Meet INCubatoredu@nfdl – Local Educator Brings Entrepreneurial Spirit to Classroom

Products, Services & the Entrepreneurial Mindset

Adam: So what does a mix look like
between products and services for the kids?

Kurt: It's really up to them —
whatever they are interested and passionate about. I try not to get in the way
of that. If I try to put them into a box, they get bored easy. As an
entrepreneur, it has to be something that they're completely passionate about
or excited about, or are going to want to just hustle on for a year straight.
And even with that, as they enjoy what they're doing — they're still kids. They
get distracted, they see something shinier. So if they want to pursue a service
or a product or a nonprofit, awesome. Honestly, that's not my primary concern.
My primary concern is the outcomes of the entrepreneurial mindset and all the
other things that sort of go along for the ride. Starting a business is the
medium that brings along all those other little character traits that we're
developing.

Adam: That's a great way to put it.
It's kind of the vehicle for a variety of expressions — could be creativity,
could be design, could be engineering, could be the nonprofit side, helping
people in need.

How Kurt Got Into INCubatoredu

Adam: So how did you get into this,
Kurt — the INCubatoredu program?

Kurt: Six years ago, our
superintendent, Aaron Sadoff, sort of a rock star — went to a conference down
in Texas. INCubatoredu is part of a national program. There's a couple hundred
schools around the U.S. and the world that are running it in their schools. He
went to a conference and it was just getting started — there were probably like
10 schools in the U.S. running it. He was talking to the folks and got excited,
as he always does. He's a huge, awesome cheerleader that way. He came back to
me and says, hey, we've got to do this. I'm like, okay, whatever. I've got some
entrepreneurial experience — I've started three businesses, almost a fourth,
but that didn't happen, which is good experience as well. I'm thinking to
myself, nope, I can do this on my own. But he's like, just give it a little —
I'm like, okay, cool.

Kurt: Every year they have a summit in
Chicago for three or four days where all the INCubatoredu teachers from around
the U.S. and world get together and hang out and go to conferences and learn
and connect and network. At that first day at that training, I was learning
more and more about their curriculum and how the process works and what they're
doing and the lean startup methods. The people that were involved in the back
end building that curriculum are some really heavy hitters. For example, one of
the folks that was working there and helping in the process — they're like,
yeah, we just sold our company to Google for $230 million, I was a little bored
now, so I think we're going to do this. I'm like, okay, cool — that's above —
we don't have those numbers at schools.

Kurt: Playing around in that a little
bit more, and then at that night I called Aaron in the hotel room — like, we're
in, we're all in. Let's start it next year. Change the course title, go. I'm
all about just jumping into the deep end right away, let's just roll with it.
So that next fall in September, kids showed up to my marketing class, and I
said, hey guys, congratulations, you're not marketing anymore — we're an
INCubatoredu. Let's roll. We sort of built it — we have the saying of “build
the airplane as it's flying.” We lived that mindset for the first couple years.
It's just grown from there. Then we started connecting with awesome people in
the community — with Envision Greater Fond du Lac and a lot of other awesome
businesses. We just started asking questions, the support came, and five years
later here we are.

Adam: Five years — so 2017-ish?

Kurt: Yeah, sounds about right.

What Types of Kids Are Drawn to This Program?

Adam: So what type of kids are drawn
to this program? You said it shifted from a marketing class to
entrepreneurship. Were the same types of people that were drawn to marketing
also drawn to this, or did it bring in a lot of new, fresh ideas and people?

Kurt: Both. Obviously I'm going to get
the kids that are inclined and excited about marketing or a business as their
future. But I also headhunt for the class. Every year I'll grab all the
freshman, sophomore, and junior kids' lists of the rosters, and I'll go through
and mark it up and talk with some other teachers about who would be good for
it. So we'll headhunt kids, and then obviously we'll get a lot of other kids as
well that join in.

Kurt: Some kids are really excited and
want to do this as a profession. We've got some diehard entrepreneurs that I
know are going to kill it in the adult world when they get out of school.
Others are like, yep, cool experience — I don't want to do this ever again.
Both are good, because again, I'm concerned about the mindset, not the output
of running the business. And if they do start a business, that's the cherry on
top. The types of kids I get are all over the spectrum. I've got the heavy
go-getters, the outgoing kids, the 4.0 students, and then I've also got the
kids that are C and D students that are sort of trying to find their way.

