The Doing Business in Bentonville Podcast
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The Doing Business in Bentonville Podcast
Ep. 83 - Phil Shellhammer on Cultivating a New Wave of Innovators
Phil Shellhammer is back with Andy Wilson, and he's bringing some amazing insights from the University of Arkansas's Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
Get ready to hear about groundbreaking initiatives like the Greenhouse Outdoor Recreation Program that's nurturing early-stage outdoor recreation companies across Arkansas. Plus, discover how the Entrepreneurial Law Project is creatively combining the talents of law students with pro bono services to provide essential legal support to budding entrepreneurs.
In Bentonville, excitement is building as a new state-funded cycling accelerator is set to revolutionize the cycling industry.
Andy and Phil explore how this initiative plans to immerse ten high-growth companies within the local community, culminating at the highly-anticipated Bike Fest.
They'll also take a look at how the Arkansas Business Resource Hub is becoming a critical digital lifeline for entrepreneurs and check out the robust programming at the University of Arkansas, like the transformative New Venture Development course and the Startup Village, all of which are equipping students with the skills to thrive in their careers.
The next generation of leaders is being shaped right now in Arkansas, and you won't want to miss how students are tackling real-world issues at the McMillon Innovation Studio.
From the exciting potential of a lithium boom in South Arkansas to the importance of mentorship and community involvement, this episode is a celebration of innovation and growth. Join DBB in supporting Phil's mission to cultivate the future leaders who will make a lasting impact in Arkansas and beyond.
Well, hello everyone and welcome to Doing Business in Bentonville. Because of that, we're now viewed in over 34 countries, thank you, thank you very much for that. It means so much to us that you're sharing and watching us. Now let's get to the real reason that you are here today with us, and that is our guest today Phil Schellhammer. Welcome, thank you, thanks for having me. Great to see you again. Yes, this is number two for you. Yeah, man, Good, I appreciate it. I'm glad you're back. I am so glad you're back. Let me tell you about Phil, because he's lost a bit, and he'll tell you a bit about himself too, but he has expanded his space since he was here last time. He's the executive director of the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Arkansas. That's great, wonderful. We have such a great school here. It's awesome. It is such a great school. He's got the hog on his shirt today and check that out. It's wonderful. And you know something else about Phil. Phil, you spent over 10 years at Sam's Club.
Speaker 2:I did. Yeah, I always talk about my two careers. I had this big corporate career. I was at P's Club. I did yeah, I always talk about my two careers Like I had this big corporate career. I was at P&G, I was at Best Buy and I spent 10 years here at Sam's Club in town.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, good, well, you are having such an impact on our state, you and all your areas that you lead, and thank you for that, and let's talk about that. There's three really critical areas that we're going to get into today that Phil leads and he'll talk about that, because what we want to do today is you to understand what is happening in our great state, in Arkansas, and if you're not in Arkansas, this could be done in other states if it's not being done in other states. So I think you're going to love to hear what Phil and his team are involved in, but we're going to talk about the business incubation. All right, look at that. I can't wait for you to hear that. It's going to be really good.
Speaker 1:The other thing that Phil does has a huge impact on the future of our state and country, and he works with students and then getting those young minds there and as they get into this whole space of entrepreneurship, innovation. He's going to talk about that. And then we have a great program or department. I guess a better department is Macmillan Innovation. That's correct. So we're going to get into that. So there's so much happening. We're doing a lot, no doubt, okay. So Phil, again welcome. We're so glad, so why don't you begin and talk about these really key topics today?
Speaker 2:for our audience. Yeah, so I've been in this role about six months, right, and what's interesting from the last time that I talked to you is I was focused on the business incubation side, which is one third of kind of what my job is now, and so my mind is kind of blown by how much more we're doing as a total office and much more the university is getting involved in entrepreneurship across those three areas you talked about. Maybe we take business incubation first. Okay, so my old world. We've had this great program here called the greenhouse outdoor recreation program. It's called the warp.
Speaker 2:Last time we talked we talked about that incubator, this for early stage outdoor recreation companies. That program continues to go well. We're in our sixth cohort amazing companies in there. We can talk at length about some of the companies that are going through that program right now. There's some really interesting new business models that are coming in outdoor recreation for our area.
