Why the Future of Entrepreneurship Starts in Schools

What we're gonna do is instead of running these like traditional vocational programs like we've all been used to back in our day. Entrepreneurship is the heartbeat. They're gonna have to understand a business plan, they're gonna get taught a business plan, so that when they go to work the skills are the No. 1 thing but your entrepreneurship is the shelter.

That's the heartbeat. Most people talk about the future of work. Jeremy Qualls is building it years before people enter the workforce. Jeremy is the executive director of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center,

he is also responsible for the College Career and Technical Education program at Williamson County Schools. In these roles Jeremy is rethinking how students are exposed to entrepreneurship technology and real world problem solving. We talked about critical thinking, about innovation and why it shouldn't wait until college.

And how early exposure to building creating and thinking like an entrepreneur fundamentally changes confidence and opportunities later in life. This conversation reshapes how you think about talent pipelines. So let's dive right in. My job is to shout from the tallest mountain to all the the folks here in Nashville that entrepreneurship and tech innovation doesn't begin when you're an adult.

That we have viable companies at the high school level. And it's really interesting. The Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center as we call it the EIC, has been only been around for seven years. And we subscribe to a group called Uncharted Learning out of Chicago, that is a an entrepreneurship curriculum if you will it's a baseline curriculum that we we do with our kids. The the center opened with 72 kids.

We have a maximum of 280 now, with a waitlist of 500 to even get in. We are the back to back and hopefully soon back to, back to, back national pitch champions. And I brought one of my national champions with me today he's launched a Ed tech company and and I think it's it's it's one of the coolest things. I used to be in my former life an athletic director and athletics is always close to my heart.

And I'm not sure there's a single thing in public ed that has the power of a football game on Friday night. This is the closest thing that I've ever had to move the needle for me, specific to the educational side of things outside of athletics is this Entrepreneurship Center. You've got a magnet going down there. I remember when you first opened. I remember the vision and this constant.

You're not just shouting from the mountain tops you're also roaming the valleys and you know making sure that people understand, that the water that feeds the valley is the youth our future. Yes and all I'm wanting to do is hook the wagons. It you know a lot of people and I'm I'm the same way before I took that job. Is when you go back in time to your time in high school, were you a were you able to have a viable company.

You two probably yes, me no way. Because I didn't have the opportunity, I didn't know the know how or the resources. And we give all of that. And then we have an application interview process where you have 10 high schools. The highest achieving school district in southeast United States and I get to get the 1% of that group to say let's go build a business, are you kidding me.

It's as good as it gets man, it's it's fun. And literally we give them some starting points and we get out of the way. Fail often fail forward. Fear not And don't fear. There's nothing there's nothing to fear. What is there to fear? Failure? That's how we learn. Well there is no such thing as failure, actually. In my opinion, I think there's nothing but learning opportunities, nothing but change. Even when you're relatively successful, compared to something else you might not be so why compared to anything.

And I love the attitude that I think youth brings to a challenge. It's all about learning and consuming, knowledge and I think reflecting back also the leadership that they're getting. From people like you and other leaders in Williamson County and throughout this region. Talk to me about how you're engaging with the Nashville Technology Council the Greater Nashville Technology Council? I since being in this role I'm also my other responsibility is is being over all of college and career technical education for Williamson County. So we have 140 teachers across 10 buildings 34 programs of study. So I immediately when I took the job I've always considered myself

a techie even though I couldn't create or do anything tech wise. But I maybe a futurist I loved watching emerging technologies and thinking okay how can we use this for better efficiencies. So I always stayed on top of those things. So immediately when I got that job the first place I went was to our it coding people was like alright what are we building, what are we doing?

Right. That's how I discovered Anthony. Are we solving any problems are we creating anything? And they said yeah we got a couple, I said we're good we're gonna have an open mic night at the EIC, and I want those tech people to come. And I'm gonna get a 'Shark Tank' of tech folks and we're gonna see what happens. Anthony was a byproduct of that. But I just I immediately reached out at that time to the NTC.

