Building a Culture of Learning and Innovation with Iris Hammel

from the crossroads of America in the hoer state of Indiana this is get in the podcast focused on the unfolding stories in extraordinary Innovations happening right now in the Heartland I'm Matt hunkler CEO at powderkeg and I'll be one of your hosts for today's conversation I am joined in Studio by Nate spangle head of community at Pig welcome Nate hey and on the show today is Iris Hamill executive director at rise zoom out and get into a space where you can really look intentionally at how you spend your energy Iris Hamill is the executive director at rise or Regional Innovation and startup education and Rise is a leader in best practices for entrepreneurship education using entrepreneurial thought and immersion and also their program startup Moxy serves area high school students and their applied entrepreneurship program the applied entrepreneurship program is offering Regional colleges and universities this curriculum Iris has been a lifelong educator working as a business teacher and college instructor before pursuing a career in entrepreneurial education and today we're going to talk about a bunch of interesting topics including developing an entrepreneurial mindset why entrepreneurship is an important skill set at any age how to develop and retain the best talent and a whole lot more I'm sure Iris thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show thank you so much for having me and I would like to just add I am actually a founder and co-founder so I think a lot of times Educators get this the old adage of those who can't do teach and I think it's just critical to know like I own my own company and I help start rise and I am not in that bucket I am a Founder being entrepreneurial in education I appreciate that so much as someone who graduated with one of my degrees was in entrepreneurship and Innovation from IU I always appreciated having teachers who had been there done that could speak From The Trenches not just the the successes but the challenges and failures along the way too yeah absolutely so why entrepreneurship honestly it's the best vehicle to create change in the education system when I'm 80 I want to be able to turn around and say that I created some type of impact on this system in our country and inside the system there's not a lot of room to do that and Entrepreneurship was a pathway that had been Meed down yet and created a a space for Freedom where you could run and so that is how I found my path in entrepreneurship education to create some change so glad you did Nate and Ne can relate as entrepreneurs ourselves yes so I feel like entrepreneurship right it's uh it's interesting to pair that with education but I'd like to start talking about your background where did you first get the entrepreneurial spirit I think on my fourth gen Family Farm I think farmers are the most entrepreneurial people on the planet because that is a theme on the show David Becker founder of first internet bank and several other companies he specifically called that out yeah it's growing up in that environment I was like the Gopher on the farmyard and I was I was the resource gatherer for everybody so it was like go find this go figure that out go do this go the I was the kid they were literally putting in the machine because they couldn't like reach so they just put me in there as like an extension so glad you made it yeah I was like little enough and I guess not scared but so you'll be ready when we all have the bionic arms and like AI embedded in our brains yes I guess that's the machines in us that's a little different a little different but yeah so I think as humans from age 0 to S that's when you're programmed and I grew up on a fourth gen farm and that's where I was programmed you're always solving problems with resources you don't have so you are using things that are not meant to be used for the things you're doing and every day there's a new problem that you have to solve is there one story from that family farm that was a big entrepreneurial lesson for you oh boy I think collectively advocation and communication is probably what came out of that and you might think Nate you're looking at me like what my per perplexed look yeah do sound like education terms yeah so I think that when you're the youngest on a farm and what's rather large operation if you are not communicating effectively and telling people what's up you're just going to get ordered around constantly and you got to get people to listen and when you're three or four and you're like telling them literally it's not there like I just went over there to go get the thing you told me to go get and it's not there and you have to boss adults around a little bit to listen I think that's one thing and then obviously work work ethic that is just bred into me like you had to turn work into fun and I guess that's just part of my mindset is I want my work to be fun and I've always been drawn towards those things that I'm passionate about that are fun to me so this may seem obvious but why is work ethic an important skill set for an entrepr to have because you are going to be faced with so much adversity at times that like if you can't have the confidence in yourself to work through it you're not going to be able to get through the other side it's just it will chew you up and spit you out now I'm not saying you should subscribe to like the hustle mentality I think that's toxic but in the beginning you are everything to that company you are the dishwasher The Cook the front of house the back of house the weight staff if you're a restaurant but whatever industry you're in and so in those early days if you don't have the the grit on the work ethic it's not going to be a career for you probably do you have advice for maybe those early stage Founders that that are balancing work ethic and then hustle culture where it's like it's early on we got to grind but you also don't want to go into that that toxic hustle culture yeah I think my advice is zoom out and get into a space where you can really look intentionally at how you spend your energy I think that managing energy is