Kurt: The results are very mixed.
Sometimes I get the 4.0 students that completely rock it in the class — they're
awesome, they take the ball and run with it, that's a lot of fun. And sometimes
I get the 4.0 kids that are like, there's no right or wrong? There's no right
answers in this class? And I said, you're right, there isn't — there's just
better answers. Those kids sometimes have a really hard time living in that
ambiguity. This is the first time they've ever been like, okay, well, do
better. It's an unconventional classroom. On the flip side, the kids that may
not thrive really well in some of the other classes — which I fell into as a
kid —

Adam: Same here.

Kurt: I'm a hands-on, technical school
sort of a guy. I did not like your traditional classes. But I thrived in those
hands-on marketing and business classes where I could apply those concepts.
Some of those kids shine because something clicks and they're just excited and
they roll. So it serves a lot of different types of kids, which is exciting to
see.

Challenges of Traditional Schooling

Adam: You talked earlier about passion
and not trying to direct somebody towards a certain project or business idea.
How much of the challenges that kids have with traditional schooling is just
the fact that nothing has sparked their passion? And suddenly a program like
this comes along where they can spend their time and energy on something they
want, and the C and D students or people that maybe don't thrive in a
traditional context — suddenly it unlocks this whole new passion for them?

Kurt: That's super cool to see. When
those kids — you see that light bulb go on and they all of a sudden have a
connection, something they get excited about, coming to school for the day.
That's great. I've heard that from kids in the past, like, I'm not excited
about coming to school today, but I show up every day because of this class.
Awesome. And it doesn't work for everybody, but it works for a lot of the kids,
and that's just fantastic to see.

Kurt: What I really enjoy seeing is at
the end of the year — because we push these kids hard, we put them in
uncomfortable situations — at the beginning of the year, the confidence isn't
there, the attention to detail, the mindset. And at the end of the year, they're
doing all this stuff, and I'm like, look at where you are and where you've come
from and how awesome you are. I get a lot of kids like, yeah, business wasn't
for me, but I feel more confident. I can get up in front of a group of people.
I can pitch things. I can work with a whole bunch of different types of
personality traits. And I'm like, there it is.

Full-Spectrum Business Approach

Adam: Do you guys take a full-spectrum
business approach, where you're touching on product, design, marketing, sales?
Do you get into accounting, the finance side of it? How do you weight those
different business functions?

Kurt: All those business functions are
baked into the process. We use a lean startup process, and everything is 100%
by doing. There's no direct, “Okay, folks, we're going to sit down and talk
about assets and liabilities and owner's equity and all these other things.”
Some of those kids have had those classes prior, some of those kids will get
those classes afterwards, now that the spark is lit. But all that content is
built in by doing. Instead of just talking about it abstractly — nope, we're
going to have this coach come in, a community member that's going to guide us
through this process, and by the end of the hour you'll get it, or you'll learn
enough to at least ask the right questions. And then we build. So it's
completely hands-on, all day long.

Adam: I remember hearing Elon Musk
talk about the school that he started for his kids, and he was just mentioning
how traditionally in schools, a component of it is memorizing the toolbox — you
learn the tools rather than diving into a project and then realizing you need a
tool and then you go look for it. It sounds like that's kind of what you're
doing — start to encounter problems, and then once you encounter problems,
there's support on the back end. Don't spend all the time memorizing the
toolbox. You might not even need every single tool.

Kurt: A couple things on that. One, we
don't do tests in the class. I'm not a big test guy. I'd rather them show me
what they know and build it and present it, rather than just regurgitate to
forget it. But the whole concept of the course and what we do is built around
problem-solving. We identify a problem. We go out and research whether or not
there are other people that have that same problem, or is it just our problem.
If that's a marketable problem, then we start looking for, all right, what
potential solutions are out there? And that not only applies to the products
and services that they're building, but also how they get through a day-by-day
process.

Kurt: I try to take a hands-off
approach on a lot of this stuff with the kids, because I want them to solve
their own problems. They are very dependent — enabled in some cases — or just,
give me the right answer, tell me now. Nope. So we'll drop a lot of bread
crumbs in front of them, and then just get out of the way. Sometimes it takes
five minutes for the kids to pick it up and run with it, and others, weeks. And
that's fine, too. But building that ability for them to just solve their own
problems, work through that, be less dependent — being able to just work
through that problem-solving process is part of those non-technical skills that
we build in.

Are Kids More Dependent Now?

Adam: Do you think that kids on
average are more dependent now, in terms of needing the exact outline and the
exact path, relative to when you were in high school, or other generations
you've taught over the years? Or is it that they've never been inspired to operate
in a different way? How has that changed over time?

