“I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” Teach Different with Stephen Covey – Growth Mindset

Transcript

Dan Fouts  0:12  

Well, welcome everybody to the Teach Different podcast tonight. We’re very excited to have a person from the education business world. Sabari Raja with us, and I’ll let her introduce herself and her really fascinating background and what she’s been doing within education in a moment. We have a Stephen Covey quote tonight, and we’ve had what, I think Steve, one or two of those already in our library. He’s a he’s a fan favorite. Let’s just put it this way. We get a lot of listens anytime we bring in a quote from from him, so we’re very juiced about that. And for the people unfamiliar with the method, we’re going to share the quote, and we’re going to take a look at the claim of the quote. We’re going to interpret it. What does it mean from various perspectives? If there’s one thing people have realized from listening to these podcasts is that everybody has a different interpretation of the same idea, which is the richness of this right? Everyone has a different viewpoint and an angle based on their life experiences. Once the claim is aired, we’re going to move to the counterclaim. We got to disagree. You got to do that critical thinking piece. The more we can see the world from a different perspective, the more adept we are at at understanding people and compromising and doing those soft skills that are so important and that really are a lost art in our society. And then as we go through this, we’ll be asking questions. Sometimes the questions come early, sometimes they come late, sometimes it’s hard to articulate them, but those are the natural, organic flowers that grow from a good conversation. So we’ll be on the watchout for those as well. Here we go. Stephen Covey, I’ll say the quote twice, and then Sabari will will weigh in with her, with her claim, I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions. I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions. Sabari, welcome to the Teach Different podcast. It’s so great to have you here.

Sabari Raja  2:25  Claim

Thank you so much, Dan and Steve. I really appreciate what you all are doing great way for students and teachers to learn. So appreciate it. I’d maybe give a bit of my background and introduction before I weigh in on the quote, because this quote is very personal to me as well, because my background, I am an entrepreneur turned investor, how I got to becoming an entrepreneur has a lot to do with my own lived experience of where I grew up, what I had access to, or what I didn’t have access to and how that has shaped my entire decision’s career in where I am today. So I grew up on a coconut farm in South India to parents without college degrees. You know, if you’ve ever read Mark Granabetter’s research on social capital, I was born into a family where I didn’t have a lot of social capital. I mean, inherited networks, right? I mean, we were a large family, loving family, but from a professional perspective, I was born into a farming family, so I really having that sort of a professional background, there were far too few people for me to really model after, so I would say that pretty much, you know, but I grew up in that environment, but very supportive parents. They supported my education, and the only way for me to get a good education was to go to a boarding school because they were on a farm. There was not really very many good schools close by. So, long story short, that led me to actually finishing my high school. Ended up going into engineering school. Post that I was again faced with a decision like, where do I go from here? And at that point, I decided I wanted to see the world. So for the first time, I got on a plane to come to America. So, so, so that’s, that’s, you know, I have lots of stories to tell about my first plane ride. Being like, you know, took 32 hours from door to door. But anyway, so now looking back, you know, 20 plus years since then, had a an amazing career, had a wonderful job at a well paying, you know, well paying job in a big company, as most people dream of, but that that wasn’t completely satisfying either. At some point, you know. Connecting my lived experience, everything that I’ve learned, I was starting to see problems in the communities that I was in, what I was hearing from people, and that turned into an idea, which turned into a company. I left my job to start my company in 2013 was a Edtech company called Nepris. Was connecting industry and education in ways that meant bringing real-world learning and career exposure to every student. It was very connected to my background of you know, we can bring equity in this process of preparing students for the future of work, and it starts with addressing this lack of inherited networks. Like everybody can have a network. How do we use technology to bring that network to every student, no matter who you are or where you’re from? That was really what I set out to solve. It was tough building an impact-focused company at scale that got through various roadblocks and through the company, Netflix got acquired in 2021 by a private equity firm to continue to grow it through mergers and acquisitions, I stayed on for a year to see it through a merger, a rebranding. Stayed on the board for two years. But anyway, in this journey, what I realized was there were a lot of entrepreneurs like me, first-time, entrepreneurs, right, who really didn’t have the social capital? They didn’t know any I didn’t know any investors. I didn’t know how to raise money. And that’s really kind of stuck with me. And when I had the opportunity to work with another investor of mine and a friend of mine to say, you know, should we build a fund that is focused on investing in entrepreneurs like this, with the lived experiences that are connecting, that are really solving a real problem with an impact first approach, but building a company at scale. So I really had this unique opportunity to really come to the other side of the table and become an investor and continue supporting founders like myself. And I’ve been, I been doing this since the beginning of 2023, so I always say I’m a I’m a entrepreneur for a decade and an investor for for, you know, 1/10 of that time. So here I am. Oh, that was a long intro, but hopefully, that sort of sets up the stage for how this quote is very relevant to to, you know, my life. To me, this quote, it’s powerful because it says, You’re not a you’re not a victim, don’t you don’t play victim in order to get ahead in life. It emphasizes personal agency that we as individuals have a lot more power to influence our lives through our own decisions, rather than to blame the external circumstances. So that’s basically how I, how I look at it, you know, and that’s, that’s how I lived my life. So