almost more important than managing time and managing yourself frankly and your perspectives cuz that's a big part of energy like you might have a bad attitude or a bad perspective about something something and that toxicity will drain you of energy which then doesn't allow you to perform with your team or your people the best that you could possibly perform so I think zooming out knowing what recharges your batteries and by the way screens and that kind of stuff does not do it but zooming out and getting quiet enough so that you can really see where do I need to spend my energy intentionally so you make every move count oh I love that I think that there's a ton of successful entrepreneurs that show like hey in 6 hours in Flow State or whatever I can accomplish all this sitting behind your computer for 10 or 12 hours and like just staring there not getting anything done is it really working it creates tunnel vision and you need to open your apertures and you can't do that if you're not in a space where you can think and if you're just grinding you're not thinking you're grinding on a very set thing are there any exercises or even like protocols that entrepreneurs can use or really anybody who wants to be more entrepreneurial can use to open there and get into that kind of zoomed out yeah I think I don't know if Dan Nash with velocities uh he was with velocities down in Columbus now works for the Columbus chamber but I hope he doesn't mind me calling him out but he and I chat all the time about breath work and taichi and and personally I use raiki to do that myself tell us what raiki is it's really and I'm going to totally just murder the description I'm going to give you cuz I'm not an expert on it but for me it's energy clearing work so it's really again like going Inward and that body mind connection and being able to have that Mind Body Connection your body is such a Telltale for so many things how stress is affecting you where your energy is like being able to feel like a spark so many people can't even feel Sparks CU they don't they're so disconnected from their own bodies so it could be bar class like my girlfriend is a runs a bar studio out in California and through that bar studio work she's created that Mind Body Connection so I think for everybody it's Unique and different some people it's religion and that their spiritual practice but whatever helps you get quiet and calm the mind and the Brain from over analyzing everything and being on can do that and what Dan has shared with me is that he has found that breath work is the thing that works so much better than everything else cuz a lot of times some of these other practices you're literally and he use this phrase you're walking around is almost like a spiritual lollipop where you've got like all these ideas in your heads about it but you're it's not getting into your body and that's what you need to do how can people use breath work to be more entrepreneurial more creative and find more Sparks yeah I think anytime you're faced with a really awesome opportunity or big audacious problem or difficult conversation or frustration or anger or anything like deep breaths and it sounds cliche and simple and too Elementary but if you can get in the habit of studying how to breathe because we don't actually breathe the way we should be breathing to get into our bodies like start there there's books on it you can obviously Google it or talk to chat GTP I'm sure um but just get curious about it and and find your own path but the point is you have to get that mindbody connection to really truly be able to take a beat and be like your most creative possible I couldn't agree more here at powder cake we use breath work all the time we use the Wim Hoff method yeah Wim Hoff is almost like hyperventilating getting into that almost just a different state why don't you have an ice tub in here I know we need an ice we need to do that right before the show cold we should do a show in the ice tub or a sauna oh I would do both we could do the cold plunge or the SAA yes uh box breathing is another good one that Navy Seals have done and then there's a new one that I've been trying recently that has been like really good for calming the way I understand it is breathing in is going to and focusing on the in breath is going to help energize you whereas if you do a longer exhale that's going to help calm you down yeah cool so the new one I found is like two quick inhales through your nose and then a longer exhale through your mouth love it yeah and if you do three of those it's like a complete nervous system reset yeah totally I think this episode might get picked up by the daily calm yeah maybe who knows knows head space why not yeah why not I love it so currently where you're sitting with rise is at the intersection of Entrepreneurship and education yes I'd love to talk for you which came first the chicken or the you talk about growing up on the farm learning entrepreneurship there where did you find at what point did you find that you wanted to be an educator as well yeah so I I did work in business and industry after college and then recognized like education is near and dear to my help where my mom was an educator my grandma was an educator everybody told me I was going to go into education I was like no I'm not doing that and I had some pretty honestly like super traumatic experiences at the hands of the education system to the point where my mom helped me just play the game to graduate and two weeks before going into graduation my principal hauled me and he's like Iris you're not I shouldn't actually let you walk and I was like what and he's like you're technically truant right now and I was like oh and he's why aren't you coming to school and I'm like I'm fourth in my class I can't move up in the rankings I'm doing other things cuz this is boring like this is painful for me to be sitting here and I think at the the root of it it's that right it's like we are putting children in a space for 8 hours a day every day it's their work right it's their work week and it's painful and it's not the people in the buildings it's the system and so I think that's what drew