[ 00:00:13 ]I’m Adam Hayes, joined to my left by my co-host, Bob Payton. Across the table is our good friend, Ron Brumbarger. Welcome to the show. Welcome, guys. Thank you. Good to be here. Yeah, thanks for coming on. So what’s the plan of du jour this Friday?

 

[ 00:00:30 ]What did it look like? This Friday is focused on launching my class, one of two courses at Taylor University this fall-transformative innovation and entrepreneurship. So I’m polishing off my curriculum, getting ready to launch classes into about three or four weeks. Nice. Cool. Same here.

 

[ 00:00:51 ]It’s exciting times. But you didn’t just create that out of thin air. And I know this because I know you, but you’ve been an advocate of design thinking for a long time. So tell us, where’s the founding principles of that come? How did you get involved with that? Where was the inspiration? How did you get involved with that?

 

[ 00:01:12 ]With the design thinking, design thinking, yeah we’ll get to Taylor in the future, okay! I’ve been studying problem solving and innovation for many, many years and I’ve been blessed to travel the world doing it and teaching it facilitating and helping people solve problems. So this is an incarnation of that very activity. So I’ve used it. I don’t think about how to solve problems any other way.

 

[ 00:01:38 ]Right. Nice. But was there an impetus that got you into it? Or was it a mentor that led you to it in the first place?

 

[ 00:01:46 ]Not design thinking necessarily, but creative problem solving. I stumbled into when I was co-teaching an entrepreneurship MBA program at Ball State. And they kept talking about this process they were using for finding opportunities. Hey, I need to know about this. So I kind of tucked it under my belt and used it at my firm Bitwise for many years and taught some of my staff. We used it for all of our engagements.

 

[ 00:02:13 ]and one thing led to another and then when i started apprentice university this was the logical progression of all of my students need to understand problem solving processes and design thinking processes and innovation tools yeah so you’ve been involved as you know directly as a business owner entrepreneur you’ve been involved in the entrepreneurship community in indiana for a long time walk us back to where you knew that was going to be your path, you know, from when you were younger and you just kind of went down this path and you’ve. Just. You are that. I am that. You are that. That’s the brand, right? Yeah. And you just really just leaned into who you are and embraced it. So when did you know that? And when did that start for you? And when did you learn to start just being you? I guess in earnest, 91, 92.

 

[ 00:03:05 ]I got tired of being fired. We’ve heard that before. I got fired from a digital mapping firm here in town because I refused to violate copyright laws with a bunch of software installs. And then I got fired from what was TruVizion, one of the early technology firms here in the city. Not fired, but told goodbye because I didn’t want to move to Santa Clara. That was all cute, but I’m not a Santa guy. So that was what I would figure this out and start my own business. I’m going to get fired and be the first one to know. Right. So here we are. How many years later? 32, three years later, I guess. I probably started a half a dozen businesses and sold three or four. Closed a few of them down, just didn’t quite get out of the nest. Working on maybe a couple more.

 

[ 00:04:00 ]Yeah.

 

[ 00:04:00 ]So what are you doing now today? Oh my. Most of my week is consumed with my role at Taylor as an entrepreneur in residence. Or have a teaching and mentoring obligation there, that I’m enjoying, it’s the it’s the part that I love most about apprentice university, which was working mano-a-mano with the students and teaching and facilitating learning is maybe a better way for sure. But I don’t have to worry about clogged toilets. Payroll operations. I don’t have to worry about all that red tape. I don’t have all that headache, to be honest. So I get to do the best part and leave that to somebody else who gets paid to do it. So I’m working on that. And the second part, the other part of my week is around my team Monocles project that I kicked off. And that’s assisting IMPD on a cold case. So I can’t talk about the details of the case, but talking about my team. And the work that we’re doing using AI and attempting to use some very innovative problem-solving techniques that I’ve created as a derivative of the training that I’ve had for so many years to try to catch bag guy. Nice. Awesome. So, I mean, without sharing the details of the case itself, but I mean, what’s, I mean, maybe for the general public methodology right what’s the approach what are you doing that’s different than what they’ve done for the last 20 years sure right well in problem-solving step one as Einstein said if I had an hour to save the world I’d spend 55 minutes defining the problem so problem-solving you spend all your time fact-finding and then you look at the most curious facts and you drill into those. That takes a lot of time, sure. Cold case that’s many years old takes a lot of work. But the technique we’re using is using AI. So we’re using some state-of-the-art AI tools. Because it doesn’t forget, and we can ask it questions, and it can help us with associations or relationships; so we’re doing that we’re creating you know social network analysis graphs on the fly based on our commentaries and notes, which helps us understand who’s related to whom and why, and what interests they had with each other. And ultimately, hopefully, we’ll be able to have it produce some insights that we didn’t know about, some facts that were kind of hidden, and relationships that weren’t obvious. Ideally, you’ve seen the training avatars. What’s that, Syncygia? The training avatar business, you upload your training script and they read it back to you. Ideally, we’ll have a synthetic avatar of as many people who are in a case at some point in the future and we’ll be able to ask them questions based on the facts of what we know. Now, the good part of that is they don’t fear being arrested because they don’t know any better. But it’s limited to what we know. Right. So that’s the future of where we want to be. So you can kind of role play it with the facts that are acquired. Okay. And or have them. Them that the synthetic versions of whoever speaking to one another, right? Talking about situations and relationships. We’re not far from that. We’re not far from that. That’s pretty cool.

