Charge Forward Podcast
The Charge Forward Podcast: Dedicated to those who choose to Charge Forward into the Storm when hit with challenges. This is what makes them different and has lead to their success. When in doubt.... Charge Forward!
Charge Forward Podcast
Revolutionizing Education & Entrepreneurship: How Jeremy Qualls is Building Future Innovators
What if high school wasn't just about textbooks and tests, but about real-world business experience, industry mentorship, and innovation?
That’s exactly what Jeremy Qualls, Director of the Entrepreneur & Innovation Center (EIC) in Williamson County, has built—a game-changing educational model that prepares students for success in entrepreneurship and beyond.
In this episode, we explore:
✅ How the EIC selects and mentors students with a Shark Tank-style challenge
✅ Why failure is a critical teacher—and how embracing it fuels resilience
✅ The future of vocational training, industry partnerships, and hands-on learning
✅ The impact of mentorship, leadership, and assembling high-performing teams
From reshaping education to discussing entrepreneurial grit, innovation, and the power of learning from failure, this episode is packed with insights you don’t want to miss. 🎧
🔗 Watch & Listen Now:
Want to connect with Jeremy Qualls?
🎙️ Williamson Co EIC: Website
📱 Linkedin: Jeremy Qualls
📱 Instagram: Jeremy Qualls
Charge Forward Podcast Links:
🎙️Podcast Page: Charge Forward Podcast
📱 Facebook: Charge Forward Podcast
📱 Instagram: @ChargeForwardPodcast
📱 TikTok: @ChargeForwardPodcast
📱 X: @ChargeForwardX
Special Thanks to Our Sponsors:
💳 Charge Forward Solutions – Merchant Services: Charge Forward Solutions
📈 Sense Custom Development – Marketing & Executive Services: Sense Custom
🌟 Rosemary Salazar – Virtual Assistant Services: Find A Way with Rose
🎥 HitLab Studios – Podcast Studio: HitLab Studio
💡 New episodes drop every Thursday!
#ChargeForward #Entrepreneurship #Education #Leadership #Innovation #Business #Podcast
You are the cap for whatever goes on in your store, in your company, in your district, in your household. However excited you are, what you believe is possible, whatever that threshold is. Hey team, jim Cripps here with the Charge Forward podcast, coming to you from HitLab Studios here in Nashville, tennessee. Now I've got a special guest for you today. He is the executive director of the EIC in Williamson County. He's a longtime entrepreneur. He is just a dedicated family man as well as a lifelong educator. Welcome, mr Jeremy Qualls.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I hope that your viewers don't turn us off in the first 30 seconds because I may not. You know the lifelong education piece, but I hope I have some things and some nuggets here for people to take back.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I find what you do there just the spirit of the EIC, and before we met I had no idea that that even existed, that it was even a thing. So that's the Entrepreneur and Innovation Center in Williamson County, correct? That is correct, yes, and what is the spirit of it? I know it's 9th through 12th grade, but it's not like normal school.
Speaker 2:It's not like normal school at all. If you're a Williamson County parent and you're part of the Williamson County school system, let me make sure we're up front and clear about that. This is a Williamson County School System. Let me make sure we're up front and clear about that. This is a Williamson County School System program, so you have to be enrolled in one of the ten high schools and it started six years ago. It's on the campus of Franklin High School in the old Annex building. It used to be the vocational building at one point in time 40 years ago and then after that it was retroed for Columbia State. Columbia State Community College was in there for 15 plus years and then, when they built their new campus, we got it back. Dr Mike Looney and some people went on a trip to Denver, colorado, saw this entrepreneurial program in a classroom and they were trying to make a decision at that time what are we going to do with this space, what are we going to do with this building? So he went back. He said I know exactly and I'm so thankful for his vision on this that him and some other folks got together and went back retro this building and started the Entrepreneurship Innovation Center, better known as the EIC.
Speaker 2:What it is is a application and interview process to even get in. We just don't take kids. It started with 72 kids. Now we have a waiting list of over 500 to even get in. We have an enrollment roughly of 280, 275 to 280. That is the sweet spot for us. We have four teachers there. We don't even call them teachers, they are facilitators.
Speaker 2:I mean, the kids come in and to show you the power of the program, our very first class is during what we call zero period. It starts at 7 o'clock. That's an hour before any of our schools start and it's one of the first that our kids go and take and fill up. Because you've got athletes that have after school or during school things they have to do. You've got AP honor students that have a full slate of classes that they can't really juggle around to even be at the EIC.
Speaker 2:To be at the EIC you have to have two free periods. You have to give up a study hall or lunch for travel time and then obviously the classroom time that you have, and we see kids every day. But anyway, that zero period, that's a testament to how powerful the program is. We've got kids that are coming an hour before school to take this class, yeah, and we provide transportation in the middle of the day for those that cannot drive. And then when they get there, it is literally you've seen the space, it's an open collab space. It's not like any school. We make sure our saying is it doesn't smell like school, it doesn't look like school and it doesn't taste like school.
