenges imposed by traditional schooling methods, particularly the detrimental impact of homework on student motivation and well-being. She highlights the disconnect between school structures and the needs of students, emphasizing the need for educational environments that foster enjoyment and lifelong learning. The conversation also explores Allie’s innovative approaches at Space of Mind, where education is personalized, project-based, and closely integrated with real-world skills and problem-solving.

Listeners interested in educational reform or alternative schooling methods will find valuable insights in Allie’s critique of conventional education and her innovative solutions. Her approach not only reduces stress but also prepares students for real-life challenges by integrating essential life skills and resilience into the curriculum. Keywords such as "innovative education models," "reducing school stress," and "project-based learning" are woven throughout the episode, align with those researching new educational paradigms and personal development.

Connect with Ali: HERE

Questions Answered in this Episode:
1. How does Allie Kaufman’s Space of Mind program transform traditional education to reduce student stress?
2. What are effective alternatives to homework that enhance student learning and motivation?
3. How can project-based learning and real-world skills be integrated into school curriculums to prepare students for future challenges?

Timestamps of Key Moments:
[0:39 - 2:40] Ali Kaufman introduces her background and the foundation of Space of Mind, discussing how it started as a coaching service and evolved into an educational program designed to address disorganization, anxiety, and the inefficacy of traditional schooling methods.
[7:29 - 11:16] Discussion about the negative i

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Transcript

0:23

And kids are tired, so they're not retaining what they're doing for homework. And what it's doing is it's actually demotivating them for school. Welcome to another episode here on the OWL podcast. It has been a crazy day. We did a call-in show for approximately three hours today. And for the first time, we had those individuals in a group on the home page of the OWL app. People were calling into the show and connecting, and of course, building meaningful relationships. It was pretty cool to witness. Then I jumped into another podcast on the Shrimp Tag, and now I'm here doing other podcasts. So, you don't always have to wait around every month to do one show here or there. You can just knock it out all in one day, and then go back to doing other stuff the next day. What were your thoughts about today, Ellie? It's a lot of energy, but I think, you know, coming from our event that we did on Saturday with the Speakers and Coaches Network, it's super important to follow up with people, create these opportunities for networking on the go. I want to get into our guest today, though. We have Allie Kaufman here. She is the creator, founder of Space of Mind. She also has a nonprofit that she was just sharing with us about. So, tell the audience a little bit about yourself, Allie, and your journey. Oh, that's a big story. I know. I don't know. I'm just a big, prolific problem solver with a lot of creative energy. I started Space of Mind as a coaching company, working with people who were dealing with inattention, disorganization, and anxiety. So, my first two groups of clients were CEOs and hoarders. So, interestingly, I was having the same conversation with each type of client, because clutter is clutter. It doesn't matter if it's physical or mental or whatever. It's just, you know, getting in our way. So, I started the schoolhouse program, though, because the CEOs started to invite me into their homes once we were creating order in their offices. And so, I was traveling around the country and meeting with people and started to see how families were really struggling with school-related stress. And so, we could fix things in the home, but the system from the school was not fixable, and that was causing a lot of chaos. And, you know, I realized that that was the problem that I didn't need to really see anyone solving. Can you go into detail a little bit of the chaos? I have a nine and seven-year-old, so there's always chaos. So, I really want to hear from you when you say there was chaos, and it doesn't matter if you're worth $100 million or$10,000. Like, there's chaos with children, right? They don't care about these things, right? They come home, they have homework to do, and it's stressful as a parent. I was watching our producer, Stephanie, you know, coach her daughter, right, with homework. And, you know, getting them to focus on the numbers when they're not into numbers is a struggle for all parents, right? Right. Well, the first problem is homework. There's no research that shows that homework helps learning. In fact, everything we know about homework is it's doing the opposite, and kids right now are tired. Just existing in a school day is exhausting, and they're stressed, and they're stressed from things that have nothing to do with learning, and they're stressed with things that have everything to do with learning. And parents right now are, like, I feel like we need a reality show of competitive parenting. Oh, I live in Parkland. So, you get it. And parents are... I have a whole website. Parkland Talks, right? You post on it. It's like Parkland Problems, as they say, right? It's like parents are taking on this identity. If my kid is struggling, then there's something wrong with me. So, homework time becomes really stressful, and I was working with families that were literally getting divorced because there was a lot of arguing between the parents about how to handle it, and kids are tired. So, they're not retaining what they're doing for homework, and what it's doing is it's actually demotivating them for school, and kids are hating school, so they're equating that with hating learning. And we need a generation that's going to become lifelong learners. That was me. I wasn't a school type, right? I got into good colleges. I went to University of Delaware, but I was really good at math. Horrible on the English side, but now these chat GPT came to save me on that side. So, it's pretty good on my end right now. But in general, I couldn't stay focused. It was so boring, the topics, and then when I would get homework, I hated it. And then my mother would help me get through it during those times where you always had to submit papers, but I'm seeing it with my son. He's in an advanced class, and it's crazy what these teachers are giving him. He's just getting mounds of homework and tasks. I'm like, I can't believe that he has to do all this at nine years old. And he's stressed. He literally, there was days where he was like, I don't want to go to school, Mom. And we had an incident for about a 30-day period where he lost confidence, and we've never seen my son like that in our lives. He was always athletic, did good at basketball, soccer, and then just one day, he never wanted to go to school. And he had some bathroom issues, and I think he was embarrassed, and he fell a little bit behind on some of the schoolwork. And then, thankfully, he bounced back. But it took a toll on my wife because she was super stressed. She was owning his stress, and I was like, it will pass. I'm not even impacted by this. I'm like, it will go. He's a child. He'll get through this. But it speaks to me what you're speaking about. Yeah. And school should be fun. If you think back to what you did in school and the things you remember from school, it's the things you did with your hands and with your friends and that you dug into because it was enjoyable. And that's how we create memories is from the experiences we enjoy. So we've got school a little bit backwards. Allie over here was pretty smart, though. She went to GW. No, but I can resonate with everything. I feel like most people who went to school resonate with everything you're saying. I remember my school experience was never paid attention in class because maybe I was ADD. I don't know. But I remember I was always just not listening to what the teachers said, always looking around the room like, what is this person doing? Just