Steve Fouts   8:10

that was great. And you you kind of saw it as a no-excuses type quote, excuses,

Sabari Raja  8:17  

yeah. And it’s also like, you know, I say no excuses, not in a ruthless way, you know, because no excuses doesn’t mean no empathy. You know, because a lot of people are in worse circumstances than I could ever imagine. So I always try to put myself and walk walk in other people’s shoes before I make, you know, statements like that this, there’s always good reasons for excuses, but most of the time, you know, a lot of things are under your own control. So

Steve Fouts  9:00

Question was your family supportive of you starting to think a little bit bigger and wanting to go somewhere with your life, with your career, or did you get a lot of pushback from your dreams and ambitions?

Sabari Raja  9:24  

Yeah, that’s you kind of, you know, nailed the question that that’s, that’s at the heart of how everything started. Right? Like, given the environment and circumstances I grew up in, I mean, I, I won’t say, like, I grew up in a in a middle-class household, I had access to good education. We were just far away from it, so my parents decided that they’re going to send me to boarding school. So my parents, from day one, was always supportive of me getting a good education. Period right where it became. Sort of tough is back home, we live in a very connected community. You know, there were 4000 people at my sister’s wedding. That’s how many people my parents have to answer to. If you sort of queer from the norm,

Steve Fouts  10:17  

you say 4000 Wow.

Sabari Raja  10:21

So so it’s a very generations my families have lived there. They are landowners, grandparents, and they are, you know, great-grandparents. It’s a very connected community. So it’s not just my parent’s voices, you know, it’s the collective voices of the community. So it’s, it’s also today in India, like the more girls in engineering jobs, more girls doctor as doctors. But this was also like, you know, 20 years back, while I always, I applaud and respect my parents a lot, in spite of being in an environment where it was like, Hey if you’re a girl, you really don’t have to go be so ambitious and pursue a career. You can always get married, have a family. That’s what is expected of you, right? So there was all this environment and community that expected me to do one thing, but for me always, my parents were super supportive, which is, I was fortunate about that, right? But we had to constantly fight the community expectations interesting, right? So when I said I wanted to go to the US to do my masters, the biggest pushback was 1000 people telling my parents, are you nuts? Why would you send your daughter so far away? You know,

Steve Fouts  11:58

but they were on your team.

Sabari Raja  12:01  

They were my parents were always on my team. Yes, they were always on my team, but it was always it. I guess it would have been easier to fall in line, right to say, I don’t want to have this conversation with my parents. I was super scared of my dad. He was very strict, right? But I remember not being able to sleep for a couple of days because I was working up an anxiety trying to ask him, is it okay if I take my exams, I want to go to the US. It was easier to not have that conversation as a young teenager who grew up in a in a in an environment where we never spoke a word against her or Dad, no, but that was my that was my decision, right?