me to get my teaching degree and and go that education route and I was a business teacher first and I just about died it was a very Traditional School it was just like I I think I walked in and they had typewriters and this was 2008 and and and then I got looked at sideways for getting rid of the typewriters and I was just like what do you mean wow so it was hard and and I think at my heart I am an entrepreneur and I want to solve the problem and I realized I can't be in inside these buildings to solve the problem and I a big picture thinker and I like big audacious challenges and I almost left education to be honest I was I I was teaching psychology at a technical college and that was really rewarding and I I thought I'm going to leave K12 I'm going to I'm going to go the psychology route like that I honestly think my psychology degree like background has helped me more in entrepreneurship and business than my business educ or my business degree how so um because we're humans and to build a company to get other humans to change their behaviors to spend money or time with you you got to understand humans when you got to understand yourself I think to Be an Effective entrepreneur you have to master yourself and that really is like that interpersonal psychology work and the breath work and Mind Body Connection stuff so try to fast forward here but it was like one of those moments in life I'll never forget I checked the the teaching board for Wisconsin one last time before I was going to like just get my masters in Psychology and there was an opportunity to start an entrepreneurial middle school and inside of me it just felt like a light switch went off this is it this is what you got to do and so I networked into an interview literally that night finally I found somebody that I like one of my connections connected me with a connection that connected me with the school and talked with the one of the guidance counselors that was on the interview committee and was like we're interviewing tomorrow can you be here at 9:00 a.

m. and by the way you need a portfolio and so my husband actually took off of work to drive me so I could finish my portfolio in the car on the way to the interview and then it was an eight hour interview with students and parents and very Innovative School very Innovative and to me it was the melding of all of my loves it was entrepreneurship it was psychology it was education and it just felt right and that is where I cut my teeth on all of the work I'm doing today in the education space anything that you think people working in an entrepreneurial environment could learn from the skill set you gained learning to be a teacher yes every no is just a soft yes you just got to find the path to it yes there are so many NOS in the education industry and they're all just soft yeses you just got to get creative and find your way around it and and I think that people give up too soon and and it's zoom out again and really get curious about this problem and think about a different way to hack it because there's never one right way to do the thing in entrepreneurship there's an infinite number of ways that you could build a company or serve or create products and don't let a no shut you down I love that flip side of the coin maybe there's a teacher listening that maybe wants to start a business but how could let's go how could a teacher who's listening become more entrepreneurial in the classroom yeah a couple of things I think how you facilitate matters so your pedagogy model if you are practicing the old school direct instruction thing just throw that in the garbage and start over start researching constructivism students centered learning experiential learning come visit us we'd love to help you uh that's what we're here to do and just so people know where where so we're at Innovation Park at Idea Center in Notre Dame um that's where our offices and our our R&D lab classrooms are South Bend Indiana South Bend Indiana for those who maybe don't know yeah South Bend Indiana um yeah we love helping people that's and that's what we're here to do and and I think don't lose hope but do focus on yourself first honestly you can't really do really good entrepreneurial education if you don't pick up those skill sets yourself first start learning about empathy and design thinking and and drisking problems from a standpoint of understanding your customers and your students are your customers so you need to get to know them you like that is part of it honestly if there was like one thing to focus on to be more entrepreneurial understand your customer and then ask yourself how might we meet my our customers where they're at and the path will be set for you I would imagine that there's an interesting Dynamic with students being the customer and what does that make the parents yeah so I'm thinking about like a startup and you've got your customers but then you've also got like your board yes you've got your investors you've got other key stakeholders who say you should be doing this you should be doing that at at the end of the day your job is to sell and serve to the customer MH but how do you manage that Dynamic with the parents if the parents are saying you need I mean in the worst case scenario I'm sure this has never happened my kid needs an a uh and they're pushing for the grade as opposed to like the learning I think this goes back um just something I've learned through this career that I guess I've buil here in Indiana is manage up like yes your students are your customers but your parents are your board like your parents your Administration everybody else above that you got to manage up so you got to anticipate what are they going to be what are they going to be getting after you about and then how do you proactively help them understand so what we do is we actually host an orientation before our program even starts and we are bullish about do not Rob your child of learning opportunities and not getting what they want is a learning opportunity for them to have an adult professional conversation about why maybe their grade is what their grade is or what it is like we will be fully transparent with