Speaker 1:No, not at all. And you know, the thing that I found really interesting there is, you know, the I think it's called the right thing with the collab space, because you've got all these young minds that are really again, like you said, not really teachers, because they're really just trying to guide and answer questions, because their minds are the ones that are like oh well, what if I want to do this, and how do I get through that? And and that type of environment.
Speaker 2:What separates us from any other business marketing fill in the blank class in any given high school across America is the fact that we've got 150 mentors built into this, baked into this, that are from the private sector, that come in, that volunteer their time. We have a dedicated day monthly for those mentors to come in. You know, if a mentor only has 30 minutes, that's great. Sign up for a 30-minute block. We got you, you're in and out. Most people say that and they look up and they've been there for eight hours a day. But what they do is we play speed dating right, we us today. But but what they do is we play speed dating right. We get them out there.
Speaker 2:The kids go around, they have three minutes to put their pitch on them and those mentors say that's a great idea. Well, that's a terrible idea. And hey, have you ever thought about this? Hey, I know somebody over here that I can get you connected with. That'll help you. You know, it's just one of those things. It's a pay it forward deal and they're so passionate about it that what happens is six months into this process, they start latching on to groups. The next thing, you know they're, they're fully invested, you know with those groups and pushing them forward and hoping they get launched and hoping they make it into the finals of our shark tank process where there's actual cash, actual seed funding up for grabs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and I think it's that, um, you know, if I'm, if I'm coming in somewhere and I'm speaking to a group, there are groups that that you're giving energy to and they don't give you energy back. What I see at the EIC is people get energy while they're giving energy because they see the light bulbs clicking, they see the things going off in these kids' heads, and then when they come back, they see what they've already done, because we get used to, we give energy or energy, or information, suggestions, et cetera, and the people don't do anything with them and they're like sponges. They're just hoping somebody feeds into them so that they can get where they're trying to go faster. So you come back and you see what they've done with what you gave them and then you're more excited to give again.
Speaker 2:That's a very astute point. I know you've been there and you've seen it. You can feel the energy in the building. Oh yeah, now there's something I want to remind everybody. Even though we're a public school system, they're choosing to be there, they're wanting to be there. So the type of quality of student that we have is is off the charts, right, number one. They're eager, they're they're willing to learn, they're ambitious, they're all of those things self-disciplined, hardworking. So I think what really happens is the feedback that we get from the adults that are. The mentors are like I had a preconceived notion about today's youth. You see the negativity, you see the social media, you see all the ignorance that's happening in traps that people fall into. But then when they come to the scene, they say these kids like hey, I gave you three ideas and you brought back seven. That's unheard of right. So it gives that energy back that you're talking about.
Speaker 1:It does Well. And I kind of liken it to your top athletes, because I loved hiring athletes because they had discipline, they knew how to get to be coached, they actually knew how they liked to be coached, where so many people don't. And I think this, the spirit of the EIC, is kind of in that same light. And these are not your average everyday kids or regardless of their age kids or regardless of their age.
Speaker 2:You bring up another good point too, and I think that in some form or fashion in my brain, whether I'm choosing to do so or not, I agree with you on the athletic piece. Right. My whole entire makeup, background, philosophies the way I work. Everything is dedicated to the craft that we own. For many, many hours in the backyard when nobody was looking right and mine was basketball Too bad. Colby's not here because he would talk about Millsaps College. I'm going to give him a shout out for Millsaps, but there's a lot of truth, because he talks about it a ton, talking about taking those athletes and how perseverance, adversity, self-discipline, all those things craft the person that you are, you know.
Speaker 2:I never forget the first time I became principal. I that you are, I never forget the first time I became principal. I was 31 years old when I became principal and I had been a head coach head basketball coach before that. I was the youngest in the state to become head coach at that time. I didn't need it, I didn't deserve it, but I got it. And there was a reason why I got it because I thought I was going to take this team to the state championship, because I was so brilliant, such a brilliant mind at the age of, you know, 23, 24, 25 years old, that I led my team to a five and 21 first year. You know and and the humbling experiences that.
Speaker 2:Anyway, my point is, when I got to become principal and the fires coming down and things are happening, I'd be like man, why aren't you getting? I was like this is, this is Sunday school. Man, you got to sit over there as a 25 year old. Try to get a bunch of 16, 17, 18 year olds to do what you asked them to do to put food on your table, Cause if you do not win, you're going to lose your job. That's right, that's fire. Yeah, this is playtime.
Speaker 1:Well, and you bring it up. Another good point there I love this conversation is you know, so much today has been watered down by us not keeping score, um, about us not talking about somebody won and somebody lost and what you need to do, what you need to fix. So that's one reason why I love the coaching aspect, the sports aspect, those types of things, but it plays right into your career.