Dan Fouts 12:55

That was your decision, right? There. Could have gone the easy route there, but you push that. And I have a follow-up question. When you got your your corporate job that you referred to that was a very stable job, right? I mean, that was sent, okay, my next question then is this, when you left that job and decided to be an entrepreneur, that’s another level. Is it not of acceptance? How did your family react to that? Because you’re you’re hitting it, you’re rolling the dice here in the States, and you’re not going to keep this stable job. You’re going to try to

Sabari Raja  13:40

Yeah, no, no, you’re hitting at all the right questions. I see you guys, why you are the experts at this. So at that point, my family, my more immediate family, was my husband. So I was married, I had two young kids, and my parents at that point were I was so far away, they didn’t really understand this corporate world what I was I mean, they were proud, but they didn’t quite understand enough to push me or put any pressure on me, right? But we had two well-paying jobs. I was doing well at my work, I was getting the promotions, right? So we had a home, a mortgage, you know, a certain lifestyle, two young kids, we needed the health insurance. We so there were all these things, but somehow there was always this thing in the back of my mind that I wanted to do my own thing. So it was not like again, I’ve been fortunate with my family, like my husband is probably my biggest cheerleader. So we sat down and had that conversation. I tell every entrepreneur, have those difficult conversations with your family first, right? Because we were going to go from a. Comfortable to income family with a certain lifestyle, to having to rely just on his income for a while. So there were lots and lots of risks. The easy decision at that point would have been to continue working for a company and going up the ladder, but this thing in the in the back of my head was always like, Okay, I wanted more I wanted more freedom in my decision making. I wanted to do something that was mine. I wanted to do something that I could really relate to and connect to and, you know, jump out of bed and be super pumped about I guess I’m a glutton for punishment. In another, In other words, you know, so, So

Dan Fouts  15:51

How old were your kids when you How old were your kids when you made the decision to go the entrepreneurial route?

Sabari Raja  15:57

My younger one was, was, I think, six, five, five, or six. And then my,  my older one was seven, eight-ish, so both, both in early elementary school, but before that. Like, if you all don’t mind, I’ll, I’ll give you just one other example of our decisions are internal and what is in our control and not letting sort of the environment dictate, you know who you can be or what you can and cannot do. One step before the entrepreneurship journey was within my company. I was doing well, I was taking on different roles, but I knew I needed to do an MBA and I needed to push myself to take their opportunity. I started as a software developer. I was writing code, and then at every step of the way, I was like, okay, I I was not at all confident. I couldn’t speak a single sentence in a meeting with five people in the room. That’s how terrified I was of public speaking. I couldn’t bring myself to so I knew that was like a barrier. My ambitions were bigger, my confidence, my lack of exposure, these were my biggest barriers, right? But it was like this internal fight between your ambition or your you know or your fears you know. So I remember going and talking to people who’ve been the other leaders within the organization, and one of I asked somebody to be my mentor, and that was a decision I made. I said I needed to get over my fears because I’m not going to be able to go up in my career based on what I wanted to accomplish. I always was like, I want more. What’s next? What’s next, and all of these were barriers for for me to progress. So I was like, I know. First thing was self-awareness. I was like, I just, I’m not good at this. How do I get over it? And then it’s taking that step. What is under my control is finding that mentor and saying, What do I do? How do I get over this fear? And she suggested signing up to Toastmasters. And I remember going to Toastmasters every week for four years, the thought of going there, standing in front of people, and, you know, you, I don’t know if you know how Toastmasters describe

Dan Fouts  18:30

That for people unfamiliar, if you would.