how we got here and and honestly in in our programs our students are tell they are in control of everything and when there's something off like to me a red flag in my program is if we're talking too much about those schoolie things if kids are coming to me whining about grades there is a massive problem in our culture in our program and it's then we address that so it's that proactive communication it's managing up it's and honestly they see the human transformation in their children and it's not about the grade it's about the experience and the learning the true learning that is happening and the network connections that are happening and kids get lit up about their communities in ways that their parents have never heard before and their kids are coming home telling them about the economic development strategies in their region and it's so many parents over the years they're just like blown away that their kids know so much about these things and it's that's exactly what we want to see are you ready to transform your brand with award-winning video content that captures your vision and connects with your audience check out Alchemy the experts at building your brand using video from story-driven social media Snippets that leave a lasting impression to compelling fulllength documentaries they have got the expertise to take your brand to the next level Alchemy is actually our video partner here on get in they do amazing work all the videos across social across YouTube all that is done by Alchemy and and they're an amazing partner to work with reach out to me Nate at powderkeg or check out Alchemy film cod.

com to get connected with Alden and his team they will take care of all your video needs I I want to public school I'm not sure about you Nate I did go to a public it sounds like your school is maybe different than the school I went and I went to a great School here in Indiana nothing wrong with it but tell me a little bit about the culture of your school and and how is it different from other schools that you've experienced yeah so we're not a school I wish we were a school but we're more of like a a career center for entrepreneurship so students come to us from all the sending schools so in our programs we've got every Everything Under the Sun from very affluent private school to Scrappy Urban disadvantaged economically disadvantaged kind of inner city school uh students and so that classroom creates an opportunity for a dynamic that none of them have experienced before and for me I always listen for the buzz if I'm walking into the classroom at 7:30 in the morning which is early that's when we meet for class if there's not a buzz there I know our kids aren't lit up they're not excited to be there they're not and so it's like a total shift in where you place emphasis and what's important and it's so much more about those essential skills than it is the content like the content will come as long as the human has those entrepreneurial mindsets and skills that they need to be able to get after whatever it is they want to get after and and for those not familiar with the startup MOX is the program right so one of them one of them right that's like the high school program um and that was like your first entry point right the first product can you give us like a 10,000 foot flyover of what the startup Moxy program is yeah so we our motto is we get kids radically connected to their communities we help them build themselves while they build their startups and startup I use that word because that makes sense but it could be an innovation within a company so entrepreneurial activity it could be a nonprofit it could be a startup and so that's the recipe that's what we do we we are intentionally creating an ecosystem around our students to support whatever Vision they have for their future but it starts with helping them understand how do I create a vision for myself how do I know myself and it goes back to the psychology stuff and the mindbody connection stuff that is fundamental those essential skills are what's fundamental to this work and then anything could be put on top of that you've seen so many kids grow up become adults even and when you look back at those hundreds maybe thousands of people do you think entrepreneurship is a skill set that you're born with or can it be taught it can absolutely be taught and I think how it's taught is everybody is unique and has their own unique strengths and behaviors that makes them who they are and the Entre entrepreneu you can teach how to create teams to surround yourself so you can work from a place of strength and then you can attract advisers mentors support systems that round out your blind spots so you absolutely can teach you can absolutely teach the fundamentals of of Lean Startup that's easy you can just go online and watch some videos you can teach how to pitch that's easy it's just presentation skills mixed with some sales it's those life skills though and a lot of our kids unfortunately their parents didn't have the opportunity to learn these things and yeah it you can absolutely teach people how to get to know themselves so they can design a life where they can work from a place of strength do you think entrepreneurship is best taught in a classroom oh my gosh no as the Matt sits here as the resident Entre urial major in college and I've always had like mixed feelings about can you really study entrepreneurship in a textbook go it no you cannot and like when I it's so funny I'm not going to call any institutions out but like when I would listen to practice pitches or help give feedback is I'm like could you maybe just get your head out of the theory in the book and go talk to like actual industry people that are doing this so you can move a bit faster and understand the real work you need to be doing we have to have a docking station and a hub where there's density and activity call it a classroom but it I I think entrepreneurship education is it's almost a little bit of an oxymoron to be fair if you are truly entrepreneurial you are going to understand how to figure it out and go do it but I do think you can drisk the process and create a stronger