Speaker 2:Like it, it does. And you know anything you do outside of bowling, golf. Even then there's a team concept at some point in time. Uh, for me it was basketball. So I mean, you can't hide you when there's five people on the floor. It's hard, it's hard to hide and if you're not any good and they have to hide you, you're not going to play, that's right. So you have to continually fight for a spot, which is something I love. And then when you get into the real world, it's like you said people like, if they haven't done it, you can't.
Speaker 2:It's hard to learn older, right, you have to go through that trial by fire. You have to understand you have to lose. You have to go five and twenty one in your first year to say, hmm, what's the problem? And then I went six and 20. Hey, I improved a game. And then I went seven wins the third year and I thought, okay, this is insanity, I haven't changed anything. I keep thinking that the players are going to change, they're going to change the outcome. But it was the coach the whole time, it was me. Until I learned that valuable lesson, I wouldn't be sitting here with you today. Yeah, yeah, and that's all because of failure. So the first thing that we teach at the SE is fail often and fail forward. If you're not learning through your failures, it's insanity.
Speaker 1:You're doing the same thing over and over. Yeah, absolutely Well, and again, I think that's. That's one of those things that's lost in a lot of households and I'm going to put this back on the parents is they're so quick to remove pain from the situation that the kid never learns how to deal with it, and so then that's where we end up with 20-year-olds that can't hold a job or can't make it through school because they can't handle somebody holding them accountable.
Speaker 2:I think about this all the time. As a father of three, I have failed miserably. I'm hoping by the third one, by the time he gets old enough that he can. Maybe I have learned my lesson. Like coaching right, nothing gets you ready for fatherhood. My father told me all the way through one day, son, you'll understand. One day, son, you'll understand. I'm like whatever. And now I'm like. He's so right. Here we are and and I try to raise our children with failure in mind. Yeah, hey, it's okay to fail. Okay, what'd we do wrong? Now, as we go back, when you approach this scenario again and we have helicopter parents this day that you know that just at all costs comfort them and shield them from failures and the teachable moments of that. It's not fun. Nobody wants to do it specifically with athletics with your own children. Yeah, you know, do you live vicariously through your children or do you back up and say they're their own person? Either they got to want it themselves and if they fail, or don't make the team. There's lessons involved in that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Don't complain about your playing time. What have you done to change it?
Speaker 1:That's right. Well, and a lot of times it's attitude and it's how they adapted to that challenge, whether it was they missed the shot, or I mean all the way down to you know, I love it when Colby talks about him making the goal or making a shot in the wrong goal.
Speaker 2:He does that quite often. Don't let him lie to you.
Speaker 1:Right, right, you know, but if you don't learn to recover from things, it's going to be a tough life.
Speaker 2:It is that resilience factor is so overlooked a lot of times and in fact you know you go back to the entrepreneurship side. So we have 150 mentors. The vast majority of them are some type of entrepreneur. First question I always ask when we get together as mentors is like okay, how many of you are on your first business and out of the 150 you might have one hand go up? Yeah, how many are on your second business? How many are in your third business? How many you get to five and six? That's when the hands start going up, yeah, and you start thinking about the failure and the lessons that are in that of the iterations. That is maybe their product that evolved over those six iterations, or they just completely pivoted altogether because of the failures. Yeah, they could have easily quit. They could have easily went and got a nine to five job and felt safe. But boats aren't made to be in that harbor.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:Smooth seas don't make skillful sellers. I mean, that's just the truth. You got to get out there. I wish kobe was here because he'd be rolling his eyes right now, because he'd be, he'd be referencing drucker or some kind of. You know, we call ourselves town and country. He's the, the city slicker that likes to talk in bumper stickers, and I just get redneck logic going right, right, it's literally comes down to that, though. Yeah, what do you do in those failures?
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I mean, cliches are cliches for a reason.
Speaker 1:I mean it's because they've been used over and over and over Um and it's because we don't have new problems. I mean, don't get me wrong AI and some things. Obviously they're creating some new dynamics, but you know a lot of the problems that that people go through growing up. They're the same problems that have been around a long, long time. You know how do you deal with failure, how do you deal with and you mentioned helicopter parents, but I think, and I didn't know this was a thing until just maybe a year or two ago, but they call them lawnmower parents that clear the way so that the child never sees a problem. It's terrible. It's terrible. You're stealing that. You're stealing that. You're stealing that from your kid and their future and really you're damaging your grandkids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're going to come a time that this is going to be, you know, you feel like everything is cyclical, that it will come back around, I guess maybe to the old golden days of raising kids at the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s, right, and I don't know. Man, it's really disheartening to watch. You know, being a coach, I don't know that you could pay me enough money to get back in the coaching profession because nobody's ever right. Right, I mean no coach is ever right, never, you know. And then I followed up my coaching gig after I got into admin with the district athletic director of Williamson County, which I was before the EIC, that's right. And you know, for five years I had to ride hard over 320 coaches and 10,000 student athletes in Williamson County. Let's just say that every job past that is pretty much Sunday school, because you know you've got highly ambitious people. Nothing wrong with that. But the high ambition sometimes comes with the blinders too.