too much stimulation happening. Oh, you. I'm like during the pop, the guests come in and then you do a lot as I want. No, I would. This is how I just like operated by never paid attention in class, would always cram for test day before test, memorize the entire text, be up till three in the morning, do well on the test, completely forget all the information the next day, like dump it all. And then the only thing I cared about or remember was like music and like being in the school plays and going to dances with my friends. So like, yeah, I feel like even I remember my mom one day, I was like, not doing well in history because I just didn't care. I remember like she sat down and was like, okay, I'm going to help you. And then she's like, you never learned how to like study. Like this is what you're supposed to do. Schools don't teach you. They don't teach you how to study or do any of the important things, even like home ec. I'm like, I wish that they still had home ec because I feel like I never like learned how to sew or cook all these like important skills that they used to have back in the day that now they don't have. I completely agree with everything you're putting windshield wiper fluid in your car. Like, you know how many people do that? The only thing I really learned from college is how to be like an adult. Yeah. Like seriously, like live on my own and that's it. Which are important skills, right? We're in a time right now where we have Google, we have chat GPT. What we need to teach is resourcefulness, research, people skills, how to talk, skills, communication, and the life skills, how to be resilient, how to have grit, how to mental health skills now. Like I feel like kids don't have resources for that. And I'm curious because I feel like during COVID, it was totally, yeah, COVID was a time where people probably saw like the holes in the education system and everything was turned upside down. Parents saw how hard it was to teach. And yeah, but nothing really changed after COVID. In fact, everybody, I got really secretly happy when COVID happened. I was really sick for like 10 weeks. So I was trying not to die while we were taking everything virtual and, you know, keep the business going and everything. And at the same time, I was like, great, this is the break we've needed that schools will finally like change their head and do something new. And what ended up happening is it was just a race to how fast could we get back to how it was. And with really very little allowance for the learning loss. And in fact, I think we've come back and parents are more stressed about how successful their kids can be, how many honors or AP classes. And we're in this time right now where college admissions is a total bloodbath these last two years. Oh, I've heard. My next door neighbor went through it and I was like, what is all this? And now like, you know, life on campus is so crazy right now. So it's, you know, I think the college system is going to reinvent itself totally in these next three to four years. I don't even think it's like necessary for so many people. You can get an Ivy League education for free on edX, right? And as a business owner, if someone came to me with a spreadsheet or a transcript that they kept of all the classes that they've taken and, you know, said, hey, I was working, but I did all these classes, I'm qualified and I can be valuable to your company. I would hire that person instead of the person who like partied their freshman year, sat in the library, whatever. Like we're in this time where creativity is our greatest human capital and schools have pretty much eliminated that. Yeah. Well, the thing I was going to mention about COVID was not necessarily like that people change, but I guess more of like, did you get more enrollment in the school after COVID because people like maybe saw that how their kids were learning? So it did open up room for people to feel less like the pods were happening and all. Yeah. Like our, you know, our program is I started Space of Mind Schoolhouse as a homeschool program with three kids in my living room. And I did that because I had toured about 25 private schools about 2008, 2009, trying to see who was doing it better because I had so many kids like your son who just stopped wanting to go at like, you know, around 2008, online bullying was now becoming a thing with social media and Edline, which is like the website to keep track of your kids' assignments was causing all these fights. Like mom would check Edline before breakfast and then yell at their kids on the way to school. Nobody wants to start their day off that way. So it was, you know, COVID did make it a little less weird to go to a non-traditional school, but South Florida is strange. We've gotten a lot of new enrollments from up North families who have come down who are more open to finding a school that fits their child. But there is down here, this sort of like, I have to be like everyone else. And I think a lot of kids are struggling because of that, because parents are afraid to feel othered or that they, you know. When you say like, I have to be like everyone else, do you mean in terms of like academic ability or just like the way you dress, like everything? I think that's everything in life. Like I need X amount of car and you live in this type of condo or this apartment. We measure ourselves by other people's success. Yeah. Everyone says don't judge and don't compare, but that's extremely difficult. Yeah. Especially with social media, literally in these kids' faces. So they're doing it with their friends and parents are doing it. It's hard to, you know, chart your own course and say, hey, I don't, you know, I'm not going to worry about what you guys are doing. I know this is right for my kid. It's interesting. We have a couple of families who's, where the parents are not American and they are looking at it like, this is how the system should be. This is how school should be. And there is no concern because when you're coming from a culture outside of ours, you're looking at what works best for your kid. I think it's just, I don't know. We've been sort of trained to not be outside of the box with school, but yet we are in an economy where you have to be outside of the box to make it big. Right. So it's tough. Can you explain the school in more detail? I really want our audience to really understand like what grade levels, what is the cost for example, how many different classes, teachers, for example, just explain it in more detail. So we really get a full understanding. So I started the school house in 2010 and it was long before COVID popularized homeschooling and pods, but I figured out that homeschooling was a way to kind of create a school without technically and, you know, being a school. So we're compliant to our families and our kids and obviously the homeschool and state graduation requirements. We have kindergarten through 12th grade. We also have a gap year program for up to age 26 where we teach workforce development and life skills and help students launch their own businesses. We do private coaching for kids, for adults. We've got adult programs because adults walk onto our campus and they're like, I want to go here. So now we teach, you know, adult rock band and cooking and art and all the things that we do for kids. But we have, you know, camp and all that. So our schoolhouse has 50 kids on campus. And then we have a virtual program that we write all of our own curriculum. So it's all, it's written in the gifted format, which is collaborative and creative and interdisciplinary. And it's all project-based learning. And we write a brand new curriculum every summer for the coming year. So it's always really current, which keeps our educators who we call coaches on their toes too, because we're all lifelong learners ourselves. I'm curious, like when you're writing the new curriculum, how does that process occur? Like who's involved? All of us. Okay. Yeah. So we do, last month we had a professional development day and the coaches spent the whole morning just brainstorming. So we came up with the theme for next year is we are the world and kind of got inspired watching the documentary that just came out a few months ago. And so how are we responsible for ourselves