healthier entrepreneur in in a space I I kind of think of entrepreneurial and startup education as like tools not rules yes yes here's a set of tools you're building a company would you rather have more tools or less tools and sometimes more tools can be confusing if you don't know how to use them and you don't have them organized in some kind of framework yes but the moment you shift into and I think this is what you're getting to the moment you shift into these are the rules no first I need to do this and we can't go you we can't sell yet because we haven't done this step that honesty is one of the things that we train teachers now so our R&D lab is Moxy our startup Moxy program and our applied entrepreneurship program that's where we test our test bed but now we're in the teacher training mode and that's where most of our time and work is spent and they are tied to rules because of our system our education system they struggle because they're like I'm not sure if I'm doing right I'm not sure if I have to do this first or that first and then if I do this and then and I'm like the only thing you need to do is get to know your students and where are they at and then yes Lean Startup process but the fundamentals of help helping them understand who they are and their intention intentions are and this entrepreneurial life design of what do I want for Life what do I intend with this company slow down and forget it's not a rule-bound thing it's organic and you yes a process helps keep you steady and getting traction and having structure around best practices but keeping it simple is the best and I Mentor teachers across the state and always when they call me and they're in struggle it always goes back to what do your students need tell me about your students where are they struggling right now and the second they start telling me the path is revealed for them on how to move forward so it's just regrounding them in tell me about your students and those that can't tell me I know they're not doing what we're asking them to do well speaking of tools how are you seeing students and teachers start to use things like AI yeah we haven't seen it yet like this year we will see it which is exciting we're using it really excited I and just today we were talking with the Carnegie foundation and they're using it in redesigning how we assess students and I am so excited about this one of the the hardest things in my style of education is the tools have never matched the work every tool in the education system right now requires the teacher to be the leader and we need the students to lead we need the students to be driving hey I think this opportunity is going to teach me these things and I'm going to go do this and then bring back this artifact or product or thing to show Mastery of that so shifting away from the Carnegie unit which Carnegie Foundation has said please stop using the credits and the hours and the time and seat as the measure which was established in 1906 it's we're still doing that and colleges are doing that and everything K12 does is because of what colleges do and it's just so they are making a very bullish public stance on stop using the Carnegie unit and we're redesigning using Mastery based competencies and the middle school I started was was founded on that and I had to use paper paper and stickers and Empower students to know what the competencies were so if they were going to the Science Museum on the weekend they could come back and get credit for the learning they had done because of the enriched experience they just had and learning happens everywhere it's not just in a building and so now the technology exists to make that possible and to individualize it from that level and I am hopeful I'm very hopeful that the state of Indiana is going to be a lead in this work using AI to really truly make individualized education a reality and also allow teachers to stop focusing on the rules and the tests and all these things that actually are not proving effective I love what you're say the access to all this knowledge has never been more accessible than it is now with YouTube and all the internet Tik Tok you can Le like 10 things in a 10 minutes on on Tik Tac how are you seeing students apply the entrepreneurship principles or lessons that you guys are teaching as well as that are on the internet in real life I think again it goes back to like the traits right those essential skills of resiliency and problem solving and going from I was just sharing this story today of a young woman who was wired for all the AP courses straight A heading to Notre Dame parents are doctors and lawyers like you there is a clear path of what success looks like in This Girl's family and I'll never forget her journal that's a big reflecting is a big part of our work with students she probably wrote three pages about this was the first time in her entire education that she had been allowed to fail and what Rich learning experience she had from that failure and given the time and the space to do that and so I think that with these tools we will be able to innovate and we will celebrate the failures because failure is so dense with learning you know what I mean like you can't even predict the learning that comes out of failure and so that's exciting when was your first startup Moxy class it was 2015 2015 okay so eight years later do you have a story of any of those early students that went through the startup Maxi program that are there any that are like current entrepreneurs now yes several yeah oh I'd love to hear a story yeah oh my gosh cat Edmond's as my heart this girl is incredible by the way I know cat I was an or fellowship with cat she was a year younger than I was yes okay so you ex you know exactly what I'm talking about so I don't know so tell me the story all right so cat Edmonds is in my class and she by the way comes from a a long Legacy of successful business owners and has a lot of pressure self-imposed pressure to perform to arise to that family Legacy I will just say that but so she was the class CEO for their class business event and they wanted to produce and do something crazy every Community has