Speaker 1:Sometimes and that entitlement, that's not.
Speaker 2:The entitlement. You know, hey, I'm paying $400 a month for my kid to go to this personal trainer. I'm like you might want to save your money. You know, I'm just going to be honest with you and I found that when I had discussions with disgruntled parents over coaching and or their or playing time or whatever, uh, sometimes the more blunt you are, the faster you get to that bluntness to them, the faster that conversation's over. So then all of a sudden, I went from well, let's talk about this to you. Know what I've been to? That that's not true. That's not accurate. I've been to the practices, I've been to games. Your kid just ain't good enough to play on that. Tell me who they're going to play over and that's the end of the, because they default back to, at some point in time, their failures and they're going back to what you're saying. They're trying to protect them from that failure. So sometimes when you talk, you know I just want to be realistic.
Speaker 2:It's what we do at DIC with the kids. That is a bad idea. Let me tell you why it's a bad idea. You're going to have to get that created overseas. They're going to have tariffs and you're going to have to get that created overseas that are going to have tariffs and you're going to have to go through customs. You don't have time for that, you don't have the infrastructure for that, you don't even have your business license yet. So let's back up. If we don't have those full conversations with those kids at the USC, they're going to spend six months on a frivolous project and then wake up and say why didn't you tell me this in the first six days? No different with disgruntled people.
Speaker 1:The reality is, the faster you can get to the truth with somebody. Almost 100% of the time, that's how you serve them best.
Speaker 2:It's not fun. It's not and it's not for everybody. It's not fun. When I was coach, I usually had to break down some of the kids. I had a guy. I love him to this day. His nickname was Pappy Terry Hudson, Lexington High School. I love that guy. I hope he watches this. Be like Pap. You got one job. If you want to play, Do not shoot. You're going to rebound. The only time you can shoot is off your own offensive rebound. If you get an offensive rebound, put it back up. Other than that, you get rid of it. He bought into that. He became a great player. His role was not to shoot In, Shoot. In his mind. When we first started, he was a scorer. Pap, I hate to tell you buddy, yeah, you want to play. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Offensive rebounds.
Speaker 1:Well, you know and I think this is fostered by social media and then just all the different things out there that push sometimes people in the wrong ways. I think it's Jack Daly that says that the average Little League team is run better than the average business, and it's because Little League players know their role. If I'm shortstop, I know what I do. If I'm the pitcher, I know what I do. If I'm the catcher, I know what I do. And sometimes people are confused as to what their role is.
Speaker 2:Well, biases haven't crept in yet. Egos haven't quite gotten there yet. If you're on a winning team Randy's team, right, oh yeah, parents aren't going to be saying everybody wants to be a part of a winner. If you're on a losing team, the parents start to chatter and they chatter in front of the kid and it just muddies it up. But, like you said, yes, none of that has. The innocence is still there. The wanting to please whomever is still there, whether it be your teammate and or your coach. When you get older, that's when those biases creeped in. When that happens, it's really, really difficult.
Speaker 2:I think about that from talent development perspective. We call our team the pirate ship. I want the best. I'm going to go and I'm going to steal and pirate every single top talent I can get. I'm not afraid of somebody. I don't want to be the smartest in the room. My father always said if you think you're in your smartest room, you go to a different room. That's right. There's a lot of truth in that. I want to surround myself with people that won't not necessarily this sounds, you know. This is when you start reading those guru books. Hire people that want to take your job. Have enough confidence to hire people that are that can do your job better. Yeah, absolutely empower them, make them autonomous within a structure and go forth and conquer yeah, well, and I think that's.
Speaker 1:There's two different mindsets there. A lot of people manage out of, they're trying to keep them in their boxes, yes, and then people that lead and I mean truly lead lead people that are better than them. They are constantly looking for that talent that can take the entire team to the next level, and then you're just guilty by association. I will tell you for I mean the majority of my career, I was not the guy, but I knew the guy because I hired him or the girl Like I had experts in all types of places that I had this much knowledge. I didn't need to be the expert in that field, I needed to have them on my team and then let them do their thing, like you said, within the framework, so that everybody was better because of it.
Speaker 2:I spent two weeks with my wife for our 20th anniversary in New Zealand and I told her when I was gone I was like I'm not going to check anything. It's the first time in my career I think I've really checked out of work. I really did. I mean, I could honestly say I checked out and I said you know what, when I come back they don't even need me anymore. I said that group, I love our team, I love our team. I mean it's just, I've put together some people that just are unbelievable teammates, care about each other just not from a personal, I mean from a work standpoint, but from a personal standpoint, but they are. They were diamonds in the rough.