Sabari Raja  18:33  

Toastmasters is like a group of people that get together and sort of help each other practice your public speaking skills and so you pick a topic, if there’s a curriculum and stuff, but you pick a topic and you choose to stand up in front of this friendly group and speak, basically, doing it over over and over again until you get over this. But the terrifying part is, every time you um and ah, somebody’s ringing a bell.

So it’s talk about putting yourself in uncomfortable situations, making that decision on your own, because you know you need to get over these things in order to get to that next step, right? That that was me. I was very afraid of speaking. I was at zero confidence when I did my TED Talk in 2020 I think if somebody had told me 10 years back that I’ll do a TED talk, I’d say over my dead body, right? So,

Dan Fouts  19:39

So I watched it, by the way.

Sabari Raja  19:42 

Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hopefully, it was good. But, yeah, I never. I always tell other people. Now, you know, if I talk to students or entrepreneurs, I always tell people, if I can get over this fear, anybody can get over. It, right? That is how terrified I was. And that, again, it’s really this. Why I really love this quote is because those were all under my control, right? I could have easily said I’m not good at public speaking. I’m gonna stick to coding, not talk to anybody. You know, I could have very well done that, I would have had a decent career. I would have been just fine. You know, there’s nothing wrong with that. But

Dan Fouts  20:25  Counterclaim

I can actually, I can jump in with the public speaking thing. I can relate Sabari so well to that. Steve and I, and this is where, if we can, I’m going to flip to the counterclaim a tiny bit, just because I have that in my, in my head. You know, I didn’t make the decision to be a twin, right? I found myself in that situation, and Steve and I, both growing up, had all this attention lavished on us because we’re twins. You know, it was the Fouts twins. We didn’t have our own identity. They just kind of called us in a blob, you know, two people. And I think at least for me, I don’t want to speak for Steve, but it made me excessively introverted and shy because I didn’t want the attention. I wanted to go kind of under the radar a little bit. So I feel like the circumstance of being born a twin caused a certain shyness in me, and then when I went through high school and college, I was terrified of public speaking, absolutely terrified. And I got to the point in college where I’m just I’m so sick of being afraid of this, I ended up taking a few classes and just putting myself out there. And then, now I’m a teacher, and I’ve given, you, know, 16,000 presentations in my life. And it’s funny, I made the decision kind of consistent with what you were saying. I made the decision that my ambition to get over this, this hesitancy, was stronger than my fear of not being accepted, or whatever the weird, irrational fear is when you stand up in front of people. So I feel like I’m playing both sides of this quote right now, and it’s interesting how they intersect.

Sabari Raja  22:20  

No, 100% I mean, that was my exact experience, too. Like where I was born into and what kind of exposure I had as a kid, was not under my control. You know, not everything is under your control. But like, when I was able to think about it and make decisions on my own, I had the opportunity to change the trajectory right, rather than accept the fate that, okay, this is who you are, you know and

Steve Fouts  22:48  

and that’s fortunate to be able to do that right. Here’s my little story. My decision to be a teacher was kind of a default decision. Sabari, I mean, our family, the biggest joke we always tell is that, growing up, there were so many teachers in our immediate family, we didn’t realize that adults worked in the summer until we got older. So it was kind of a default for us, you know, you’re going to go teach. So I decided that I wanted to go teach in some of the neighborhoods on the west side of the city of Chicago. I just wanted to do that. I can’t explain why, but I knew that I wanted to do that, so that’s exactly what I did. Back in 1993 six weeks into my first teaching job, the department chair came in and said, I need your keys. I just taken out a lease first teaching job, and I got bumped because of some restructuring, and someone with more seniority just stepped right into my my position Chicago public schools. So here, I am coming back think of this circumstance, Sabari like I’m I am not in control of that one just took out a lease, and I was a social studies teacher. There were like three math positions open in that school, but I couldn’t take them because I wasn’t certified. Yeah, at that moment, I said, okay, I need to go get an endorsement in math so that I can guarantee myself a job and stay in this system. And here’s what I’m bringing this up, I relied on my parents at that moment. To handle the lease for that year, let me go back to school, got the endorsement, and then I, you know, it’s all over from there, and no problem, right? I think back and I think, what if I hadn’t had that support, would I have done something differently? Would I have switched and tried another career, or did something temporary and delayed my career? So yes, I made the decision to try to do that, but then I had to rely on a lot of circumstances and just luck. You know, we talk about winning the lotto with our parents.