their set of Gallas and fundraisers that everybody goes to every year and she was the class CEO and she's like let's do something different let's do something people have never seen before and so we're going to host this event at an airplane hanger and one of the problems they had identified in their Discovery work throughout the year is that a lot of CEOs and owners of companies were really concerned about our ability as a region to attract top talent because our school systems were so poor and they felt that they were losing Hope on our schools and that they didn't want our our most important Business Leaders to lose hope and not understand the children in those schools and the cool stuff that kids were doing despite the system and so they partnered with a group called ignite michano which does like TED talks and they did a kid Ted Talk where they laser focused on kids doing cool things in our most rough school system to help give hope that was their problem they were solving to give hope to these CEOs and these company owners that don't give up on this system there's cool stuff happening and it was cool so long story short we're producing this event about three weeks before the event cat gives me a call and she's Iris we're not hitting our metrics we are not I think we need to pull the plug on some things I don't know what we do I'm like all right let's map this out we got to get a game plan we got to talk to your company here and the company of 24 17 and 18 year olds and she did we hosted a meeting I think we were on the third floor at that time we were running my program out of my car we did not actually have a space that's amazing I think I had funded everything at my credit card up to the point where my husband was like are we going to get paid for this and we didn't have a checking account yet so I was just running the program but we were in the conference room in Notre Dame third floor of Idea Center Innovation Park and she had a a come to Jesus meeting with her classmates before we had a speaker so they came in early she called called them there at 7:00 a.

m. and we had a speaker coming at 730 early call time for teenagers yep and she just level set on all the key areas and was like you all need to make a decision right now do we want to go with we're going to produce something we've never done before in this community he's never seen before or do we want to play it safe and not embarrass ourselves and go this other route and she got the whole class to wholeheartedly say we're going with you we're doing it it was it was I don't know like a Rudy moment we're going for it and but but then so then we get up to the event it's November 25th so my birthday is on November 24th so I'll never forget this it's like Thanksgiving time too that's or not November February I don't know why I said November February worst snowstorm of like years right businesses were shutting down not just schools businesses had lock and Cat day of cats what do we do and I was like who are the vendors you've spent the most money with and so it was our Lighting and Sound guy cuz we had to like totally build out an airplane hanger we also had to work with the airplane hanger because it was a private hanger that there's jets in there and we didn't know if they'd be willing to take the Jets out so that we could have our event in that space with these inclement weather situations so they hustle is true entrepreneurship at its finest and by the way I didn't do any of it for them and that's a big misconception like when people showed up to that event which we ended up having to have because the Lighting and Sound guys were like we've already loaded our trucks you're going to have to pay us double if we canel right now and we're like let's do it so we did it during setup that day we're like how do we fix the entrance so there's like cover so people aren't getting wind whipped with snow and ice and all these things so we're literally setting up a tent that we had crowd sourced cuz we don't have any money they also by the way didn't want to rent chairs because they didn't want to spend the money so we crowd sourced 700 chairs wow they hustled their BS off but literally there was a moment where I'm helping these boys set up this tent and it goes flying in the wind and it's about to hit the tarmac and then it gets hung up on the barbed wire fence to stop it and I'm just like what else what else is going to go on here but they do it and that class set the bar like I am forever grateful to cat Edmonds and Cole Kyper and Zack bigs and Christian like the kids the leaders in that Kevin Torres like they set the bar so incredibly high for every like I Moxy would not be what it is today without them setting the bar so high and so cat's an or fellow now and yes and an entrepreneur finished I think she's yeah a year or two out yeah so back to the original question so now sidebar she had a full ride to play soccer at Maran but because of our program wanted to stay local and that is one of the awesome side effects of our program is when you get kids radically connected to community and leaders in their Community they want to stay they want to stay they love their work and they want to keep doing their work so she started a nonprofit in high school that's still running today called together for the long run and it's a super cool model and then now actually her and one of my alumni from the first year of the applied entrepreneurship program who's also a Serial entrepreneur at this point because I think he started three companies they just launched a company called together called connect 574 so it's all about connecting uh people in the community around social activities and and making it okay to go to an event and meet people cuz they're always doing things where you're getting put on teams with people you don't know and it's super cool and fun and they're doing it that's really awesome and I'm so glad that you're doing the work that you're doing if if people want to get plugged in to rise how can they find you and in what ways can they engage yeah so our uh social media is at rise SBE that's Instagram everything else our website is raising the.