Kurt: It's changed in a lot of
different ways. In some cases, it might be exactly the same; in others,
different. You could argue, how has the internet changed? When I started
teaching, the internet with Google was just a thing. And then with the advent
of cell phones and their ability to get instant gratification and find the
information they need right away, their patience and their tolerance for time
of how long it takes to get things done is way lower. They don't have that
patience anymore. That's different. Problem-solving is no different than you or
I or anyone else. It's just a matter of getting them an experience and having
them do that. Throwing them in the deep end and having those opportunities for
them to try different things out and learn what that looks like and feels like.
In many cases, they just haven't had that ability.

Kurt: Throw COVID into the mix, where
they've been home for two years. There's some other social-emotional dependency
issues. For two years, a lot of these kids, all through middle school, that
we've got now were at home by themselves. That was a completely different
experience. That's part of the middle school process, as awkward as it is —
it's all about just learning how to be a good human. And then they get to high
school, and it's been a learning curve the last year or two for that. But we'll
get through it.

Kurt's Business Background

Adam: You'd mentioned that you had a
few businesses. What markets or industries were those in?

Kurt: I started out when I graduated
high school as a marketing/business educator. And then shortly thereafter I
entered the field of custom home building and did that for 10 years on top of
teaching. We started a solar, renewable energy, and insulation division. And
then I decided I left education for a little bit to pursue that full-time, and
decided that as soon as I left, I'm like, nope, I really miss kids. Went back
into education. And then started another business with some fellow business
teachers on educational technology consulting. When Chromebooks were becoming a
new thing, and the Google Apps for Education stuff was new, we were the ones
that went into all the other districts and showed them how to best implement
that.

Adam: No, that sounds like a pretty
diverse background — home building to solar to teaching. I can see how you're
able to interface with a lot of different types of students.

Kurt: The beauty of having those
experiences under my belt was that when we're talking about this, that, or the
other thing related to startups or accounting or marketing — whatever we're
talking about with any of my kids — it's not just saying, hey guys, this is how
to write out a book. It's, this is what we did. That carries a lot of weight
for the kids. They're like, oh, he's not screwing around. Okay, cool, we got
it. That's been helpful for me. It was a challenging process and I learned a
ton, but I wouldn't trade it.

Pairing Teams: Hipster, Hackster & Hustler

Adam: Do you see some of the
math-strong kids or maybe some of the folks that are more outgoing — do you see
them gravitating towards certain types of business functions? Do the math kids
latch on to accounting and engineering? Do different types of personalities
latch on to more of the sales and marketing functions?

Kurt: I'm going to answer that
question a little bit differently. That lends itself to how we pair our teams.
Each of our businesses are grouped in teams of two, three, or four kids. Three
is a really good number for a partnership within the classes. Those kids are
paired based on their talents and their skill sets. I don't want to put three
of the same types of kids all together, because that's not going to work well.
I always try to tell the kids that you're either a hipster, a hackster, or a
hustler. So if you're one of those three, let's not have three hacksters in the
group and no hustlers or hipsters. So you have to have that diversity of
thought, where one's strengthened by the other. And learn that.

Kurt: Some teams — it doesn't meld
well. Others it does. And that's part of the process of just interpersonal
relationships and dealing with co-workers, because we don't always get to pick
who we work with. But as high school kids, they seem to think that they should.
So dealing with that, putting them together — I'm also very cognizant of who I
know is going to work fairly well together and who isn't. Every year we have to
have conversations, sit-downs with our groups of kids, and say, we need to talk
about communication within this group. You guys are not talking, you're not
getting along. It might have just been something that happened at prom or
something else, who knows. But we have to work through that.

Importance of Empathy

Adam: I would say, as I look back for
the last 10 to 15 years, one of the things that's core to our growth is just
having a diverse group of skill sets that can work together. Finding a diverse
group of skill sets is one thing, but then to get a group that can actually
appreciate each other. We've been very mindful of that, especially at the core
— get in the same direction, but also embrace — for instance, get the
engineering team in front of the customers, get the sales team involved with
product. Try and get people mixing with each other, but also head in the same
direction. From a business and growth standpoint, aside from all the technical
stuff, that's probably one of the most important things.

Kurt: So it's empathy. You get the
kids together, and if I can train them how to do a task, training them how to
be a good person, a good human, is what we're really doing. So that you don't
have to worry about it when they come to you as an employee down the road.
Those interpersonal skills of being able to communicate with people and
understand — okay, I'm upset today, you're upset today, why? Let's talk a
little bit about that, work through that as a human. It boils down to empathy
and just understanding and communication skills. If we can work through that,
the rest all falls into place.

Adam: For sure. And also knowing when
maybe it's not going to work. There are always those situations where two
people, four people, five people — sometimes it doesn't mean they're bad
people. Sometimes things don't click. We have to fire people. That is part of
the job.