 

[ 00:07:17 ]That’s awesome. Nice. So, you’ve had team monocles before on another project. Is that right?

 

[ 00:07:24 ]Yeah, I actually started this same case a year and a half ago at Apprentice University, and I had four students helping me on it, and we were knocking it down. Springtime, summertime, nobody wants to be you know sequestered away reading files and stuff in the middle of middle of summer, this is really hard. And then when I exited apprentice last summer, had to go to my friends at INPD and say, hey guys, I’m really sorry. I got to close this thing down. And they understood. And then they came back in March of this year. And, you know, you try not to tell your friends. No, you can’t just say yes. They came back and said, would you be willing to try this case on again, build a new team, and see where you can take it? So I very cautiously selected seven volunteers with job descriptions and their roles in mind. And it is incredible. You know, you never. You never want to be the smartest guy in the room, yeah, I never have to worry about that with this team; that is never of a concern, I’m never the smartest guy in this room, so I can just walk in be me and know that the smart people are taking care of the details, awesome.

 

[ 00:08:32 ]That’s cool. So let’s talk about, you graduated in what year from Ball State? 87. 87, with a degree in Industrial technology.

 

[ 00:08:43 ]I was supposed to be doing robotics. PLCs. This kind of predates PLCs largely. Okay, so this explains the tech portion of your entrepreneurship. Yeah, I get that. I’ve written a lot of software over the years; it’s kind of fun. I’ll be in a room with a bunch of early 20-somethings, you know, they use the word ‘model’ 100 times per sentence, and you think, well, that’s pretty intelligent. You know, just use the model. But, you know, in reality, it’s a different way of managing an application. And. They’re not, you know, I can understand the language that they’re talking about, but they don’t think somebody my age has any clue, right? So, just keep saying yeah; they think they know what they’re talking about, yeah.

 

[ 00:09:37 ]You’ve got so much stuff going on. What’s the project that is helping build programs to help small businesses and rural communities? Let’s talk about that. Sure.

 

[ 00:09:49 ]Homegrown apprenticeships. I started back first of the year to leverage my 11 years of knowledge and research around apprenticeships that I used at Apprentice University. It’s still going. In fact, I had a couple of meetings about it just in the last two weeks. Apprenticeship programs that serve local communities. So think rural community that needs an apprenticeship program that maps to that community’s business’ needs, not out of the alphabet soup downtown or anybody like that. This is led by local businesses, managed by local businesses to serve communities in that or students in that community, young adults in that community.

 

[ 00:10:31 ]Yeah.

 

[ 00:10:31 ]So very simple program, but I have the recipe. I know how it works. It’s just helping them adopt that process and recipe.

 

[ 00:10:40 ]Yeah. And what was the inspiration to do that?

 

[ 00:10:44 ]I had hair before I started. At least I had a little bit more. It’s a hard business to run. It was a small university, but had all the same moving gears as a Purdue or an IU. Just different sizes. And I don’t want that knowledge and lessons. failures and hard knocks to go to waste. And I also have long thought that the apprenticeship model, at least as I’ve designed it with homegrown apprenticeships, would serve as an economic development tool in rural communities. And they could use it as a way to keep kids home around instead of you going to college, you go to the military, you go get a job. Well, what about this beautiful blend of work and education at the same time that has a sort of a triple net effect of serving the community, keeping the kids around, and helping those businesses all at the same time?