org my email is Iris raising the. org and I think we are here to help we consult with universities and Community groups we're working with boys and girls club so even if you're not in South Ben there's a way to plug in oh yeah we're actually Statewide now in all of our work so we're in about 90 high schools and 10 higher education institutions and and it's a model it's not a program it really is a model where it's like to get kids radically connected to community you have to have an ecosystem to plug into in our case I really do feel strongly that there were some Grassroots movements when I moved to South Bend but really the work of my boss and the founding board that I was on with the startup South B Elkart you know board like that work honestly I was doing that work at the same time as I was building Moxy and I was doing both intentionally because you have to have something for kids to dock into and so if you're running our model you will become the nucleus of entrepreneurial activity in your community just by nature of our model all like you can't not create an entrepreneurial ecosystem and not if you're implementing with Fidelity for communities that don't have anything it's a great place to start something for communities that have stuff it's a great place to add density and intentionality and just Inspire young people very cool I could ask you questions all day but we are to our favorite segment of the show or at least Nate's favorite segment of the show I feel like it's a stumper question right no there there actually no wrong answer oh no there's no wrong judge the lightning round okay so we're going to ask three questions off the top of your head just quick let's hear the answer right outside of the amazing entrepreneurial ecosystem what is Indiana known for race car driving race car driving I love it that's like come on there we go I'm from Wisconsin so that one's easy cheese easy that's fair Ryan Newman the South Ben NASCAR driver there you go yeah yeah uh what is one Hidden Gem in Indiana our humbleness I'm from the Midwest but I did not know what kindness truly means across an entire State like that hoer humbleness is like a real thing it's palpable I love that and couldn't agree more and who is someone that we need to keep on our radar someone who is doing big things oh man I'm going to call out Matt Sheldon who was Matt Sheldon so he's the I already called out cat so now I got to call him Matt he was in my first year program for the the college program started uh a program or a company called game day that does like concierge tailgating also got the soul tailgating rights at Soldier Field with Arena Club started a property management company and what I love about Matt Sheldon is he is somebody that gives back so talk about the return on your invest this is what I live for right it's you create an experience where students can understand the value of connectivity and being a part of something and servant leadership so it's not about trying to get the network for themsel to go build from a place of ego it's about how can I help so we teach them in like the networking process it's like it's asking how can I help first and Matt to me is I had an experience this summer because he always comes in and speaks to teachers we're training he was talking about the entrepreneur operating system and it was the first time in my professional career where the teacher got to be the student again and that lit a fire under my ass like none other and I was like I need to get after it my kids are passing me up like they're teaching me now and so that was just such a cool thing and he is he and his co-founder Greg are just incredible Holy Cross graduates and they are going to do some cool stuff in this world cuz they're good people doing good work I love that and so are you Iris thank you so much for all that you do for young people entrepreneurs everywhere and all these communities it's a really inspiring story and we look forward to continuing to follow your success thank you guys so much pleasure to be here this has been get in a powder kick production in partnership with Elevate Ventures and we want to hear from you if you have suggestions for a guest or segment reach out to Matt or Nate on LinkedIn or on email to discover top tier tech companies outside of Silicon Valley in hubs like Indiana check out our newsletter at powder.

com newletter and to apply for membership to the powdercake executive Community Check out powder. com premium we'll catch you next time and next week as we continue to help the world get in since you just listen to this podcast you might be thinking about starting one for your company lucky for you our partners over at casted have you covered casted is the first and only podcast and video marketing platform made specifically for B2B Brands I love this about them the platform makes it possible to publish Syndicate amplify and measure the value of your podcast and video content in fact we use it for our podcast here at powderkeg and if you're a startup you should listen up because cassid for startups is definitely for you they are offering exclusive deep discounts of up to 82% off retail price for qualifying startups connect with casted at cd. us/ powderkeg