and one another and the planet and the economy and sort of the globalness of our existence right now. And so we just kicked off, like, here's the theme. And then everybody spent the morning just like, you know, on butcher block paper all over the room and just kind of mapping it out. And then we'll take a few weeks in June where we close the campus to kids and we'll dig in and start brainstorming. And then we'll have July where everyone breaks out and works on their sections. But because it's so interdisciplinary, we're able to cover standards for multiple subjects within one class, so to speak. So that really allows like the kids who hate math, we teach math through the music. So used to be when before we started doing this in the first couple of years, the kids who hated math would hide in the bathroom for 20 minutes. So that wasn't really productive. So the curriculum comes together by August and then we're, you know, off and running with it. But it's it is a lot of work, but also really keeps us, you know, feeling like we're meeting the kids where they are. So we take into account each student and their learning style and their interests and their attention span. So what we're going to do is shift this over because we've got this big TV here. So I really want our audience to see it. What I'm going to do is everyone listening out there, she's posted on our feed right now and just click right here, that link, space of mind. Because I think it's important, you know, when we when we're on podcasts, all the time it's audio, people can't visualize what you're speaking about. But then we open up social media and it's right there. And when we see some of these pictures, we could really kind of explain it and understand it. So can you give us an understanding? Like what's happening here? Like let's use this one as an example. Our kids have their own business. It's called Mason Jar Munchies. They have a booth at the green market in Delray every weekend. They create the products, they produce the products, they sell them, they manage the finances. A true entrepreneur. That's absolutely awesome. See Wesson and Kennedy out there. They did create a lemonade stand and they call it W&K Legendary Lemonade. But I'm like, we got to start an Instagram account. You got to post like this. Ours, don't take it out there. But you think about all the kids have just a lemonade stand and it stops there. But they really could go a little deeper. It's free to brand everything, throw an Instagram handle up there. And it changes every year, right? A different group of kids come up with different things. We've just opened after a four and a half year long construction nightmare, a commercial teaching kitchen. So now we can actually make like real food products. We've got a meal box project. Is that on here? There's probably a picture somewhere on there. Cool. Where should we go? Show us something exciting that our audience should see. I think there's a lot. There's a recording studio. Yeah, we've got a full recording studio. Is that right here? No, that's our lunchbox theater. Oh, that's pretty cool. It looks like that right on the right, right here. Yeah, that's cool. So here's a cool story. Yeah, we go fishing. I want to go to this. That's what I'm saying. All the adults want to go. So we're right in downtown Delray. So we use the whole city as our extended classroom. But we do have a full recording studio. It's student run. The kids this year that are really into the rock band, they were not musicians to start. And they really discovered that they've got some chops. We've got amazing music coaches. And so they asked, what's the hardest song that we could sing? And they came up with Bohemian Rhapsody, which is pretty hard. Well, I'll have to send it to you. They've just they're mastering it right now, but they have recorded and matched note for note the whole song. And it's insane. And these are the kids that did this. These are quiet kids that did not think they could sing. But in regular school, kids aren't getting out of their box. They're just trying to. It's so interesting you say that because my other show, The Shrimp Tank, has been there for four or five years. And finally, and this just shows you how long it takes to move the needle at universities, is we took my co-host's class, which is an entrepreneurship class, and we had them sit in on our podcast. And it was so cool where they're getting to actually hear stories like yours, not just reading out of a textbook. And really implemented into the curriculum to really learn about what business owners are really going through. And it's working out phenomenally. But very few, think about how many podcasts there are, over three million of them. How many colleges literally have entrepreneurs coming in and speaking to classrooms through podcasting? Sometimes a lot of guest speakers, but really hearing the rawness of this conversation. Even getting the students to have their own podcast. Students, they're expected to do all this stuff outside of school. And it's like, when do you have time to do that when you have homework required, sports required? I remember being the most exhausted and stressed I ever was in my life was high school. I will always say that because I lived 30 minutes away from my school. So getting there and back, having to play a sport every season, private school required, being in the musicals, then staying up all night studying. One of our biggest success stories, and we've had a lot of kids that have come out of our program and doing wildly amazing things, but Zach Hirsch started a sports podcast in ninth grade in our program. And summer before 12th grade, I was like, you got to build a portfolio and put this online so we could use it for college admissions. He ended up, he's kind of like a savant when it comes to sports forecasting, like handicapping. You definitely need to check him out, Mystic Zach. He's on World Star Hip Hop. He's got his own podcast with Pac-Man. He's doing right now with Caitlyn Jenner and a show. He's all over the place. It all started from this one small podcast that he did in ninth and 10th grade. And then in 12th grade, he went to the MIT sports analyst conference and was the only kid there. But it came from the confidence of realizing that this was his passion and the potential that it had. And so now he's like 22 and crushing it in the broadcasting world. I'm curious. So you said the school goes up to 12th grade and then there's like the gap year program. So in terms of once the students get to the end, I guess, how does it work? Is it really like an individualized plan for each student in terms of like, do you want to go to college? Yeah. So some of our kids have done passion projects after high school, you know, recording an album or competed in equestrian or whatever they were doing. Other kids have gone to culinary school or technical schools for different things. A lot of our kids go to college and a couple are just still figuring it out, which is cool because it's hard to be in high school and it's hard to figure out who you are and then figure out what you want to be. So not everyone does that at the same time or at the same pace. So gap years are becoming they've been very popular in Europe for decades. And we're seeing now with the cost of college, you know, you pay a hundred grand a year and your kids partying for two years before they get it out of their system. I feel like having like an internship or something like in between where you actually get into the job force before you, it's so important. I don't understand why we do it the way we do. It doesn't make any sense because we've been doing it forever and we don't like change. Let's also talk about it's really hard for small business owners to get interns, right? Because the laws, right. When I was in New York city, I would do free internships, you know, being a financial advisor in New York city, you know, it was a, you know, a hot spot for getting students from NYU to then, you know, come in and intern for free for a month or two, right. Nothing crazy. And then just sit by the desk and watch us, right. And do a couple of tasks here and there like, Hey, we need to have some photocopies done of this or input this data. And you know what ended up happening? Like