Sabari Raja  25:46  

They were 100%

Dan Fouts  25:50  

it’s, yeah, I’d love to think it’s me, but it’s kind of like a team thing. So I go back and forth on the plane counterclaim as well.

Sabari Raja  25:58

No, no, I you absolutely right, because recently, I was talking to a South Asian Women’s Group, and I was talking about how fortunate I was that my husband was my biggest cheerleader when I wanted to quit my perfectly well-paying job and go pursue some random idea to build a company who, who knows like 80% of companies fail. He said, go do it right. I’ll, you know, I’m working. I’ll take care of everything, and we’ll tighten our belts and make this happen. When I said that, I was shocked at how many women in the room later came and talked to me and said, You know, I don’t have a very supportive spouse, you know. And at that moment, I thought, I just take it for granted, you know, that that this exists for everybody, although I know in my head it doesn’t right, but I’ve been just so used to it, and that’s a good question, like, what would I have done if I had a controlling spouse, a conservative or controlling spouse that really didn’t support my authority, my independence, and there’s so many nuances in that relationship, insecurity, authority, you know, freedom. I didn’t have to battle any of that. I had everything I wanted, right? So

Dan Fouts   27:40  

You could focus on your own internal, little hangups that you wanted to get rid of. You didn’t have any drama around your decision. That is so helpful. And I think back on the yeah, go ahead, yeah..

Dan Fouts  27:54  

makes your on-ramp into your try at business, so much smoother, because you’re not coming home with feelings of inadequacy and feelings that you’re letting people down, you’re coming home to a cheerleader.

Sabari Raja  28:08

Yes, yes, yeah. 100% that’s so

Dan Fouts  28:12

Important.

Sabari Raja  28:13

Your headwinds are all external, right? But you’re you have a safe place when you come home, and that that means you can deal with all the external pressures. I mean, I remember my kids starting Elementary School. At that point, I hadn’t left my job. I was when I say I was a glutton for punishment, I decided that I wanted to do my MBA, and so I was having a full-time job doing my MBA. And I also wanted more experience with my work, so I took on an emerging market role. I made 11 trips to Asia in 2011 or 2012 when I had two little kids at home, was doing an MBA. I remember later my core group of mommy friends, you know, a couple of years later, they said we all thought your husband was a single dad. We never saw you, you know, so, wow, so, and then the the little things like, I remember coming back from an Asia trip and directly from there, going to take my final exams or something. I remember sitting at the London Airport, studying for my exams, and then going to the exam, coming back exhausted, coming back home, and at the middle of the night, my little one cried, and he always was, like, always super attached to me, order of priorities, me, then grandma, then husband, then, you know, so, so I my husband woke up by habit, to go, you know, take care of the baby. And I said, No, no, let me go. Take care of take care of him. I walk into his room. He was, he was eight. Months old, or 10 months old or something, he saw me and started bawling, saying, I don’t want you. I want Dad. I know that was my older one, the little one was too young. It was like, I don’t want you. I want Dad, you know. So that, like, completely broke me. Like, I was like, what am I doing? You know? So, but years, exactly, I think it was a year and a half. I kind of forget the timeline of it, very super little, and that was just that was like, Really, I started questioning, like, you know, what am I doing? Am I hurting my kids? This is the typical mommy guilt, right? So, but again, you know, at that point, again, you’re forced with, you’re sort of faced with a decision. And I’ve had best friends quit when faced with those decisions, because that’s what they said. This is I, in order to be a good mom, I need to be present 100% for my kids, right? That’s, a decision they made. I said I’m gonna somehow make it work, right? That was a decision I made. And all these kids turned out just perfectly fine. But at the end of the day, you know your your decisions also not just shape you, it also shape your kid, my kids are like, super independent. Their idea of a woman’s role in the world is very different, right?