 

[ 00:11:39 ]What’s being done today in those communities?

 

[ 00:11:43 ]Nothing. Yeah. Nothing. It’s really hard. There’s some alphabet soup groups downtown that are trying to do this and exert efforts in other places. Uh, you know wish them success but the reality is there’s a lot of red tape that’s wrapped into that and it just doesn’t need to be right; needs to be full of red tape. The model that we’ve created is pretty simple, pretty straightforward, and really, really entirely designed, that I’ll call it ‘the student the young adult that we’re serving never is out of focus in the lens of the camera, the businesses, the community, the, whoever else, the governments, the chambers, what all the seat renters are like home. That’s all great. But the minute we’re not focused on that student, it’s the minute we need to stop. And that’s, that’s the driver behind it. Not a bunch of reporting and red tape and printed office of apprenticeship. No, we don’t need all that stuff. Let’s keep it simple. We’re serving a kid.

 

[ 00:12:43 ]Cause I mean, just recently, I think, you know, and I still haven’t quite figured out the genesis of it. The state of Indiana decided on their own to change high school diploma requirements, and started to roll that out, and all of a sudden universities came back out and said, however, part of that requirement was apprenticeships their junior and senior years. Sure. And you know, I’m in the Boone County Chamber; we talk to our community leaders about it. And they’re just like, who is going to hire? All these high school students that have to graduate? Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of interns – where are they going? Right. So now I call that, you know, a rule of unintended consequences. Somebody thought it was a great idea here. Now all of a sudden, right. However, you know, there is a shift, there’s a shift of, you know, you’re working for a university. People are evaluating that university spend. Sure. Of course. What they’re doing in it and what they’re getting for it. So I wonder what your thoughts are kind of in that space. Yeah. Cause you and I both, I teach at Purdue, you teach at Taylor. Yeah. Yeah. Trying to find that blend. There is value to be had of going to university. Of course. For certain things.

 

[ 00:13:56 ]Yeah, well, this came up during my interview with Taylor, as you might imagine. It was kind of an interesting conversation. And I’ve long said that going to college is for many, just not for as many as we’ve been sending for many years. Yeah. And the reality is. God made us all differently. And thankfully, that’s the case. We’re not all stamped out of the same exact. It’d be a boring world if everybody was like me. That’d be horrible. And you guys understand that. Yes. I appreciate you agreeing with me there, Adam. I was agreeing for my own personal reasons.

 

[ 00:14:29 ]If there were a bunch of me running around, it’d be a real boring world.

 

[ 00:14:32 ]Anyway, so the idea that a young adult stepping off the stage of graduation is facing this freight train called adulthood. And they really don’t have many choices to deal with. And to have another option that says maybe you could. Try out some areas of interest. If you want to be in marketing, let’s say you really don’t know what that means. You just thought it sounded really cool. And you’re going to go study that somewhere for four years and spend a bunch of time off the grid of earning and pay a lot of money for tuition. Hopefully not get your head scrambled politically and socially. Let’s just go try it for a year or two. Try it locally. I’m from Frankfurt. Metropolis there up the street. And I remember growing up as a kid, there was a business, I don’t know if it’s still there or not, called Beard Industries. And they made grain dryer fans.

 

[ 00:15:23 ]Oh, yeah.

 

[ 00:15:24 ]I don’t know if they’re still there. I don’t think they are. But I always thought, who would ever want to work there? If you think about it for just a minute, they have engineers. They have technology. Crazy, they have marketing sales, I mean, they have the same operational that you have here at your marketing firm right? And how many times would I have driven by there as a kid and discounted ever having a job there, so I think about if you’re interested in marketing and you live in Frankfurt, go to Beard or whoever’s there now, go to Beard Industries and say, ‘Can I try a marketing role here and they might be saying, ‘You know, we’ve had this seat open for two years, right? We’d love to have your help.’ Or it’s too expensive or it’s not the right fit or whatever. Yeah. And so now you get a chance to try it. And if that journey, if that educational journey then leads you into a typical university or traditional university down the road, great. Great. But here’s the point: the point is you’re doing it with intentionality. Going to a traditional university to find a career is like breaking a fast at a grocery store with a lot of sugar. Yes. Everything looks great. So why don’t you do it with intentionality, do it with purpose, do it with some bit of experience behind your belt instead of just kind of guessing, what am I going to do here? Yeah.