no more free internships. And then when that happened, we're like, okay, so let me get this straight as a business owner. I'm going to hire someone for a month and a half in the financial service industry, which is so complex to then teach them what I can, if I'm going to pay someone to like photocopy, right. And store data like that's, they're not going to learn much. So, you know, it ended up backfiring because we don't want to hire somebody for six weeks and train them. So it was really difficult to that point to take on paid interns. I'd rather hire someone part-time that I could train and get going or full-time. So it kind of, it kind of squeezed a lot of small business owners to hire interns. The bigger organizations can have a whole internship program because of course, one day those interns turn around and really get hired. But small businesses, when you have one or two staff, it was really difficult. And we still see that problem today. So the people who write the laws are not entrepreneurs that, you know, really understand like how that really makes an impact because I would love to hire a couple of students, you know, and, and just sit, you know, in my office and watch me. You will learn so much. They don't want to do that though. Their, their attention span doesn't really. Well, watch me, but with tasks, you understand what I'm saying, but not about the money element or just, you know, giving back, mentoring. And it's an issue, but I agree. As long as you hire people and you know, you. Mentorship is key. I mean, I'm a big believer in mentorship. Without the mentors in my life, I would be nowhere. I think, you know, the kids who have adults that are invested in them, they will go so much further because they feel valued. I agree. And I think more universities are never going to change when they just keep seeing the amount of applications pouring in and people willing to pay 50 to $75,000 per year at these private universities is why would they change? Yeah. Right. If the money keeps coming in. What was your experience? I'm curious, like in your education with college and everything that made you want to change this, like to change the system. Yeah. I grew up in the eighties when they took all the kids with busy brains and they put us in the gifted program. Well, when I was out of college, I tested off the charts for ADD, but you know, when I was a kid, we were all ADD or autistic or full of anxiety. That's where all we all landed. But in, you know, in elementary school, the gifted program was a half day pullout. We were treated like we were special. We were told we were, we were taught to be leaders in third grade. I learned the rules of brainstorming and how to run a think tank. And, you know, like these are things that I use every day. And I never forgot Ms. Willie, our teacher, like she was amazing and she changed all of our lives. And, you know, when we, when I got to college, I kind of had a freak out because I hadn't realized I had to rearrange, like restart all my systems and learn new things. Cause I was so, you know, used to being so creative, but after college, when I was, you know, Facebook happened and, you know, these last 15 years and we've all kind of reconnected, almost all of us are doing incredible things. We're CEOs, we're, you know, all of my friends are super successful that came out of this program, but we're almost all diagnosed with something related to having a busy brain. Today, if I were in second grade and got put into the gifted program, I would have been medicated. I would have been told something was wrong with me. Maybe I wouldn't have even made the gifted program because my brain would have been all over the place. And it was different. So I grew up just understanding that creativity was the cure. It was the, the thing that made everything make sense and that it was boundary-less, right? And so the, the seeing how the kids and the families, when I started the coaching program were struggling and there was no room for creativity, there wasn't fun in the day. And then they come home and now you got mom yelling at you to do eight hours of homework when you're nine, you know, like it's, it doesn't, it doesn't feel good. Um, so I started the program that I actually had, but in public school, that gifted program has gone now. Now it's how many honors and AP classes can we get these kids to take? What do you even think about like traveling? Like I was telling my wife, you know, it's Mother's Day coming up and I have an event on Saturdays. I'm like, I don't think we go anywhere. But then I was like, why can't we just take the kids out of school on Monday? Like who cares? And then like you get into that conversation. You're like, why does it matter? How many days? I literally was asking my wife this morning. I was like, what does it matter if we missed two, three days? So they put pressure. Yeah. The pressure. Because in public school, well, here's why it's financial. In public school, the schools get paid based on how many kids attend each day. So especially after COVID principles were like, how do we improve the attendance? Because now it's after COVID it's okay. Like I, you know, kids miss 20, 30, 40 days of school now because they're stressed or they have a headache or they don't want to go or whatever. And schools are really struggling because it's translating into financials. So that's a big issue right now. And, and that pressure comes down on the parents and then the parents put the pressure on their kids. But ultimately, like we just had a student transfer into our program from a really prestigious prep school down here. And she has a disease that kept her out of school a lot. And the stress of having to make up the work when being sick, when, you know, she was out a couple of days this week and mom was like, what can she do at home? And we're like, she doesn't have to do anything at home. We'll, we'll handle it when she's well. Because when you're sick, the last thing you want to do is homework piles up. So I've seen in my family, it's like, Hey, like we don't want to miss too much school because your kids fall behind. And it's very stressful because the amount, it just layers on top. But that's what I'm saying is like, I'm a travel type. Right. They're going to learn more traveling. Isn't it pretty cool to fly to a different country and just see more of the real world? So when we have kids that travel, we write curriculum for their trip. So, you know, we'll give them credit for you're going to Italy. Let's learn about it and come back and teach your friends. Um, you know, that kind of flexibility is, is key because it does empower a family to do it. I will say colleges get that part right. Like they, like some colleges do abroad programs. I did a two month abroad in Costa Rica my junior year and ready. If you look back at all college, like all the classes, I saw only one I remember because it wasn't really a real class. It was a philosophy class. You had to write a paper at the end. What'd you learn about the culture? And we just went around like having fun, like we hiked up a volcano. But I'm sure you learned a ton. So much. Cause we hung out with the locals. And you were feeling good while you were there. Of course. You know, we went and hiked in 30 miles into the rainforest, you know, saw, you know, all these spider monkeys, alligators, sharks, and you just learned about different cultures and you know, the, the class didn't really matter that much. That could have been at any university. So after, so a friend of mine owns a student travel company in California and, um, we met actually at the March for our lives, which each taking groups of kids to DC for the first March after the Douglas shooting. And I asked her how she started her company. And she was a history teacher in a high school in San Diego. And after nine 11, she asked her students, what's the one thing we could do to bring on peace without war. And the students overwhelmingly agreed. It was travel. And so they started in their classroom, a student run travel company. She eventually quit her job as a teacher to run the company full time. And, um, and ultimately if we look at what's going on today and, and in the world and how little we understand each other, it's because we're stuck in