Speaker 2:But then right at right, it would have been a year ago. This week actually we received this grant from the federal government to take that same programming and stretch it around the state and what we have seen is we are starting to find people throughout our state that are interested in working outdoor recreation as well, that are interested in building new business models and support and getting support to try and figure out how they build something in their community. That land grant, university model, that how do we help support our whole state really comes through in this particular program and then through that same grant we started something called the Entrepreneurial Law Project and that's one that we've been super excited to see kind of moving forward this past year.
Speaker 1:I don't want you to skip over this. Okay, because in GORP you're in the sixth cohort, soon to be seventh?
Speaker 2:right, yeah, we'll have a set. We're taking applications. By the time this comes out, the application will be closed. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So the seventh, the seventh. So if you're from Arkansas, right, and so you need to pay attention to that, because the seventh is coming, yeah, yeah. And so the second thing is the law project. Yeah, okay, that's interesting to me. Tell us how that works.
Speaker 2:This is like entrepreneurship is all about finding problems and trying to solve them right.
Speaker 2:So when you're an entrepreneurship support organization like we are. We look for the biggest problems entrepreneurs are dealing with, and one of the biggest ones we've seen for a long time in our community and I'm sure this happens around the US is early-stage entrepreneurs need legal support. They just need help. But unfortunately, at the early stage, when you have very little money and you're trying to figure out because they don't have any money to do this, but lawyers are expensive. Right, they add an amazing service and a needed service, but lawyers can be very expensive for these early-stage entrepreneurs. And so a woman named Rachel Sullivan, who's on our team, created this program, which takes the later state the three all students out of the university's law school combines them with pro bono legal support from our community and puts them together into an education experience for entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2:We just did this in Fayetteville last month. 30 founders come into the Brewer Hub in Fayetteville and we've got lawyers there presenting them all morning, teaching them about business formation and operating agreements and IP right and getting them to get these core lessons they have to have. But then those same entrepreneurs get 30-minute free sessions of legal support and we're giving tens of thousands of dollars of legal support away to these entrepreneurs who just need the help, who just need somebody to help them say how do I do this one piece? And we've got stories that have come out of that. Some of these founders who are really in dire straits are really struggling with different pieces.
Speaker 2:We've had some of our community lawyers step up and say, look, I want to help here, like, why don't I help you kind of get this operating agreement together? We'll help you get you know your initial forms together for your customers so you can get your business back on track right. Other entrepreneurs who don't know anything about filing for IP or how do I get a patent can start the process of understanding whether they should or not, all that coming from this free support. Now, that happened in fayetteville, but this happened in five different locations around our state this year alone. Okay, and we continue to kind of stretch it out. So we're providing it, hopefully as best we can, to as many communities within our state that's wonderful.
Speaker 1:Now I want to. You talked about gore. Let's talk about. Give us some examples. I'm a cyclist and I know some examples that you have worked on and doing, so that's why, when I started reading, oh yeah, we got to talk about that. So give us some examples about Gore. Sure.
Speaker 2:So let's take our current cohort, our current cohort. There's a woman in the cohort who's building a new business model around consignment right. One of the things that happens in larger outdoor recreation communities like a Denver or Boulder or Asheville right where you get a lot of tourism coming to, is you tend to get one of these shops formed, which is a consignment shop around used outdoor rec. Here what you're finding across America is resale, and secondhand products have become much, much more popular, but we don't have a store like this here specifically designed for outdoor rec, and so she's designing this program right now. It's going to be called Sturdy Used Gear and she's just at the very early stage of starting to build out what that business model will be a new retail shop in our community just for St years gear.
Speaker 2:That's one side, but in the same cohort we've got another founder who is taking computer vision and trying to help train people who are interested in shooting sports how better to accurately shoot their weapons. Right, this could be good for military. This could be good for police. It could be good for the casual user as well. Right, this could be good for military. This could be good for police. It could be good for the casual user as well, right, but he's using computer vision to help you actually better aim or better target as you're learning shooting support. So you get this high-end AI kind of technology thought process and you have this kind of retail experience and all business models in between. Those are some of the models we have going through right now, a lot of them To the cohort Now. We've had other ones that have come through in the past that we're starting to see some real success coming through. We had one company maybe three cohorts ago called Nargo Bike.
Speaker 1:All right, that's the one I'm familiar with. I love Nargo yeah.