This was been 7 / 8 years ago, Elise was coming on board and Elise and I were on the Williamson Forward trip we got to know each other and and figuring things out. And then the thing I love about Mark Blaze. Mark called me he's like in his awesome dialect, of course I have my own southern dialect, we couldn't understand each other for the first five minutes. It was great we laughed, now what did you say slow down.

He's like hey man I've heard all about you I wanna come see you, and I was thinking okay this guy's new he's not gonna come down and sure enough he came down the next week. We spent I don't know, we had to literally kick each other out and say let's we gotta go back to work. And it's just it's a constant thing on my radar, specific to the tech industry.

Cause I feel like the innovations happen fastest at the tech, so I really love to attach everything we're doing to the tech aspect. And hopefully we're providing an infrastructure and a jumping off place for these for these folks to go into that industry. You know you we talked a little bit about the you never fail you only learn, it's the the your relationship with failure as an entrepreneur and it took me late into my 40s to learn that lesson or to be taught that lesson.

Why are we not teaching kids that lesson? You're you're an exception. Why are why is that this not more universal teaching lessons like that? I'm gonna try to be careful here because I'm scared something. When I was a principal way back I subscribed to that theory. Let's get away from rote memorization. Let's get away from 74 problems for homework.

Let's get away from all these things that we've traditionally done. And let's put kids in a place of success. And do it at a quantity where it's manageable from a teaching aspect of if they don't know what they're doing. What are we kicking out to get them there? And if they do know what they're doing, where do you send them? So that's the first problem that we solved as a principal. So you go back to now these days.

The problem of it is I think people in public ed moves at glacial speed. It just does, always has been. We're still stuck in 1984, we're playing Pac-Man we think that's AI, right. AOL as they use yesterday, we're still on AOL. What AOL is that gone now? We're still we're still looking for a mail, they didn't realize they shut it down yesterday after 30 years you know.

I want to move at business speed and I'm fortunate enough to be in a facility and a system that allows me to to to play in that sandbox. Because we have the abilities at the EIC in the in the incoming Innovation Center to do so. The funny thing is when I go out to these general ed classes, and say hey I know you're running a senior level English class, why don't we shift the mindset a little bit let them come in and be our PR firm for our kids. And do corporate memos, you can get the exact same standards that you're trying to cross over.

It may not be Hamlet, but it's real life, and it's relevant. And it's a little bit overwhelming sometimes if you haven't been in a situation like the EIC. That's what I see. If you haven't been in a situation where you've got an Anthony, you've seen Anthony have 12,000 users worldwide before you graduated high school. And you realize that the last two months of his career was not spent in a classroom. That I sent him to every single school district within driving distance to meet with their superintendent.

That is 10 times more important than anything he's gonna learn in a classroom. And until we can wholesale do some things like that, it's just the public educate or any education system has to get into that realm of understanding the power. And how to back up, give the kids a little bit of ownership, help them fail help them refine and do it again.

When we open the Innovation Center in August We're gonna open up with five programs of study. Five programs that have never been done in Williamson County history. Aviation, kids can get private pilot license. Cyber security, artificial intelligence. We've done cyber before, but artificial intelligence is gonna be in tow with that.

Hospitality and tourism is a brand new program where kids are learning everything every aspect of the restaurant and hotel industry. From the front of the house to the back of the house house and everything in between. We've got a firefighting program that we are with the city of Franklin. And we have a heavy machine technology program that in energy power generation with Thompson Caterpillar.

What we're gonna do is instead of running these like traditional vocational programs like we've all been used to back in our day. Entrepreneurship is the heartbeat, they're gonna have to understand a business plan, they're gonna get taught a business plan. So that when they go to work the skills are the No. 1 thing. But your entrepreneurship is the shelter, that's the heartbeat. So I can go work for Thompson Caterpillar as an 18 year old straight out of this program at $100,000 and a truck, but five years down the road I'm gonna realize I can do this business elsewhere on my own.