 

[ 00:16:44 ]And it also allows, in my view, you know, the student to be curious. Correct. Sure. Right. To have honest curiosity about saying, I don’t know what I want to do right now, but here’s some things I like to do. I like to, you know, build things with my hands. I like to do math. I like to, you know, do X, Y, and Z. Cool. Here’s some opportunities for you to explore.

 

[ 00:17:09 ]If you think about this for a minute, an 18-year-old graduating from high school, not just Indiana, but let’s pick our backyard. Where would they get the experience of? Drones. At 18. How would you know? Unless they have one personally, right? Or the application for home automation system. They wouldn’t have any knowledge of these things without some exposure. How do you get it? That’s true.

 

[ 00:17:34 ]I mean, perhaps maybe they went to STEM school and they did one project with one, right?

 

[ 00:17:40 ]Exactly. Or otherwise they hear it or their buddies are interested in it or it’s just a topic du jour around school. Do you know how I picked my major at Ball State? My roommate was studying industrial technology. That sounds kind of cool. I’ll do that.

 

[ 00:17:58 ]Yeah. I mean, I, I clearly went to the wrong degree and based off, you know, my dad’s friend who, you know, I trusted his advice at the time and thought he’s like, well, what about finance? You know, you can always get a job finance. And I was like, okay, sounds good. I’m an 18-year-old kid. I get a degree in corporate finance. I go to my jobs and I absolutely hate them. I remember you’ve told me that story a few times. Yeah.

 

[ 00:18:22 ]There was no intentionality. Yeah.

 

[ 00:18:26 ]None. School was you know our guidance counselor, her name being nameless, I think she’s passed away long ago, but I mean, if you were a male, it was Ball State for architecture or Purdue for engineering. And if you’re a female, it was Ball State for marketing, or IU for anything else. That was the filter. Right. I mean, virtually, if I looked at my entire class that went to college, I would say 80% followed that model.

 

[ 00:18:53 ]Wow.

 

[ 00:18:53 ]That was as much exploratory as there was. Right. And you get there and it’s like, this is awful. And quickly figured out that was not for me, especially Kim 116. Right. I mean, so it’s the same thing. It’s like, how do we break that mold a little bit? And I think the stigma of not going to college immediately is starting to soften. Yeah. Mainly because it’s probably too expensive anyway; yes, and way too expensive. To your point, the whole idea of spending two hundred thousand dollars on a whim what other decision in life would we ever do that? Yeah, we just matter. Maserati was that correct?

 

[ 00:19:28 ]That’s another conversation.

 

[ 00:19:30 ]It’s Honda Odyssey; I gotta go pick up…

 

[ 00:19:33 ]yeah, there are two.

 

[ 00:19:34 ]I’m sorry, but I mean it’s. It’s always I remember going to our college counselor to pick a… that both pick a college and how to go through the application process. Right. And that was her first thing right out of the box is like, ‘Why are you deciding to go to Marion University?’ Right. It’s $65,000 a year. And there’s no offsets. Right. No. I mean, maybe if you’re lucky, right. But I mean, it’s like: You don’t even buy a car at that time. Your car is not that expensive. Right. I mean, think of the process you go through in buying a house. You know, we looked at 37 houses. Alright. So you’re exploring, you’re figuring out what do you like, what do you not like. You don’t do that, and we don’t do that. It’s a real shame. Intentionality is a big deal.

 

[ 00:20:22 ]I love two words that come to mind as I think about that 18-year-old stepping off that stage, staring at that fridge. I have a really cool visual I’ll send you sometime. Staring at that stage of staring, staring at the uh the freight train known as adulthood coming at them. Two phrases come to mind. One is the undaunted curiosity. How do you inspire undaunted curiosity in whatever field they might want to explore? And to do that, how do you help open their aperture of imagination? So I think about my role at Taylor. That’s all I’m doing. I’m talking about those two terms. Incessantly, right open your aperture of imagination so that you can undauntedly be curious being curiously undaunted curiosity. That’s my goal. That’s what I want to do. I’ve been doing that at Apprentice, but a year out now I can kind of. Yeah, unplugging toilets and fixing bathroom floors and broken windows or whatever else and teaching. And now I can look out and say, OK, these are the two things that really give me passion.