Speaker 2:I don't know, this is not self-serving, this is not narcissistic. I'm just saying I don't know this is. This is not self-serving, this is not narcissistic. I'm just saying I don't have a lot of quality. I don't know what I have. I'm all over the map. But one thing that I think that I do see, for whatever reason that that guy gave me, was be able to see people and say, either one, their con arson, their car salesman, or number two, that person's got some unbelievable talent. Oh yeah, and the team that I have. It's just I'm so thankful for Jen, chris and Paula and Kim and all the people that we have because, as an example, chris, who works with us, chris was a teacher at a high school, had applied for several administration jobs, gotten looked over, passed over, passed over, don't know why Foolish. Now she could have any job in Wisconsin as she wants, because they see it now.
Speaker 2:And when I started the Wilco's, which is our version of the Espy's, when I was an athletic director, she was a soccer coach, yeah, and she texted me First off. She hit me up First day I was touring that building, never even know who she was. Came up, she said, hey, you knew the athletic director. Yeah, we need lights on our field. Hey, not, how are you doing? I'm like now, who is this Northern Razor's Edge? Right, so she goes through this conversation. And then we got to know each other. We're laughing. She says hey, says hey, we really do need light. So I started looking into it. Anyway, along the side, you know, we get the uh wheelcoats going. She calls me. She said, hey, I'm looking for more admin roles. I want to help you fast forward to the night that the the wheelcoats. After it's over. Everybody's gone. I send my wife home and I'm out there in a tuxedo. I take my the jacket off.
Speaker 2:I'm rolling up carpets and there she is, in a dress, pregnant, putting up rugs and didn't even ask her Got home. I told my wife. I was like if I ever get an opportunity, she's going to be my number one hire. Now she's assistant director. I probably get in their way. I just need to get out of the way and let them. I mean, that's what I'm talking about, pirate, right? People like well, you have a unique ability to hire. No, it's not a unique ability, it's the confidence in people and confidence in yourself that I'm not worried to bring in the right people on that are smarter, better, it's OK. Yeah, because we're going to make a cool team dynamic and culture. That's a non-negotiable and I'm going to let them soar. I mean that's what we're here to do. I mean let them go.
Speaker 1:No, I believe almost exactly the same thing and for years I looked at it as kind of two different ways. One, I'm looking for puzzle pieces and you're looking for that person that fits that role, that makes the whole thing come together. Or I also described it as like misfit toys that were made for this particular kid or for this particular scenario. And you know, taking those people that other people overlook, foolishly overlook, because you're not willing to ask what are they supposed to be doing? Like what do they want? Like what's the bigger picture for this person, and then plugging them in, and I mean literally, you look like a rock star when it's really them. You're just giving them a place to shine.
Speaker 2:That's so accurate. I learned this lesson from a good friend of mine and the person that followed me into that athletic directorship job, a guy named Darren Joins. He's a longtime basketball coach, very close friend of mine and a remarkable human, and I never forget going to his practices, going to his games and watching him and talking to him constantly. It's like, dude, you're letting that guy run practice. He's like what's your point? It's like you're the head coach. I was falling back into that 5 and 21,. Jeremy, where it has to be me, the light has to be on me. I got hired to do this, this job, because, my God, I deserve it. That's the old me. And then I started watching and next thing, you know, the practices are so Well old. And then you got the one-on-one aspect of the teaching down to the toe, down to that little league aspect that everybody's bought into and all those people are working extremely hard and he's sitting back and evaluating, watching and just moving pieces around. I was like that's smart.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Hire people that are talented, that are just as good as you, and let them roll, yeah, and I mean, it's such a simple concept, simple concept. So I, I, I like to think I'm very cautious now that when we do have openings, that the culture and the team dynamic is at all costs. So it's not my decision. We do everything as a team, everything. Now I may have to veto and they veto me, and that's fine and that's part of that culture that we have internally, but it works. It doesn't necessarily work for everybody, because you have to be willing to let go of the reins and that's tough.
Speaker 1:You do, and you have to have the right people that are willing to push back when they know that that's the wrong thing, and that means that you've got to have fostered an environment where they can speak up.
Speaker 2:It's not the wrong thing more so than it is. What are we here fighting for? Because that wrong thing can be misconstrued, as Jim really wants to do this, because it's going to make Jim look good, right, and that's not what we're doing, that's right. There's not a decision that's made that's going to make Jeremy look good, chris look good, paula look good. It's saying what's best for these kids and that's who we serve.
Speaker 1:I love it. That's the mission. That that's the mission. That's the mission, and I mean that's why you're so successful at it. And you guys, you just broke ground on some pretty amazing stuff too. If you will Give us a look under the hood on that, we did.