Dan Fouts  31:29

Your decisions have created the circumstances around their decisions.

Sabari Raja  31:35  

Correct? Exactly 100% Yeah, right!

Dan Fouts   31:37  

Because circumstances are obviously the outside world where the family is the unit, but for lots of people who go home to families that they’re not close to, that’s their external.

Sabari Raja  31:50  

That’s, their external. Correct, correct. I mean, I can’t imagine having to go back home and fighting the battle. I mean, running a startup is a big battle. You know, if you have to go home and fight the battle, financial battles, or, you know, suddenly we have half the income we can’t afford this, and that all those little things that we just take for granted or create that external circumstance, right? So,

Steve Fouts  32:24  Essential Question

Is a question popping up for anyone?

Dan Fouts  32:26

How do my circumstances shape my decisions? I’m always trying to combine them together somehow, in what way do circumstances shape our decisions?

Sabari Raja  32:39  

How do circumstances shape our decisions?

Dan Fouts  32:43  

Is it possible to make decisions independently, without any circumstances? You know, it’s in philosophy. It’s free will and determinism is kind of what I teach a philosophy elective Sabari, and that’s one little tension that the kids love to discuss. You know, do we make free choices all the time, or are some choices determined for us by our circumstances? So one question to go on that route is, are we a product of our circumstances?

Sabari Raja  33:16

I think we’re a product of our decisions. I strongly believe that you know, yes, circumstances matter, but I think if you make the right decision, you can circumvent the circumstances.

Steve Fouts  33:30

Cirum how about this? Sabari, you just got me thinking about this. Think of circumstances as a big sea where there’s storms and waves and all the difficulties in it, but you’re in your boat, you can get to the island. You can get to your destination with decisions. If you don’t have decisions, you’re going to be lost at sea. The sea might be calmer for some but you’re going to need the decisions. So back to the, you can’t blame your situation on your lack of success or your unhappiness. That’s easy to say, Yeah, but without the decisions, you don’t have much. If you don’t make the decisions and you don’t believe that you can control, you know your future.

Sabari Raja  34:32  

yeah, yeah. And I think it’s mainly, I think the circumstances are you cannot change your circumstances, right? This is the hand that has been right that you have been dealt. You cannot change it, but, but we can always choose, like how we respond to them, right? And how we respond to them is really going to affect the outcome of it, right?

Steve Fouts  34:56

You read stoicism.

Dan Fouts  34:57

Sabari that’s stoicism. That’s stoicism.

Steve Fouts  35:01

Are you familiar?

Sabari Raja  35:02

No, I’ve heard of the term. I have no idea!

Dan Fouts  35:05

Sabaris, you’re a stoic. We’ve just labeled you.

Sabari Raja  35:10

No, I’ve been when you sent me the quote. I thought about it and and that’s kind of like couple of things that came to mind was, and I was putting people in these buckets in my life, or not my immediate circle, but the you know, people that I known. So I was saying, I was thinking about who loves to play victim. Where are they in their life? You know, I know somebody so. So I was just putting people that I met in these years like other people who have fought through much bigger challenges and come out of it super successfully, right? Like I can’t even tell my story next to theirs, and think that this is I even had any issues, right? So people who who’ve been dealt a harsher hand, and still figured out a way to sort of get through all of that. So that’s what I was doing. I was like, coming up with four or five different people and putting them in what, what were their circumstances, and how did they get past it? And how did somebody else never got past it? Right? So,