 

[ 00:21:24 ]Well, when they when they I mean, I think that, you know, the the fertile ground for, you know, that condition that you’re seeking to set for them and encourage is set by feeling supported and seen. And, you know, right. And it’s OK to do it.

 

[ 00:21:40 ]Right. And there’s there’s so much pressure, peer pressure, parent pressure. You know. I mean, we did it. I hate to say it. I did it with my own kids. And there’s pieces of that I regret. Because that’s where my mom went. That’s where my wife went. That’s where I went. That’s where you’re going. And there was just all these unsaid pressures. And that’s just not really fair. And it doesn’t create a good outcome.

 

[ 00:22:05 ]I spent last September in Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy, just needed to get out of dodge for a while. I had some opportunities to do some speaking engagements there and so forth. And I’m increasingly adamant that exposure, international exposure to travel, and intentionality for that. Just helps widen your mindset. And, you know, the idea of taking a year off, go touring Europe, whatever. Yeah, okay, maybe. But doing that with purpose and having that experience to go travel and experience new cultures, get lost, get frustrated, fail, you know, have a little car accident, didn’t get hurt, have a little car accident here and there. Those are all part of things that help you grow. Sleeping in an airport because you couldn’t figure something out. That helps you grow.

 

[ 00:22:57 ]Yes.

 

[ 00:22:57 ]And in our little bubble, you know, we have our little protected cocoon here. You’re not going to get that. So I want to, I want to help young adults do that. So that’s cool.

 

[ 00:23:08 ]Yeah. I mean, you’ve had a passion for that for a long time, even back to, you know, when you first started Bitwise and a lot of your growth came through helping other people grow. Yeah. So how did you, I mean, you, you just were you, but did you recognize that you had that part of you that had the desire to, you know, help other people become better than what they thought maybe they could be.

 

[ 00:23:30 ]Adam, I am hopelessly selfish. Say more. I’m hopelessly selfish. And the adage that when one teaches to learn is me. Right. So I want to learn. I am curious. I want to go to bed smarter every day. I want to learn something new. So I am hopelessly selfish about teaching and mentoring and sharing. Things I know or things I want to know or things I want to jointly discover. Yeah. Were you always that way or did you like uncover that at some point? You know, I think back, I had a TI-99-4A, and I figured out.

 

[ 00:24:09 ]And only so many people know what that is, by the way.

 

[ 00:24:11 ]I figured out. Were you figuring out the net present value or something? No, I was finding a payroll system on that thing and helping run a construction company at 16. You know, I just, I’ve always been curious about how stuff works and what’s interesting is we we just got back from a two-week trip around Lake Huron in our motorhome. In preparation for the trip, I discovered why some of the stuff wasn’t working on the rig. And a mouse had decided to set up shop on my gas tank and chew the fuel line to my generator. What took me a month to figure out what was wrong. And it was a really hard problem to solve. It was a really, really hard problem to solve. I had to literally see it. Can’t see it. Can’t drop the tank. It had, you know, 40 some gallons of gas in it. So it weighs 280 pounds or something horrible. Right. But I literally had my problem-solving processes on the table, stepping through how might I solve this problem. When you solve really hard problems like that, You get a bit of bravado. Bring the next one right, and I maybe I’m sick okay don’t answer that guys, you guys are my friends but To walk, not somebody being hurt or ill. Of course. That’s not what I’m talking about. But can I have another problem, please? Can someone bring me the next problem? Right. And that’s exciting. And I know that’s kind of maybe weird and geeky to think about, but I think about bringing me the next problem. My buddy Captain Spurgeon and IMPD thinks about that. Here’s another case, Ron. Right. Bring another problem. I want to work on another problem. I can’t do them all alone, and I don’t have the. I don’t have the hubris to think that I can, but I can spark a team to help get started on it. Sure. So I love problem-solving and I’m selfish about it. Yeah. I’m horribly selfish.