Speaker 2:We're so excited about this and anytime we get an opportunity, thank you for that. So Governor Lee, three years ago allocated $500 million for vocational training, skills education, right, tech. We call it cte career and technical education and um, uh, being the exec director not only of the ic but over the cte world as well. We have roughly 140 teachers across 10 buildings, 30 something programs. So when they dropped this, it was like you had to modify the way you teach, the time that you teach your partners that you teach with and facilities. So we started thinking what are we going to do? That's going to leave a legacy with this money. So the formula was every high school within your system gets a million bucks. Middle schools get $500,000. You can pull. That's the first verb, the first word, excuse me, that came out of the mouths of the people that were doing it and I was going okay, pull the money. That means, so I had to carry the two. Do this. 15 and a half million. It's like, okay, that's cool, you can do something significant. Then they said you could build. That's the only two words I heard in the entire process Pull and build, pull and build and Like I looked at my table of my colleagues that are across the district, the middle Tennessee area.
Speaker 2:You've got Metro Nashville, you've got Wilson County, rutherford County, cheatham County, sumner County all of them sitting at the table and I looked at it immediately. I said we're going to build. And they all looked at me like you're crazy. I'm like we're going to build. And then they said, well, there's going to be a 10% cap on the building process. So then I did the math and I was on 1.5. Man, you can't do that. So chris looked at me. She said what are you gonna do? How you gonna pull this off? I said we're gonna request a meeting, we're gonna put a pitch on them that they cannot turn us down on. So we put together a deck, we get this idea together.
Speaker 2:We started talking to people, kind of got a couple of renderings. It's like this is what it could potentially look like. I'm'm thankful that we have such unbelievable partners in the Williamson Inc. Matt Large and his group, ceo of Williamson Inc, our chamber, along with Rogers Anderson, the mayor, got together and said hey, we got an idea. We need land. Of course, land is at a premium, so if we'd have bought land, it'd have eaten up most of the, you know, a third of the $15 million. So there's a piece of land beside the eic that used to be the old dog kennel. They've already built a new dog kennel, moved that facility out. That's been vacant for three years. It's worthless piece of property, honestly, because it sits on franklin. You know it's zoned, you couldn't build anything and mayor anderson said we're gonna, we're care of it, we're going to give you that.
Speaker 2:And I was like whoa, that was awesome. So that was step one. Step two got on the phone, did a Zoom call with the Commissioner of Education and everybody that was over this $500 million process and it was the GIVE grants, governor's Initiative on Vocational Education. So we Innovative School, school models grant pardon me, I assume that Gil came before that, I assume folks. So we got on zoom call. I said all right, here's what I want to do. I said, just hear my pitch and y'all shoot us down or do whatever. But we got this thing. Bam bam, bam. We get to the end and they're like this is exactly the spirit of what this is. I said why did you put a cap on it? And they kind of laughed and I think they've backed up off the cap. But they, they gave me the green light. So then we had to go back, we had to work you know kind of commission and everybody has to approve for the funds to be funneled. And all that went through. So we finally got to the point. It's a four-year grant. This is year three that we finally got to break the ground because you've gone through the architectural phase, engineering phase. We broke ground on December the 3rd and they have to be done by July of 26, july 1. They said they'd get it done. Bell Construction great partners, are doing the construction. So that's a long story. To get to this point, what is this building? We're going to take the EIC model and we're going to overlay it. In this building there's going to be four worlds in the building. Let me add fifth. Chris always gets mad because I forget the fifth World one I started talking about.
Speaker 2:Part of the foundation of this ISM grant was you had to do something with industry partners. So I started peddling this to people. I got told no. So many times I thought for a minute there I was like I'm never going to find anybody. I said I just need one to fall Right. So I got with the CEO of Thompson Caterpillar sitting here in Nashville, yep, and within 20 minutes he was like I mean, what do you want us to do? So they are sponsoring 5,000 square feet in this facility.
Speaker 2:It's going to be a Thompson Caterpillar machine tech program and it's going to be two for one. One of them has never been done in the United States, which I'm pretty excited about. The other one has been done and we're going to build upon it, which is heavy machine technology. So the kids are going to be coming in. Another academic partner in the kids are going to be coming in. Another academic partner in space is going to be the Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology, which is better known as TCAT. So TCAT is going to provide teachers in there they're going to get collegiate credits towards an industry certification while these kids are going through high school with Thompson Caterpillar in there.
Speaker 2:I mean it's going to be three bays, three ton cranes, modules coming in. They're bringing the drop in, the big engines in. They're doing all of that, you know, pneumatics, all of that stuff which I think is extremely cool. And then they're going to be. Hopefully, if we do our jobs, by their senior year they'll be down at the Caterpillar Tech Center right south of 840 on Columbia Pike down there working alongside Caterpillar technicians, and then they'll be ready to work. That's great. That's going on sites with a truck roughly $100,000 start, yeah, zero. College education.
Speaker 1:Zero debt.
Speaker 2:Zero debt Applied technology industry credentials embedded.
Speaker 1:And it's good for the industry too.
Speaker 2:It's great. The second one that they brought upon us was hey, would you be interested in energy power generation? I was like, yeah, what's that look like? Well, according to them I didn't know this Thompson Caterpillar is the largest provider in the world of generators generators. So if you think about it, when a hotel, a hospital, a bank, anything, the power goes down, they're either one or two, one of three.
