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.