 

[ 00:26:11 ]But you always had that curiosity even from being a kid. Yeah. I mean, what’d your parents think? You probably got yourself in a lot of trouble, didn’t you?

 

[ 00:26:19 ]That’s what I was thinking.

 

[ 00:26:20 ]You had to. How many more questions are you going to ask? Or, you know, things that today we would get in trouble for that none of us got in trouble for. But we were infinitely curious and got our butts kicked by life, right? Yeah, I mean, I like to take stuff apart and figure out how it worked. Did you ever take something apart and not figure out how to put it back together? Oh, yeah.

 

[ 00:26:40 ]Oh, yeah, sure. Of course.

 

[ 00:26:42 ]You did that with a mini bike or two.

 

[ 00:26:44 ]Yeah, a couple radios here and there. I had a motorcycle that I bought for $20 or something, and I got it running. It wouldn’t go very fast, but I got it running, and I was 12. Right, I’m gonna get this I’m gonna get this bike around again and I think my neighbor gave it to me or something I can’t remember but keep you busy I figured it out yeah yeah I figured it out That’s cool. That’s my favorite phrase. Theo and I are buddies. Yeah. I love Theo.

 

[ 00:27:11 ]No. Figure it out. Oh, figure it out. Wow. I’m slow. It’s Friday afternoon. FTFO, right? So what’s the rest of the – I mean, so Taylor’s a new gig, right? Taylor’s a new gig.

 

[ 00:27:26 ]Started technically – contractually started the end of May. Okay. But my actual work started a week and a half prior. My first day, my technical first day, I led a workshop for six people on campus. Mama didn’t raise a fool. Only an idiot would start prepping day of to run a workshop. So I needed a week, a week and a half to prep and write the workbook for that. So I ended up starting prior to my actual first day because I didn’t want to show up unprepared. Yeah, I mean, show up unprepared your first day you’re running a workshop. Okay, I got this.

 

[ 00:28:06 ]What would you say, you know, between now and the end of the year, what do you want to have happen? What would be success? Success for me, thank you for asking. Slightly different environment, right? It’s a very different environment.

 

[ 00:28:18 ]For the first time in 30 some years, I don’t have P &L to worry about, which is kind of weird. Where I’ve really instilled curiosity in 20 20 of my students in this in my primary class and my second class had two classes on teaching the second one as well, but the the primary class is just they’ve got curiosity to understand entrepreneurship That’s a high priority. The second one is. You know, Taylor said, here’s Taylor’s values. Here’s Taylor’s faith. These are the guardrails through which you have to, in which you need to stay in here. The rest is up to you. Well, that’s a pretty big sandbox. That’s a pretty big box. They said, it’s your sandbox. Here are the things you got to do, but do with what you want. So my plan is to create a pitch team and compete intergalactically. I want teams and other, you know, Andromeda, little plants in Andromeda to go, oh my gosh, Taylor’s here. We’re best. We’ve got first loser. Right. And I kind of took that. You know a little further and said you know, let’s just go ahead and get first loser trophies, take them to all the competitions, hand them out in advance. We want you to go home with something. Right. That means we got to win.

 

[ 00:29:38 ]Everybody wins a trophy.

 

[ 00:29:40 ]Here’s the thing. You’re a claiming fake loser. Absolutely. But here’s the thing. Profanity aside, Larry Bird’s smack talk was effective.

 

[ 00:29:50 ]Yes, it was.

 

[ 00:29:51 ]Come up to you. I’m going to shoot in your face, and there’s nothing you’re going to do about it. And he would score. Yeah. So I want to do that. I want to have that attitude, that bravado, but, you know, back it up. same thing, absolutely so; my plan is I’m going to recruit you guys so be ready-you’re going to get a call about it here sometime soon. But I want all my team to have really nice blazers-no suit, no ties; who does that? Really nice blazers! But it’s going to look like a NASCAR car and it patches of all my sponsors sewn onto all the jackets; that’s how we’re going to raise money to go compete in Munich… right. You pick a city-Sydney. We’re going to go compete internationally. So, because I literally want people to show up and say: ‘Great tailors here!’ Nobody told us they were coming. Just stepped into the room.

 

[ 00:30:42 ]That’s right. Exactly. Exactly. That’s a great night last night.