classrooms learning in textbooks instead of being out in the world, learning from each other and having, you know, a cultural understanding of how to accept and be tolerant of people who are different and learn from those differences. It's crazy. It's the easiest time ever in our history to book a flight right now. We can book a flight right now to Miami and go anywhere practically as long as you got a passport anywhere. But within the United States, like I could jump on a plane and go to Texas and be there later today, you know, with the time change and go out and have fun. Right. And we're just all, you know, kind of sucked into, well, it's not acceptable. Right. Don't, don't do this. Don't do that. I'm going to get in trouble. I'm in trouble or, and ultimately that's where it's backwards because we're only missing out on those experiences to grow. I give Ellie some credit. She travels. She sees an opportunity. This one's like, I could house swap. I travel and I get into trade too. I'm like, Hey, I'll trade. Like I'm always all about like trades and like resource. Yeah. Well, that is a big thing. Bartering, like a lot of bartering sites are swapping apartments. You live in Miami. I live in Vegas. I have a friend whose family does it every summer. They swap like and go to another country for a month and some other family comes to live in their house. It's cool. It is pretty cool. It's harder with kids though, unless they're in your program because I'm glued to Parkland. Right. I can't really swap with another family, but it would like with all jobs being so remote these days, like technically, you know, if they didn't have to go to that school, like I could swap to another state for 30 days and come back and go right back on track and my business would not suffer. Yep. You could spread owl in that state, do events. Oh, for the future. How much is the cost? We didn't talk about that. So we're like a private school. So it's around 33,000 for the year. Um, it's, we have a three to one ratio and that's where the magic happens. Right. So we know, and this is what also made us so successful in COVID. We got online overnight. Like we were, we were online a few days before the public schools. Um, and we didn't have any learning loss because we knew our kids, we knew their families. They knew we knew their family dynamics. We understood how they learn. We knew their ticks. We knew what stressed them out. And so we had a captive audience for that last quarter of, you know, spring of 2020 that, you know, our kids were able to continue on as normal. They didn't have any of the stressors that other kids had then. Yeah. Where everyone else is panicking. I know in my house, it was, it was kind of crazy those days where he's jumping on zoom and the kids didn't know how to use zoom. My son back then was in first grade, right? Like my wife had a son and then I had assignment and my wife's like, how do we use teams? Team sucks. Yeah. You know, back then it was really bad. It's gotten better, but like, team's not like zoom. People are like, how do I log in? I was like teachers. Good luck. My mom was, and the parents weren't muting stuff. I mean, and you saw the reality of some parents how stressed they were screaming at their kids, like sit down. I'm like, no, no mute. Right. We, a lot of people saw, you know, the other side of parenting. A lot of teachers, you know, I, we were, we were running, um, an afterschool program and, uh, some title one public schools at the time through our nonprofit. And we tried to keep the afterschool program running for that hour a week that we were doing it. And we saw some crazy stuff in the background, right? We saw drug use. We saw naked parents. We saw, you know, like a lot of stuff that, you know, nobody needs to see, but also it helped us really understand what environments those kids were in. And, and so, you know, there is something to be said from like when a student joins our program, we know a lot of things about them. We know, um, you know, sometimes we've been to their homes. We know what their bedrooms look like. We know like what their family dynamic is in a way that helps us to really communicate with everyone in the family about how to be the most successful they can be in, in a learning environment. How does this translate to the work environment? Cause what you're saying is you're stripping down the realness and then with the work environment, environment with HR policies, etiquette, it's like, it's almost like we go back to like right. Does that make sense? We're, we're treating our kids as though they are in that environment right now, right? They're, they're learning how to communicate, how to build relationships, how to, you said it before confidence, it's everything, right? Um, they're learning how to articulate their creativity. They're learning how to work in team with other kids. They're learning tolerance. Like we're a small program. So if your kid doesn't get along with someone, we can't just change their class. We're going to handle it in the moment. We're going to teach them how to resolve conflict, how to create a repair when they need to in a relationship. So these are all the real work skills, right? The, the hard skills anyone can learn. Once you're passionate about something, you can learn how to run all this equipment. You can learn how to crunch the numbers for your business. You can learn production and operations, but the soft skills which are not taught in a traditional school are arguably the most important because once you're passionate, you'll learn about anything regarding your passion, but you can't follow your passion if you can't pay attention or you can't show up and get out of bed, right? Of course. And how many people are enrolled? We have about 50 students. Yeah. And then so like per grade, I guess how many? So we don't divide by grade. We have house groups, kind of like Harry Potter. Um, so we have five house groups. Um, there's a lower elementary and upper elementary, kind of a middle school group and then a like sort of like ages are together, but we don't have a hard and fast line where like some ninth graders roll better with the younger, with the middle schoolers and some middle schoolers might roll better with the 10th graders. Um, we also don't stigmatize on learning levels. So we have some fourth graders that are at 12th grade level in math right now. We've got, you know, 11th graders that are reading at a third grade level. We're not going to put the 11th graders in a third grade group. We're going to meet them where they are with their peers, but the fourth graders, some of them can rise up and be with the high schoolers and they're holding the high schoolers accountable. Right? So it's, um, you know, if you're in a 10th or 11th grader and you've got a fourth grader show up in your math class, you're not going to let them best you, but we're able to really be so flexible based on what's best for the student. And that's where, you know, they get to be comfortable and their sweet spot. That's really interesting. Yeah. Well, I think it's that time, right? When we go into the owl app and we look at what experts are available to call and we're going to call one of them and we're going to bring them live into this show. So that sound good with you, Allie? Sure. She's in. So I look for someone, we'll put Alexandra Labar. I was sneaking through her profile a moment ago. You two could chat a little bit while we wait for her to pick up. I don't know takes a minute to get connected. Of course. Do people know that they're about to be called? No, no. Well, they know because they're alive, but they don't know they're on the podcast. Oh, really? Hello. Hey, what's going on? Hey, you are live on the owl podcast. Alexandra, Allie here in the studio. Allie, if you do not mind, try to keep it a 30 seconds or less. Just tell Alexandra a little bit about who you are, your business. And then I want Alexandra to ask you a question. Okay. Hi, Alexandra. How are you? I'm great. How are you? And she's a past guest, by the way. Okay, cool. So I guess you know the drill. Well, I'm an educator. I run a very non-traditional educational services company. We work with students from kindergarten up through age 26 and we work with adults. And our mission is to use