But I don't know how to I don't know how to do it. We're changing that narrative. So we're gonna take traditional vocational program and flip it on its head, and we're gonna make it innovative. And it's gonna be all entrepreneur driven. Oh can I get an Amen. Can I get an Amen, I feel like the I don't know the energy I just want to jump on it and ride it.

And so we've talked a little bit about helping and how the community helps. And we've talked about the nature of our community and the nature of helping. Let's let's get rid of that and just say how can we help you? What are three areas where we can empower the things that you are doing? Time. Talent. Treasure. Now today. Today. Today.

The EIC the current Entrepreneurship Center has 150 mentors built in which is pretty cool man. To have 150 business adults like yourself come in and pour themselves into our kids. One day a month that's all we ask. And what happens is when they start attaching themselves to a company all of a sudden there's Mark Cleveland walking in on a Wednesday morning at 8:00. What's up man, he's like oh I got a meeting with Anthony, I was like great and we just going about business.

That's what we do in the in the entrepreneur center it's really I mean I saw three today adults. We don't set those meetings the kids are setting those meetings. Because we treat it like real world. But those mentors we are always. We wanna continue growing that people roll off roll in whatever. I like to cover every sector too so if we need some IT experts we have them if we need people that are signing NDA's and legal, we have that. We have patent attorneys on all those things so yes. So I remember when the Entrepreneur Center was a shovel dig here and and when we were with Michael Burcham and everybody was putting this thing together.

And I personally went down and took the mentorship training program that he offered. And became a mentor. And one of the reasons was I I thought you know I'd like to imagine that I could be a better mentor in my own organization. Talk to me about you, that's a lot of mentors you're attracting to to create this energy cauldron. And how are they oriented how are you helping them get engaged?

You know what we do is, we try to keep it high level. And the reason that is most of the conversations you're gonna be having is it was with a teenager in the ideation stage. And probably there's a greater better chance than not that that's a terrible idea. And we tell them and we we inform them that is what they're wanting to hear.

They're not wanting you to sugarcoat it. I don't want to these kids are so high level. They don't want to spend six months on a product, and you come back and say "hey man I hate to tell you that's not a good idea." I should have said this before but. Why didn't you tell me earlier? I've already spent 6 months on it. Cause they're working that fast.

So we say be open and honest and provide your networks for them. If you can't do it there's somebody in your network that could possibly help them. So then as it gets deeper level 2, level 3, level 4, you know those kids that have been in the program for two and three years where they're way past the the the the children's stage.

That's where they get those individual hooked in and they really make the magic happen. So I've been exploring this topic for a while on my podcast and I'm thrilled to be a part of this project. I wanna recognize something. I've always thought growing up in corporate America running my own companies that I was I would be a mentor I would mentor.

other people right. And then I remember there was this moment where if I rolled it back I'm receiving mentorship from people in a Fortune 500 company I'm working with etcetera. And now I think that mentorship is a two way street period. At all times. I'm learning as much from this young eager, it doesn't matter if they're high school or maybe just right out of college I'm getting as much mentorship upward you know or or you know collectively in that experience. As I might even hope to offer them.

I'm excited to hear about your programs. What happens is our kids get offered internships usually on the spot. It's never fails. People are like how old are you again? I'm like 17. They're like let me check with HR. Do you have a car. Yeah yeah. Right I mean it's it's really remarkable. I've heard somebody say too I kind of felt like okay we're missing a boat on this when we first started.

Before we kind of shifted to where we are the current model now. We brought in a cyber security class to be the Cyber Geek Squad for our programming, for our kids that are building businesses. So if you need a website, need this, need this these guys are here. Let's give them real world relevancy right. Mentor sitting at the table and the mentor's like what if you had this and this and this and that.

He said you talking about this and that guy said, you just didn't do that? He goes oh yeah. He said yeah what are you doing tomorrow at 4 o'clock. And then I was like okay I've let's shift our thing because it's exactly what you said it becomes a two way street. Well I've heard that.