Speaker 2:Genrac, kohler, thompson Capital and Thompson Capital is the biggest. Right now. They tell us they're working on three to six generators that have never been built before. We're talking about a billion-dollar in contracts with Elon and Tesla on their server farm that's being set up outside of Memphis right now. Oh wow. So it has to run on a particular humidity rate. What they asked for TVA told me what they asked for out there could run the entire state in kilowatts. So it has to be a hybrid program. So they have to run half of it off these generators, half of it off the grid, and if anything happens to the grid, the generator's got to pick up 100%.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So they're building things that have never been created before. So our kids are going to get the benefit of seeing this process. So if you want to become an electrical engineer, this program is going to be great. So one thing this program is going to be great. So one thing this building is going to do for us. Our number one priority is to change the thought process. I've been reading this book called Play Bigger. You've got to read it. It's awesome, talking about pirates, innovators and entrepreneurs and how they play bigger. Category kings is the number one thing they talk about. In category kings, you start thinking about who is a category king? Well, apple's a category king, uber's a category king, amazon's a category king. So you talk about what are we? How can we become category kings in education? And this, to me, is how you do it. It's not that you're solving a problem. You're solving a problem faster and better than what's been done before.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You look at Uber. Uber was a taxi company, but it became a tech company. And the minute it became a tech company, it changed the category. Right, and it changed how you interacted with it Exactly and even though you might have to get a lift, you still call it an Uber, that's right.
Speaker 2:Right, so the second place folks can survive. The third, fourth and beyond are all gobbled up, and guess what happens to? That goes back to my pirate theory on education and hiring good people. All the great people want to work, for whom? The number one, the category key. So you start thinking about this from a votec standpoint of not just having vocational classes in your classroom. We've got a place where you can come, you can work alongside an industry partner that is using their standards. You're working along a collegiate program that's actually the credentialing base for the industry credential and when I turn 18, I can go to work for these people.
Speaker 1:Well, even just the exposure, the exposure that they're going to have Right Is monumental.
Speaker 2:So let's say I go into this and I spend three years of my high school career, I spend an hour a day and I decide that's not what I want to do. Why would you not do it on our dime then later and being in debt? That's just. That's just a small piece of the puzzle, all right. So there's world one, world two cybersecurity, ai. We are working on some deals. Right now I can't mention it yet. When I get it solidified, I hope I get it solidified with a blue chip company as well as a university that's very well known that just started a NSA program with the.
Speaker 2:NSA former chief. So if I can get this deal done, there's some really cool possibilities. I got a lot of post-secondary institutions circling this and I've got to figure out who the best partner is. I think there's room for all. But anyway, there's world two. World three, I think, is a very cool one. It's our number one requested cte program, which is culinary, believe it or not really we've got kids that we have to kick out, we don't.
Speaker 2:We just we can't put them in. We're overfilled. So what we're going to do is we're not just going to do culinary, because I think that's a little bit one one dimensional for our building. I said let's make it a bigger and better thing. So we're going to call it hospitality, hospitality and tourism management. So embedded in there you've got a hell's Kitchen-styled scratch kitchen.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That competitions can be had in there, nice, and then you've got a mock hotel lobby, mock hotel room, mock hotel bathrooms. So we're going to learn front of house, behind the house, everything in between, how to run hotels, how to do culinary programs. We're going to mash that up. I think what we're trying to do is going to run this building net zero. So how do we do that? So, as a fundraising process, people can host a meeting there. Our people will do all the logistics. I love it Right.
Speaker 2:So for a small fee that goes towards the building, we're trying to be net zero in the building, sure, and so this is really cool. Our partners in that, justin Foster, who's general manager of Harpeth Hotel, our five-star hotel in downtown Franklin We've got Halifax Properties I mean, hitesh Patel and his family have been unbelievable. And then all this is going to be mashed up. We'll have more people come to the table. All those people that told me no to begin with will be like, hey, how come y'all didn't approach us about this? They'll forget once this thing is actually happening. Oh yeah, I was trying to sell them a pie in the sky. It's hard to see it, but now that we got some movement they were like, hey, how do I get involved? But that's World 3.
Speaker 2:World 4 is aviation private pilot license. We are working with Hawkins Flight Academy guys out of Nolensville, not far down the road from here. Kids will actually be able to have loggable hours towards their private pilot license. We're going to have full-moving simulators in there. Mtsu is our secondary partner with that. They've got two routes. You want to go to school and get your post-secondary degree and then go to work for a commercial airline. That's the route you can go. If I just want to get a private pilot license, we have a route for that.
Speaker 1:Well, the opportunities in being a pilot, and I wasn't aware of this, but COVID kind of created this problem. I wasn't aware of this, but COVID kind of created this problem. And the problem was you had people that weren't expected to retire for another five to ten years, that went ahead and said I'm not dealing with all this, I'm retiring, and so there's this gap. And so whether we're talking about on the commercial side, whether we're talking about on the private side I mean, even I didn't even know that this was a thing there's people that have that just fly dogs. They literally they fly dogs from wherever in the United States to their new owners.