creativity to be the antidote to learning related stress. And Alexandra lives in the rural springs, by the way. Right on. Well, we're in downtown Delray Beach. Oh, you're in Delray Beach. I was going to ask where the school was. Yeah. How many students do you have? So we have about 50 on campus and then we have a virtual program with kids from all over the country. Wow, that's amazing. How many teachers for that program? We have about 26 on staff right now. So as I was just saying, we have a three to one ratio of students to educators. Very awesome. Alexandra, she was just sharing that the students have different businesses they're operating. It's pretty darn cool. So think about children at early age when they go to school, they're literally setting up a coffee shop. So they're learning those skills to run a business right out of the gate where folks like myself and Ellie over here would go to school and be bored to death in the back of the classroom because we lost focus and we hated homework where a lot of our students are really getting out there and doing things. Also, they don't have homework. No homework. I love that so much. We talk about that all the time where we feel that schools kind of not teach people like us, like entrepreneurs, being able to just go out there and doing things, your passion, it's more structured. So what you're doing is incredible. You're getting children and ready for the world because that's the real world. That is true. I love that. Thank you. Well, we got to ask Alexandra a question. Alexandra, Ellie has not met you before. So give us 30 seconds who you are. Give us your elevator pitch. I want Ellie to ask you a question. Awesome. Well, Alexandra Silva Labar, I am the founder and owner of Alexandra Marketing. We're a full service marketing firm. We help businesses with their branding, mission, vision, really kind of take their entire marketing and put it into more of a just division, making sure that it's kind of all uniformed. And I'm also the author of the book called The Power of Networking. My passion is to help people become a better networker and connect higher with their clients and whoever they're speaking to instead of that quick, just hi, hello. We want to make sure we have those deeper connections. My book kind of talks about the seven essential C's of networking, how to get out there and really meet your ideal clients and become a better networker. That's awesome. We were talking earlier about mentors, and I would imagine that you had somebody in your world that was crucial to teaching you how to go out and communicate and be confident while networking and putting yourself out there. Yeah. So I had a lot of different mentors and I actually kind of had a different route where my parents passed away when I was very young. So at 13 years old, I had no parents. Yeah. So I had to lean on to so many people for resources because, of course, I didn't have my parents. And I just became really good at connecting with people because almost was forced to do it. Yeah. So I even didn't even know how great I was at it until going into corporate America. And I was always the one that's connecting everyone. And then I kind of had to think about it. I'm like, wow, I just became a really good connector because I had no other choice. I needed to lean on to other people. And I knew that I couldn't do it alone. And that's the same thing as business, right? You can't do it alone. That's why my book and I'm so passionate, even what Jason's doing here, connecting everyone. We can't do it alone. We need people to help us take and move our business forward. And it takes a team. It takes those networking alliances to help you in your business. So that's what it's all about. Yeah. Well, and resilience and grit is everything. It's all boats. We're on your Instagram account and we're showing the audience on the TV, your book, your flyers, some of your events. Very cool. Staying busy, busy, busy, busy. I love, like I said, speaking to people about networking because that word networking, people think it's just going to events and handing out business cards. And it's so much bigger than that. It's that those deep human connections and being able to find common ground and build that rapport. So the world needs more than one relationship. And you saw a problem. When I moved down from Boston and I started my business, I was working primarily as a coach on sort of clutter and disorganization, anxiety, et cetera. And I went to Barnes & Noble every day and I sat in the self-help section and everyone who picked out a self-help book, just found a way to talk to them. And that's how I did it. And everybody can relate to anxiety, disorganization, and attention. And that was how I started. I got my first 20 clients just from hustling them up in Barnes & Noble. That's amazing. That's an amazing. Nellie, I'm sending you to Barnes & Noble. Hey, you like authors? You could call them Authors on OWL. I love it. It's so funny. You reminded me of one of my seven essential keys to networking is connecting and finding common ground and also creativity. So that was you being creative. You're like, how am I going to get business? That's brilliant. I actually got a client, some woman on the line of Publix in front of me, like receipts and stuff were falling out of her bag. And I was like, hey, I can help you with that. And of course, her whole house looked like her handbag. So I was working with her for a long time. But yeah, if you're not afraid to talk to people and you can naturally find a connection, then ultimately that's what matters. We were talking about how do you succeed in college or in the workforce. It's about the relationships that you make. If my kids can go to college and make a relationship with their TA or their professor, that makes all the difference. And that's way more important than, you know, getting the good grade or it's about making the impression. Yeah. And showing up. Yep. I'm show up scared, right? Because if you keep showing up, then you're not going to be scared anymore. Yeah. I'm freaking out every day. 90% of the day. Yeah, it's okay. It's okay to be a little scared. It's okay to go up to someone that you don't know and you're feeling a little anxiety, but show up anyway, because once you show up, magic happens. You're like one person away from meeting like a huge client that can change your business, change your life. You just don't know until you do it. So I tell everyone, keep showing up and show up scared. Because if you keep showing up scared, you will no longer be scared. We're always scared to do something, but fear holds us back. Yeah. But we joke that's like the unofficial motto of the school is just show up. Like, I don't care if you show up in your pajamas, just show up. Because if you don't get out of bed, you can't do anything. But we've had kids that just show up. Sometimes we put them back to bed up in the yoga studio and give them an app or cook them breakfast an hour later and get them started on the day again. And what they learn is that you can always find the start, but if you never leave the house, you won't. And so it is about showing up. What about just try it? Too often, everyone's like, well, I don't want to try it. And it's fear to start something new. And I think that's also important because everyone knows that the you just try things like podcasting. It's the worst podcast host in the world. I'm getting okay these days. But in general, I just knew I needed it for my business and I just tried it and I got better and better. Ellie did the same thing. I knocked on her door and I was like, hey, I kind of need another co-host. When she just started working there and she just tried it and now she's 70 episodes in. Yeah, we try to get them in a kit to try things twice, right? Like the no thank you portion, try it twice. Because the first time you're in your own head and the second time you have a different experience. And if after two times it's not your jam, that's okay. You've tried it and you can move on and know that you're not going to die, right? That's basically it. Nothing's that dramatic. And I was watching a TikTok video about this. It's like they gave two classes the same task. One was like build the perfect pot and the other is like build as