 

[ 00:30:45 ]It’s a great vision. Thank you. Thank you. That’s my goal. It’s going to take some work. But I’m already recruiting. I’ve been on campus all summer long and seeing some students that are there and kind of recruiting as best I can.

 

[ 00:30:59 ]So, I mean, do they have an entrepreneurship ecosystem already or is that your role to help?

 

[ 00:31:05 ]It’s there. It’s burgeoning. Mick Bates, the guy to whom I report, is the director for Center of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. They have a brand new building. By the way, it’s really cool. You guys will get an invite to open a house. It’s a brand new building, brand new facility. So it’s burgeoning. But the philosophy has been everybody there should understand entrepreneurship. No offense taken. There are plenty of other schools out there, but the idea that everybody should have-or rather, Everybody should have-an entrepreneurship minor, period. Everyone should have it. That’s the program that I’m in, by the way. Okay, good. We do that for any major. We’re very sympathetic.

 

[ 00:31:42 ]We’ll do it.

 

[ 00:31:43 ]We’re going to trade. So that’s the vision. So that’s the intent. So it is growing under the new leadership there, President Lindsey and so forth. They really want to focus on entrepreneurship as a core competency that everybody has under their belt. Awesome. No pressure.

 

[ 00:32:00 ]Well, I mean, if there’s anybody that could take the reins and do that, they hired the right person. Thank you. I appreciate that. Absolutely.

 

[ 00:32:08 ]Remind me. Of course. Yeah. I look a little like Gonzo. Remember Gonzo from The Muppets? No, not The Muppets.

 

[ 00:32:26 ]Why did I go there? That was the best character of them all. Trapper John.

 

[ 00:32:31 ]You remember Trapper John? Gonzo lived in the corner of the hospital parking lot in his motorhome. I live in the corner of Taylor’s campus in my motorhome, trying to take my RV up there, which is another reason I’ve been investing a lot summer just you know fixing this and that, yeah, there’s always something you can do, always something you can improve. But they gave me an RV slot number five. Nice. And so I’m back in the corner. I kind of got a little Wi-Fi. Kind of not. Sometimes. Sometimes. Depends on which way the winds blow. Squirrels are bouncing around or something. So I go up there. I drive my RV up. I stay on campus. And I’m not hanging out on the roof drinking martinis like I’m so good. That’s not acceptable, a tailored policy. But it is convenient.*literallyunder**_in residence_ I literally live there. It’s kind of weird, but I’m good with that.

 

[ 00:33:34 ]Good solution. Do you have your car there as well? Do you come home on the weekends? I drive my RV. I have my bike on the back, so I bike all over town. You bike over to Ivanhoe’s?

 

[ 00:33:47 ]I’m pretty sure Ivanhoe’s and St. Vincent’s Cardiology got this thing going on. Just keep feeding it. Keep serving ice cream.

 

[ 00:33:55 ]Another Butterburger. That’s right.

 

[ 00:33:58 ]I’m pretty sure they’re very cahoots. It’s not healthy, but it is a nice treat. It is a nice treat. The last two chimes up, I’ve avoided going there, so I’m pretty happy about that. More fine time, less Ivanhoe’s. Yes. That one’s all torn up. There’s a lot going on. There’s a big 1847 campaign going on to revamp Upland, and I don’t know all the details. I bet there are other people I’m not involved in. I will be soon. I’m part of their plan, but I don’t really know what that means yet. But you can’t drive through Upland. I mean, not that many people do. It’s a tiny little town, but it’s all ripped up at the moment. It’s all going to get new streets and be all spiffed up here.

 

[ 00:34:41 ]Downtown revitalization kind of thing. Yeah. A lot’s going on, yeah, that’s good.

 

[ 00:34:46 ]So it’d be neat if you could somehow work both of your ventures into that as well, well, it’s a possibility right, definite possibility, yeah, definite possibility. I mean, I would like to recruit some Taylor students for Team Monocles at some point in time. But those are very succinct job descriptions that I need.

 

[ 00:35:09 ]It sounds like Upland might be a good candidate for homegrown. Absolutely.

 

[ 00:35:16 ]Doing there in Traylor’s home space, that’d be good.

 

[ 00:35:19 ]So we’ll see.

 

[ 00:35:21 ]So aside from all that, what do you like to do for fun?