Speaker 2:That's why I wanted to bring it up, because I've been tracking, watching that, watch this company, watch this couple go um. So, uh, zach, at least are building this um, this great experience, really experience around buying an electric cargo bike, um, and they make custom frames. They they use like recycled old uh bike frames, they turn them into these custom uh cargo bikes and they really like. Their whole goal is not to make a whole bunch of money selling bikes. Their goal is to convince every person in this community to stop driving their cars, yeah, and they just want everybody to get on a bike and start riding around the community on the bike and they just have this like it's just this altruistic view of what they want to see out of things, and it's so exciting to kind of watch them go from they were doing it garage and trying to figure out a business model through gorp and through some other programming within our community.
Speaker 2:So now they've got their own shop in northern bentonville, right on the bella vista border um, and they're really getting traction. Of course. Now, now that you can buy a um, you know you've got the. The bentonville has the um. Um, there's a, there's a, there's a dollar. Oh man, I'm missing the terminology. Uh, there's a grant available now so that people can buy an electric bike.
Speaker 1:They get some funding from the government yeah, you get funding for it. It's a grant that you get funding for by e-bike, that's right.
Speaker 2:So now, they've built this kind of e-bike model up and now they're sitting right in the right spot when this grant comes through, and now people are looking at e-bike you know these ideas are and we're going to talk about so many more ideas.
Speaker 1:You just got to hang on with this. I'm telling you it's going to get so much better. But think about these ideas that you talked about can happen anywhere, any state, any city across the US. That's right and that's what's so exciting about this. And the reason you know, the cycling called my attention and all of us have our passions around things is that, first of all, we've got one of the best greenway cycling greenways in the country and we're all the way from South Fayetteville to almost the Missouri border. So it's phenomenal, so great, and it spares off in every community. So think about delivering product, and all that on a bike, you know, in screen, in a great space, one in four fans.
Speaker 2:So what's awesome about GORP is it ties so well into the rest of what the university does. So there's another company that came out of GORP called Lockstop. It actually used to be called Uncle, but their name is Lockstop now. And what Lockstop's model is is they want to be a parking meter for your bike, right. So now it's a lock that's attached to any kind of permanent fixture, any kind of bike rack. That's app enabled. So you walk up there, you scan the app with your phone. It unlocks. You lock your bike up. You don't have to carry a lock anymore. Wherever you go with your bike, you know it's going to be safe and secure and you can lock this up so you think about the infrastructure we built around cycling.
Speaker 2:Now, all of a sudden, if you add their locks onto it, now there's a whole service available for people, so that there's one less thing to think about when you're hopping on your bike and going to the grocery store, or when you're going to downtown, when you're going to go ride.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's the number one thing, because these bikes are well, you just don't want to lose your property and I know I carry a, I'm stocking wherever, because I want to lock my bike, because that way you don't have to watch it the entire time, because you can't. So, perfect, okay, we've got to move on.
Speaker 2:But this is so exciting. You want to talk about cycling. I've got to say this one thing because I haven't told anybody this yet. All right, so by the time this comes out, this will be news, but it's super exciting. So we are starting a new accelerator within cycling. The state of Arkansas has come through and is helping fund basically an accelerator model Accelerators, incubators, scorpus incubators early stage. How do you create new auto companies, right? Accelerator and cycling says.
Speaker 2:We know there's companies out there that are making new technologies in cycling right now and they're at this really high growth stage. They're at the early stage of trying to figure out growth. We and they're at this really high growth stage. They're at the early stage of trying to figure out growth we are going to bring 10 of them into Batonville in the spring of the next year and train them up on and help them connect within the industry and hopefully attract them to our community to move here and start to create that hub of cycling businesses that are here. This is all helping by funding from the state, and so we'll have 10 new companies spend a spring right here in Batonville with us ending at Bike Fest.