many pots as you possibly can during the semester. And the one that I tried to build the perfect pot didn't look as good as the ones at the end that were done over and over again because they just got so good at making pots. And that same thing in business, right? You can try as hard as you want to get the perfect podcast or the interactive podcast. And I'll use that as an example. People don't know that booth that I had at Alexander's event just four weeks ago. I've done it like 40 times and I made it better every single time. And it's because I tried it. But everyone else is trying to like write it on a piece of paper. You just can't do it the right way unless you experience what people are talking to you about. Alexander, thank you. We are short on time. Appreciate you joining us on the podcast. Pretty cool, right? Yeah. The best part about this app is like, you know, you are not required to speak more than 10 minutes. You could request more time. But, you know, it ends, which is great for networking, you know, on the fly. And we've all been kind of sucked into a meeting, you know, in person or on Zoom where you're like, I just can't get off the meeting. It just like shuts you right up. So yeah. Yeah. So it's what you were just saying. Before I started Space of Mind, I was working at what was then the world's largest software development company. I've since been bought by IBM, but they had created the universal software development process. And I had my own office because my ADD did not meet well with Cube Life. But I was staring one day at the poster of the software development process. And I was always working with kids outside of my job. So I was tutoring at the time, some kids that had a lot of test anxiety. And it clicked for me one day. And I think this is the sort of genesis of Space of Mind was that when software developers create their product, the testing phase of the software development lifecycle is the longest part of that lifecycle. And it's designed to break the product, right? You want the product to fail so that you can understand how to make it better. As soon as you've gotten enough things right, you release the product, but you immediately start working on the next version. There's no expectation in development of perfection. And in school, you get the test once, nobody hands it back to you and says, hey, I noticed you missed these questions. Can we sit down together after school before we move on? I want to make sure you learn this. And you're penalized for getting it wrong. So there's this expectation and learning of perfection. And you have to be on on test day, there's no room for not feeling your best. And in life, in business, we don't have that. There's so much room for mistakes. In fact, everyone who's successful will tell you that it's their mistakes that made them so. Oh, I've screwed up this app so much in the early days. I go back and say to the next person who builds something similar, hundreds of thousands of dollars. What we built, what I thought was going to work, the feedback we received, and then we switched it. Because what you think on paper, like, oh, this is the onboarding journey, people are going to watch a video and learn how to use that. Nope, I want to skip. Right. Even when you force them to watch it, they aren't listening. Right. When you put word down on here, it's like, nope, they're not reading the words too long. You know, you know, four sentences too long. One sentence, maybe. But it's it's a different world today than it was 30 years ago, because the amount of noise out there, there are so many websites, so many social handles, so many apps. And, you know, unless there's enough value for someone to sit there and watch everything, it's it's it's hard these days. And you have to, you know, if you're going to build an app out there, I'll use that as an example or any business for that matter is just test stuff and then go with your gut and just keep changing and getting feedback. And failure is part of the process. Yeah. And, you know, perfectionism is this myth, like, I don't know what perfect even is, you know. So being afraid to fail is never going to get you anywhere. And here's the thing. I've interviewed over 300 CEOs and entrepreneurs now through both of our shows. And what you start realizing is no one knows what the hell they're doing. Absolutely not. I really mean it. Like, everyone might be good at, like, the one part of their business. But then you think they know about, like, you know, the finances with like the retirement accounts for their employees, how that all, you know, really works under the side or the legal side. It's just like it just once you have a business, there is so many different verticals. And it's practically impossible for someone to know everything about each vertical will know a little bit about each vertical. And I think that's where lots of times people get it wrong. Entrepreneurs are really good generalists. Yeah. Right. Often they're like they're really good specialists. No, they know how to put out fires. They know how to communicate. They have good etiquette. They have good time management skills. And they know a lot about all the different things operating their business. But they know when to hand it off when they're not the expert. Right. Well, finding the right people that can take your vision to the next level is everything. And and then, you know, letting that process happen and having a mentor to actually, you know, share this information and listen and take and take constructive feedback, which I am horrible at, at least tells me all the time and actually then, you know, execute with the feedback. I'm listening. I just like to give back to you a little bit. But usually I'm taking it in and then I do it and you're like, he did listen. He wasn't just messing around. Sometimes you say that. Sometimes she's like, wow, he actually did listen to a lot of this stuff, even though it sounded like he was not. Yeah. I have way more respect for the people who tell me I'm wrong than the ones who walk away and silently probably think I am, but would never tell me. Oh, I love that. I'm from Philly. There's realness. Yeah. I'm just going to tell you to your face. Like sometimes I'm like, because I went to Catholic school growing up and it was like very much like you don't speak, you know, out to your elder. So I literally say I was like, was I too rude? He is my boss. Like, oh, thank you. And then I was like, ah, nah, it's okay. He needed that. He needed that. Yeah. And I'm like, well, we are a startup. Take him when he's down. It's a different culture, you know. Yeah. I think it's important to say how you feel because otherwise we build resentment and things like, you know, but you know, not everybody is comfortable with that. Well, sometimes cross the line sometimes, you know, by not being respectful in the right format, because I think sometimes you'll say that, well, I'm allowed to say how I feel, but be careful. That's the person who strokes the check. Like in a business setting, I'm saying like, do it with etiquette, I guess is what I'm saying. Like naturally tell them how you feel, not in a slang. Like I think social media gets this wrong. Like I'm supposed to be able to say how I feel at work. It's like, yeah, but that doesn't mean you could use F-bombs, right? It doesn't mean, you know, that email shouldn't be like, dear John, like you kind of understand what I'm saying. Maybe it's not coming out the right way, but I'm just saying it should come from a space of like, tell it so that it's constructive feedback in the right direction, not in a, you know, un, you know, etiquette way, if that is even a word, but a bad etiquette, right? Inappropriate. Inappropriate. That's the word. That's the word. So yeah, I mean, in a space of mine, it's really important to me that we live our truth, right? We want to teach the kids how to be vulnerable and how to own whatever their emotions are and communicate what they are. So I want our coaches to also, we call our educators coaches, and I want them to also be able to be in a vulnerable state when they're at work. Obviously, sometimes like we have to dance around that boundary, right? But it's important that we're all, I think kids do this all day during regular school. They