 

[ 00:35:25 ]Oh, what do I like to do? Love to travel. We just, as I mentioned, did our Huron Circle Tour. So we’ve now circle toured. Four lakes. Nice. Which ones besides Huron? Superior, Michigan, and Erie.

 

[ 00:35:41 ]Okay.

 

[ 00:35:41 ]And so we’ve done those. Had I planned that trip the right way that I didn’t do it, we would have gone up through Toronto, not through Detroit. And we would have seen Lake Ontario on the way up, which meant we’ve seen all five lakes in one trip. But dummy me went the wrong way. It was too late. They didn’t have Lewis and Clark, so their roads are. It’s just not. You don’t go anywhere fast in southern Ontario. Sure. So it’s a little frustrating for everybody. So I love to travel. I am expecting a grandchild literally any minute. Oh, wow. Congratulations. Thank you. Sometime in the next five days. So Hudson and Elaine are expecting to be our first grandchildren. So that’s going to happen literally any second. So that’ll be a game changer. That’s cool. What else? I love to write. I love to write. What kind of genre? Well, more just kind of instructional writing. Yeah? Yeah. I don’t know what genre means, Bob. Western or action? Freak or boy, man. You got to keep it simple here. It’s education and action. Put together IKEA furniture? Well, there’s that. There’s that. My favorite meme is that. IKEA meme is a box full of pine needles. It says Christmas tree from IKEA. That’s about right.

 

[ 00:37:11 ]The instruction manual, you open it up, it’s one page that says don’t. Don’t. Go to store. Yes, exactly. Buy the whole thing. Sucker box.

 

[ 00:37:21 ]I like that. You know, I found a new hobby, just tinkering with my RV. As geeky as it sounds, I really enjoyed problem solving and working on that. Sure. You know, but I also It’s part of my job at Taylor, but I also, I really am passionate about mentoring young adults. I got a couple young adults that I get a chance to work with from time to time and I really enjoy that-that investment you know, in helping them push push beyond where their comfort level is, and I really thoroughly enjoy that. A couple of students from former students from Apprentice University, I just met with one this morning, uh, one earlier this week, and just helping them open their aperture of imagination, you know? It’s just… that’s alright, you paid for it, that’s okay. I’m not looking; I wouldn’t take money from it if they had it, but that to me is just… that’s nirvana, yeah!

 

[ 00:38:23 ]I mean, even the role you’re in, I sit there and think of all the times I never talked to my professors or anyone-you know, just anybody it was heads down, do the work, go do something else. Right! And that’s kind of one of the things I would… you know, you’re going to have me come talk to your club, or if you have a class, I’ll come talk to it. But I tell my students same thing. It’s like you are, if you’re not asking questions, right. You know, if you’re not connecting with someone that comes and talks in class, which Adam’s been to my class several times and you’re not connecting and asking them questions, what are you doing? Right. It’s like, right. I get pretty rough with them the first week on that. And they’re kind of like, To your credit, several of them did reach out.

 

[ 00:39:07 ]They actually connected with me on LinkedIn. A few of them have stayed in contact.

 

[ 00:39:12 ]That’s correct. My second class I’m teaching is called Founders and Fellows. It’s a seminar-style class. The intent is to have a speaker. Probably every week to come in. But the homework is prepare three questions to ask. You may not get to ask all of them, but prepare three questions to ask and then prepare a plan that you’ll use to follow up with the speaker. Next week. So have a speaker come in. I don’t know what time the class runs. You’ll find out. Tuesday or Thursday. But then after the class, have the guests stick around and maybe have a dinner with them or something like that. Get to eat at the Dining Commons. Fine cuisine. Actually, food’s pretty good, Taylor. I’ve been pretty pleased. Oh, that’s good? It’s cheap. Yeah. It’s even better. And I can get there on my bike without a lot of work. So I’m all in.

 

[ 00:40:01 ]That’s awesome. That’s really cool. Well, Ron, it’s been a pleasure having you on. Thanks for having me. As always. Appreciate it. Good to see you guys. We’ve got to have you on again. We’ve got plenty more stories to extract from you.

 

[ 00:40:10 ]Well, yeah.

 

[ 00:40:13 ]Good luck. We’re excited for you. Thanks, guys. Yep. Yep.