Speaker 2:But it costs more money to fly dogs than it does humans. We don't bet. Oh, I have no doubt. No doubt. Doug Crulon is the president of the Metropolitan Airport Authority at B&A right. Doug's a superhuman being. He's another one of our partners he was just talking about. There's 12,500 badge holders, in other words, employees on the grounds of B&A every day, 12,500. They move Nissan Stadium daily of people and he's like we're fixing to open up an additional.
Speaker 2:I'm going to say this wrong. This number's going to be wrong. I think it's 20 million annual, going towards 40 million annual when they open up everything they're building. Wow. So you think about that.
Speaker 2:You think about the jobs that are going to come with, not just in the aviation process alone, from flying dogs to flying humans, to flying or radio control tower, it doesn't matter, there are opportunities out there. The mechanical side on this is huge too. They can't find employees. You know we're going to look at is there a crossover between the Thompson Caterpillar process and maybe jets and whatnot, and see what we can do. But it's very interesting. Our fifth world is we've struck a deal with the city of Franklin, which I think is cool. They're having a little bit of a difficulty in hiring fire employees. So we're doing a fire science management program in conjunction with the city of Franklin and their fire department and our HR department has lowered their age requirements to get in from 21 to 18. So we're going to put them through this process. They're going to man it, they're going to operate, they're going to teach it. They get to handpick six interns on the backside of that and out of that six they're going to select who's going to get employed.
Speaker 2:I love it and I just think it's really cool. It's not a lot of quantity, it's a smaller style, more niche program, if you will. But we've got data that says I think we have upwards to 300 that have the aptitude and interest to be in that. So we're going to make it so specific that it's kind of like the EIC you get selected, congratulations you're in. Because we're only looking for 12 to 14 a year anyways.
Speaker 1:Well, and you're looking for the best. You're looking for the ones that are going into that, with or without you, and they're determined.
Speaker 2:You know you can be debt-free. They even have a college reimbursement program to go into FIRE. You know they have a really cool schedule for a single young adult. You know you go a couple days home, couple of days off. It's pretty interesting how it is and if I was a single adult that'd be something I'd look at and say you know, I need to get a college degree for whatever reason we'll fall back on, I'd go through the fire, let them pay for it. And they say you know you might work up the ladder in the fire department and they pay really well once you get going. And even the intro pay right now on fire is higher than teachers.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's the world. Now here's the cool thing. I stole this from Purdue. Purdue University came and toured EIC and upon their conversation I was asking them it's like hey, give me some ideas. We got this building coming. I want those kids to not only learn the skills, but we got to get business models embedded. Yeah, if I want to open up my own aviation uh program or whatever tutoring or a pilot licensing program. They may have the skill set, but they don't have the knowledge of the business aspect. So the guy's like here's what we do at purdue we overlay inter-business studies, ibs is what it's called, and he's like you know engineering, we're engineering school engineering, engineer engineer. They get out, they know how to build xyz, but they don't know how to run their own company. So what we're going to do is, once they go through that, they're going to have to walk across the parking lot and take a business class or an entrepreneurial class in the EIC. So we feel like that is the perfect storm. We have yet to found anywhere. You either have one or the other.
Speaker 2:Like I said, we're not the only eic program in the country. There's over 500 that that are in this silo with us, that run the incubator edu program. The reason we do the incubator edu curriculum is it gives us an opportunity to be and qualify for the national championships in chic annually. So our program has been around six years, so we're relatively young as compared to the rest. Naperville suburb out of Chicago was the one that started it. Texas has been in it a long time. We're the pups. We won the national championship in year five last year and it tore some of them up. I love it. That's that competitive nature.
Speaker 1:I think you've got an opportunity to maybe get it this year too.
Speaker 2:We do so last year. I think if people are still listening and watching this and say, okay, talk more about the EIC. Here it is. I'm going back to your discipline. Instead of talking about what you're going to do and what's going to happen if things go wrong, let's talk about things that you're going to get to do.
Speaker 1:If you do things right, that's right so, yeah, maybe that didn't get across the finish line, but it gives him the confidence that he can lean into the next time in order for his pitch what do you want to change?
Speaker 2:discipline, discipline, consistent discipline. Great that public education is going to die because it will not evolve.
Speaker 1:Team is Jim Cripps here with the charge for podcast. I just want to tell you I love you, I appreciate you listening, I appreciate you for subscribing and sharing the charge for podcast with people you know and you love, because that's what we're here for. We are here to share the amazing stories, the things that people have been through, the ways that they were able to improve their life, so that you can take little nuggets from theirs and help improve your story and be better tomorrow than you were today. I hope that this is the tool you needed at the right time and that you find value in the amazing guests that we bring each and every week. Thanks so much and don't forget new episodes drop every Thursday.