can't express their emotions. They don't even have words for them sometimes. And then they come home and it's like they regurgitate everything all over their parents, right? Because it's all like, I'm, I'm totally accepted at home and I can just get in the car or get home and just release it all. And then now you're fighting with your kid because they're like losing their minds at home. But if they learn how to release it during the day and deal with it in the moment, like I'd rather have a student, you know, be like, wait, I need to take a minute from class because I'm feeling something and I need to work it out. Then sit there in class and like waste their time because they're, they're not able to focus. That's going to be my new thing. I'm like, oh, you need a minute? You could take a minute or two. Then come back. Is that it? You can do the same to me. Okay, deal? Wally, what time is it? It's bet time. Bet time, our favorite part of the show that we do not tell our guests unless they listened to the last episode. And most of our guests do not listen to the last episode because they are very busy. So that being said, this is called bet time where we are going to place a wager based on doing something within the Owl Lab. And if you fail, you have to give us something. That's how a bet works. If you succeed, you're going to get something. Okay. So Ellie, have you been thinking about the bet? She does have students. I have been thinking about what I want. We could have our students that are not, you know, that are not under age. They have to be Yeah, I already talked to her about it before the episode. So that's why I said you have an idea. That's where I was going. Well, that's I know what we want, like which would be to somehow put the Owl Lab in your curriculum with the students. So like we've done this. We've tested it. I was telling you before. It works. So yeah. So bringing it in, having them do calls, maybe write a paper or have a presentation about like what their experience was like having to call these professionals and what they got out of it. Our kids don't even know how to make restaurant reservations. Yeah. Just learning how to use the phone is a big thing we work on. You could call someone with this device. Like really? Crazy. You don't have to book it directly online. So now what does she have to do? What does she have to do? Well, she has to give it. Can we it doesn't the curriculum is going to be a very big task, right? I was saying kind of smaller for a seven day period is in the next seven days. Can we can you take because we want you to see the value with the students. You can take three students that are above age 18. OK. And make them each call one person on out. You will sit there by their side because we want you to kind of help them and kind of walk them through the process. And it's literally as easy as downloading it. You get $10 for free and just calling a couple of experts. 10 bucks, you know, find someone under 10 bucks that easy. Yeah. Hit the call button. We can do that in our adulting class. And then I just want to see the results. Have them just really give you feedback. Now, what did that feel like calling someone you do not know? Yeah. And if you get three of them to complete that in the next seven days, OK, then you win something. All right. You could win the ability to have those same three students come in here and they could shoot their own podcast for an hour. Oh, they would love them on the television. You just obviously on here, you could plug in anything, any image, and they could just have some fun, record it. Yeah. And the studio is taken over by the students. So they get something. We're doing the call. They're actually part of the bed. You're listening. Yeah. Remember the side. But if you lose, what do we win, Ellie? What do we win? No, that's what I was saying, that if she loses, then we get to, like, make it part of the curriculum. Yeah. But that's a very difficult thing to make it part. We got to do something shorter term. Like, like, just not like all the time, but just like us come in, like, do a test, like with a whole classroom. Is that so difficult? That'd be cool. To have, like, have them do, like, a project. We could do that anyway. They all get an hour. She's going to like it so much. She's going to want to do that. So, I don't know. What do you want? It's a very long term win. I'm telling you. How about, oh, how about the teachers have to download OWL if we lose? Oh, OK. So, like, you have to. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. If she loses, like, we have to have maybe 10 teachers download OWL and participate in Mentorship Monday for an hour. Deal. OK. Yeah. And just so you know, like, for the students as well, for this test with these three students, like, they can go to the search bar at the bottom. And if there is an industry that they're interested in, they can literally hit choose expertise. And, like, they can click and then find an expert to call that's actually, like, in their industry. So, it's not, like, totally random. And then we hit apply. And the musicians, if they were live, would be showing up. And then if not, you follow them and then get a notification when they are. So, you can request for them to go live. And I actually love this as a component of our curriculum, because we often spend a lot of time looking for mentors or matching our kids with people to learn more about their industry. And so, it looks like it's right here. And here's an example. Like, Debra is not available. But you could see she used the app a lot. 139 calls. So, what you do is, you know, I'm going to unfollow. He's a Broadway musician. And look, you hit follow. And then that will send you a notification next time she makes herself available. And then when you look at this, it's like, she's in New York City on Broadway. Like, how cool is that? If you're a student and you want to be on Broadway one day, now you could talk to Debra and be like, tell me what it's really like. Yeah, it's a great concept. Tell me how I one day, you know, could be on Broadway. Or Daniel Mock was on our podcast, right? And he's an artist, songwriter, vocalist in Nashville, Tennessee. Same thing, 54 calls. He's got a few hundred thousand. 940,000 followers on all medias and 2.3 million likes, right? And he's in there at five bucks, right? Like, how cool is that to get access to, you know, someone who could be, you know, a huge country star in the future, right? It was already in his early 20s with 2.3 million, you know, likes. Think about the amount of music, you know, that he's going to release in the future. I love it. This is really cool. I can think of a lot of ways that this would be beneficial for our kids. Okay, we got a shake on it. All right. It's official. Yeah. You got to shake. Ellie, Ellie, you got to do the shake. You made this deal. Okay, well. Sounds good. Thank you for joining us on the OWL podcast. Everybody listening, of course, just follow Ellie on the OWL app. All of her social media links are connected to her profile. I had it up on the TV earlier and then just. Some of them. Yes, I'm sorry. I didn't make her do all of them beforehand. I'll do it now. They can go to Instagram and eventually go from Instagram. And follow Space of Mind as well. The extra effort, right? The effort. It's not like one click. And this is kind of I didn't tell you guys this beforehand, but this is full circle for me. Because when I first moved to South Florida in 2021, it was still COVID. I was just like working for myself, literally figuring things out. I did a workshop at Space of Mind. Like super random. That was like a music workshop with kids. So now like having you come back and yeah, it's pretty cool. So well, thank you for having me. This was really fun. Yeah, thank you. There's Ellie on the TV. Ellie as well. She is at 436 calls only. Had to get that up to 2,000. Come on, Ellie. There's someone out there that did 2,000. Chella did and Cassandra. It is cool to see people doing thousands or hundreds. Yeah, this is a great concept. I really think this is very cool. Okay, well that wraps up today's episode. Thanks again for joining us. Everybody listening, take care. Thanks. Post-production for the OWL Podcast is done. With care. By Ocean Tree Creative.