Dan Fouts  36:21

And there’s so many layers to this too, because someone’s in my classes, if I have the right group, the environment has to be safe. But if it’s the right group, we’ll get into issues of race and ethnicity and gender and how those circumstances for some kids are extremely difficult to overcome, especially, you know, when you have a high schooler talking about how they feel that someone has been racist towards them or demeaning, you know, and you just see it in their eyes there, it’s so hard not to feel like you’re a victim of your circumstances, it’s so difficult, so lot of layers,

Sabari Raja  37:05

I for that that’s absolutely right. It’s also the level of how those circumstances has really affected you, which means for some people, it’s a longer road to respond to that in a positive manner and get out of it, right? So my comment made me think my older one as a, you know, young kid, like he was in elementary and I think he was playing in in a common playground, and, you know, one of those jumping things like that, not the trampolines, but those parks that they have big trampolines, and some kid commented on his skin color and said something super racist, you know, his his response was, keep talking like that, and one day you’re going to work for me.

Steve Fouts  38:01  

Wow. To that one.

Sabari Raja  38:04  

No, we had a good laugh, but he was always a little more mature for his age, you know, so, but I was proud, and I was like, okay,

Dan Fouts  38:14  

Where did he get that confidence?

Sabari Raja  38:16  

Probably heard me, probably heard me say that sentence, you know. So, yeah, well.

Dan Fouts  38:24  

That’s this is great. What an interesting conversation. I can’t believe we’re almost an hour into this.

Sabari Raja  38:30  

I know we said 30 minutes time.

Dan Fouts  38:34  

I apologize, Sabari, sometimes  We needed to get your background though, Sabari, that was really good. Your episode is unique in a good way because the amount of storytelling you did with your own experiences really provided a great context for your perspective on this quote. And that’s one thing that Steve and I are constantly reinforcing with the teachers we work with that these these conversations in this method work best when there’s vulnerability and there’s a desire to share your own testaments, because that that’s when it comes alive. That’s when you have the culture of the room change and people become more willing to share their experiences and storytelling.

Sabari Raja  39:25

You know, when I talked about public speaking, I’ll just say this one thing, and, you know, I’ll stop one of the things I learned in this, how do I get over my public speaking fear I was, you know, it’s been a multi-step process over a few years, but when I look back, it’s this art of storytelling to own who you are and to be vulnerable and to not be afraid, to share your failures and to tell that story as authentically as possible. You know, when. When, when you do that, you’re not really preparing a speech, you’re not really you’re you’re being who you are. And so even when I pitch my company, my pitch deck, it was telling stories of it’s it’s not about here’s the product. This is the button you have to press in order to do this, but it’s like, who’s using this product? How did it change their life? And it was a story about this person, and this person in this rural Texas town who never had exposure. And you could tell, you could see the engagement change, because suddenly this is everybody can relate to it. So I You said it so well, then don’t underestimate the power of storytelling.

Dan Fouts  40:46

You know, in the classroom,, it’s the heart of connection. And as we all know, when it comes to adolescence and people’s developing, and really, all people, not everyone, has a place to go to have a voice and to talk and even tell a story to anyone who listens. So part of the beauty of conversations is that you give people a chance to do that, and that’s where that those neuroscience principles kick in. You know, in the mirror neurons, we always talk about this, the power of the brain activity, and how we really connect and get on the same wavelength, and that creates the safety and trust. And then, you know, it’s sky’s the limit from there. So absolutely.

Sabari Raja  41:37

Well, great students are your students are lucky to have you. I wish I had teachers like your. I would have gone farther, maybe.

Steve Fouts  41:45

Well, Dan’s still in the classroom. He has two years left.

Dan Fouts  41:53  

But, thank you so much for being a guest, on on on this, on this episode, Sabarina, it was great hearing your story and your insights and wisdom, and I think your story is going to be an inspiration to a lot of people who listen to this.

Steve Fouts  42:08

Thank you.

Dan Fouts  42:09

We appreciate you very, very much.

Sabari Raja  42:11  

I appreciate the opportunity and appreciate what you both are doing. Thank you.