Kurt: Yeah, it's clear at some point
that we know that's just not going to work out. We need to go separate ways.

Does This Program Discourage College?

Adam: One of the things I'm really
interested in — maybe this is slightly controversial — is how do you see
programs like this discouraging, in a good way or any bad way, people going to
college? Or even beyond college — a lot of the things you're describing are
things that will never be taught in college. It's great that it's done in high
school. Being able to solve problems on day one is super important. Like you
said, it's the mentality and the approach more so than the specific way of
doing something. I was a finance and econ major in college. I'm 36, going on
37, and I feel like I'm just now ready to understand some of the things I was
taught in college — corporate finance, econometrics. You get such a high-level
overview that maybe it's useful if you're at a 50,000-person company, but if
you're at a 50- to 1,000-person company, a lot of times it's not specialized
enough to spend all your day living in one type of function. Do you think that
what you're doing will discourage or encourage kids to pursue additional
education? How do you think about that?

Kurt: Good question. As educators,
we're probably a little biased — we all have college degrees. We've all gone
through that system, and we know the value of that because that's what we need.
So when you're surrounded by professionals in the building that all have a
college degree or a master's degree, that becomes a mindset.

Kurt: My initial — I failed my first
year of college. Got put on academic probation, which was the best thing that
ever happened to me. I was screwing around. Then I went to the technical
college at Appleton — Fox Valley Tech. It was the best experience of my life.
Went from being kicked out of college to a 4.0, because somewhere in me the
switch flipped. I very much appreciate the technical college system. I think
it's fantastic. I think it's completely undersold. I always encourage my kids
to at least go that route, because I've seen so many of my kids that go to a
four-year college only to come back after a year. Many of my kids, don't get me
wrong, go off and finish a four-year degree and master's degree and they do
amazing things. But with the cost of education and everything else — start
local on that. There's nothing wrong with it. It was fantastic, and it really
helped me embrace my hands-on learning process.

Kurt: I'm less concerned about where
kids are going to school. I just want to make sure that they are set up for
success. In the end, we all have to be lifelong learners. The more you know,
the more you know that you need to know more. That lifelong learning mentality
is more important to me.

Adam: The way I think about it is,
college or a master's degree or a doctorate, or just on-the-job training,
YouTube, forums — these are all just learning tools in the toolkit. My
generation was pressured very hard to go to a four-year college. I don't think
people were really given consideration that there are other options. You go to
a four-year college or you don't. I don't know if that served everybody well.
It served a lot of people well, but I look at programs like this, plus all the
learning that you can do on your own. We recently collaborated on a 3D printing
project, and I think that's a really good parallel and comparison. A few years
ago, 11 3D printers would have been several hundred thousand dollars, and we
were able to invest about $10,000 in those 3D printers. The means of production
and the tools — empowering kids — the costs are plummeting, which is great.
It'll be interesting to see how that, plus online education, plus other tools
that schools are implementing, ends up shifting people in one direction or
another.

Partnerships & “Ask Three Before Me”

Kurt: Two things on that. Having
partnerships like our program with WiLL Lighting is fantastic. Yesterday, my
students were in here working with your team and 3D printing their prototype
for their product — which is awesome — and we're going to expand that going
more so in the future. None of those kids knew you existed up until yesterday.
Now some of them may think, oh, wow, that's really cool. That's an opportunity
that they never knew about or had a possibility about.

Kurt: The second part of that equation
— in one of the classes that I teach, a sixth-grade technology literacy class,
they do coding and programming — they'll create their own custom video game.
One of the rules I have in that class is “Ask Three Before Me.” I've got it
written up on the wall. Before they ask me a question, they have to ask their
neighbor, Google, or YouTube. If they've asked those three entities — two
pretty powerful sources — and they're still stumped, then talk to me. It's
again teaching the young to reduce their dependency on instant feedback — give
me the answer now. No, do the research. Somebody in this room is smarter than
you.

Kurt: I remember the first year I
started doing that, one of my kids — who's now a senior — within the second
day, came back and said, “Mr. Whisper, I figured out how to do this level three
thing, and I got a boss battle going on there, and this guy comes in” — it was
awesome. How did you do that? That mindset is great, that they embrace that.
And I'll drop that same sort of process with my incubator kids — like, sounds
like a problem you should research. And I'll walk away. Figure it out.

Confidence & Pressing Buttons

Adam: I remember that was such an
important moment for me. When we first built our first website, we hired a few
developers — some worked out, some didn't. But the people that — the amount of
information, this was back in like 2007, 2008 — they're all self-taught. It
was, go to a code library, copy and paste the code, start with that code, clean
some of it up, maybe don't clean some of it up. But just the confidence that,
even if you didn't know how to write that particular line of code or know that
language, it was just assumed that you were going to be able to figure it out.

Kurt: Sounds like that's what you're
trying to instill. And my kids call me out on the carpet all the time — like,
Mr. Whisper, how do you know how to do all the software? I was teaching my kids
how to do some database management today, and I'm like, I don't know, I just —
did you get taught how to do this in high school? No, this wasn't a thing when
I was in high school. In the '90s we had like DOS. Well, how'd you learn how to
do it? I'm like, I don't know, I just started pressing buttons and seeing what they
do. That didn't work? Okay, undo button, figure it out, try another way. And
eventually you figure it out. That mindset is really important.

Adam: For sure. That's how I learned
how to do two-thirds of my job here.

Becca: What? I said at least — see
what they do. Every time since I started — the podcast thing, I walked in and
I'm like, there's no way I'm going to figure this out. But I couldn't say no —
you just hired me. And started pressing buttons, and here we are.

Adam: I think that's definitely part
of our culture, where at least 80% of us — even if you don't know how to do
something, you're confident you can learn it. Doesn't matter if it's mechanical
engineering, electrical engineering, production. Last year we implemented a lot
of lean process flow initiatives on the production floor. It was just a case
of, we didn't have a lean process flow Six Sigma consultant expert come in. It
was, okay, we better spend a few weeks learning how to solve this problem.
Again, that kind of culture and mentality — it's such a great cultural momentum
component to have, because once you see it a few times and go through a couple
cycles of that, you definitely feel empowered.

Resilience & Community Mentors

Kurt: Well, that resilience is really
important. The grit. What's the alternative? You give up? That's not an option.
You're still here. This is still producing a podcast. It's funny, because when
I got hired at North Fond du Lac eight years ago, Aaron Sadoff dropped — he's
like, oh yeah, by the way, you're running a video production lab too. I'm like,
cool, never taught it. Let's figure it out. You surround yourself with really
intelligent people and you just ask questions. It's fun, too.

Kurt: Having so many folks part of our
program — we've got 80 or 100 different classroom coaches and mentors and
professionals that come into our classroom. It's equally empowering for these
kids to be able to have conversations with these mentors. Folks that come in —
in the last week, we probably had 15 or 20 different people in our classroom.
These are all different folks that kids are going to connect with. They don't
know yet, but their last project is to build up their LinkedIn page. And I'm
like, okay, cool — now here's your list of people you need to connect with.
Remember all these people? These are really good people. Well, now they're in
your Rolodex — which they don't know what that means.

Adam: And there's such a great
small-business culture in Fond du Lac. Machine shops, contractors — a lot of
it's manufacturing and construction related, but there's a lot of two-to-twenty
person companies that have made it through many recessions. They have that
grit, that problem-solving mentality. It's definitely ingrained in this area.

Kurt: The first group of people that I
called — once we started this class in 2017 — I sat down with Envision and
said, who do I need to talk to? And they just laid out this list of awesome
people. Many of them are still involved or contributed in some capacity. You're
absolutely right — the group of people in Fond du Lac just pulled me away.
That's awesome.

How to Get Involved

Adam: So if people want to get more
involved or want to learn more about what you're doing in North Fond du Lac,
what's the best resource for that?

Kurt: They can go to IncubatorNFDL.com
— that's our website. Or you can search us out on our district homepage as
well, through the School District of North Fond du Lac. Seek me out in any
capacity. I'm happy to have a conversation with you. And I think the most
powerful process of that is just, come on in. Come to the classroom. It's
important for us, for education as a whole — first off, educators do a horrible
job promoting themselves and promoting what we do. We don't toot our own horn
enough. We always hear about what's bad in the news about education, especially
with politics. And most of it is not true. Just get in the classroom and find
out. I think it's really, really valuable — aside from all the stuff that we're
teaching — just to get community members in the classroom to see what's going
on. They're going to very quickly find out that there's a lot of really cool
things happening. I've heard that over and over again from people that get
involved in the program — like, you guys are doing all this stuff? This isn't
like — oh my God, I didn't get to do this when I was a kid! I'm like, yeah, of
course. We're doing really cool stuff. We're not just still using abacuses and
stuff.

Adam: There's so much cool stuff going
on. And you guys are a big part of that in the area. I think the more
networking and like-minded people with diverse skill sets that we can get
moving in the same direction — it starts at the micro level, but before too long
it can start to affect things in a positive way in a big way. So thanks for all
you do, man, and thanks for coming on.

Kurt: Yeah, absolutely.