Speaker 1:Okay, you know, I don't have to sing very hard to have you back. See, that's when we got to have you back then. For that for sure, you know, because maybe it's my personal interest too. All right, so, no, this is really good. Okay, so you've talked about the work, you've talked about the law, the law project, and that's wonderful. What else do you want to give us here?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if you think about the rest of business incubation, for a second, one of the other big programs that we're helping work on with the Northwest Arkansas Council actually is creating a business hub for entrepreneurs, right? So how do you create a digital location that any entrepreneur can go to to find all the resources that are available to them? Right? It's called the Arkansas Business Resource Hub. I can give you the web address later it's AR Business Resource Hub, but it is designed to help our founders find all those resources available. What happens in entrepreneurship uptime is they get stuck trying to find what dollars are available, what grants are available, how can I fund this piece, or how do I find legal resources, whatever the case is, and so we have collected all those resources in a one single location to help our founders find those places and find those resources. So that's kind of a big tool that we've, as you just recently, been building, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, we're going to make sure, when we post this, you'll go to our website, dbbnwacom. There will be articles there and we'll make sure that we'll run this by Philil. He'll have a nice article there and all the uh, the information you need here, absolutely in order and and then where to find phil to all that. So we'll, we'll make sure we do that. Well, that'd be great. Okay, good, I love.
Speaker 2:What are you gonna talk about? Well, if you go to the second stage. So I told you, business incubation is my first bucket, right, the bucket which is really our core to everything we do at OEI. But the office here is about students. It's about student programming, right, and so we have a ton of great initiatives that we've been running for quite a while. But if you go back to the beginning of our offices, it started with one class called New Venture Development.
Speaker 2:New Venture Development was designed by and implemented by a woman, carol Reeves, who was a long-term faculty member at the University of Arkansas, and she just saw this vision of how do we teach students how to build businesses from I have no problem all the way through to I'm pitching to investors, and it was a year-long course designed to help those students do that.
Speaker 2:And what we were finding early on, and what we continue to do today, is you take really great intellectual property from the university or really great ideas coming out of different programs. It doesn't have to be business. Students could be engineering, could be arts, could be wherever within our colleges. Bring them in, surround them with a team of students that all have different skill sets in finance or marketing or whatever the case is, and those form teams that are building business models and, honestly, some of the best businesses the University of Arkansas has kind of kicked out have come out of this class. The new venture-friendly course is what's built up everything else the lock stop company I talked about before. While they were going through GORP, they also went through that class as well, and so those two resources allowed them to go in the spring, pitch to investors and raise money to earn for their business and allowed them to kind of kick off and get going.
Speaker 2:That course continues to be strong. We've got I've got eight different business models right now. So I'm teaching this course this year along with a guy named David Hinton who runs our tech transfer at the university. The two of us teach this course. We've got 35, 36 students in it, eight different business models, all of them being built right now and getting ready for what eventually is going to become pitches to investors this spring, in hopes that a few of those businesses not everyone will go. Some will graduate and be like I want to go on to my corporate job, but they're learning the key tools of entrepreneurship that are going to be helpful and valuable to them, even if they don't take these business models to move them forward. That's exciting.
Speaker 2:And then, wrapped all around, that is all the different support structures we have for new businesses. So, as students want to form new businesses, we provide them, you know, free co-working space called the Startup Village. We provide them venture mentoring service. We have mentors that are there to work on their business models. We even at times, take our interns, who are undergrad students who are looking to work in entrepreneurship. We want to understand what it's like to be a founder, and we give them experiences through something called the venture intern program. We have all these different programs that are designed to get our students experience in entrepreneurship, and that's what we want people to do.
Speaker 2:Not all of them are going to build something tomorrow. Not all of them are going to kick out new business models Some of them should not, and that's okay but they're learning these really core tools of customer discovery and what's a lean canvas model and how do I think through how big a market is or whether there's real potential here, or is this a real problem? No-transcript. And those tools will be super valuable when they walk into their jobs as well.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, that's so exciting when I think about this opportunity that the University of Arkansas is doing through the student programming is that we're teaching, coaching, young potential leaders, business owners, future CEOs, individuals to come in and do this successfully and then to learn how to fail forward. That's right, because business is difficult starting businesses. There's right Because you know business is difficult starting businesses. There's a lot of failure in all of that and but yet, with all the help and mentorship that you're talking about, it's about learning through those failures to keep going to fail forward. That is. That is something that that's amazing that we have in our state. That's right.
Speaker 1:I want to say something here just a moment before you. We move, if I can. Yeah, um, takes a lot of funding for this Takes a lot of investment. Phil's talked about the mentorship. If you want to get involved in this from mentoring to investing, to supporting this financially we're going to make sure that you can. We have that information so you can reach out to Phil and get with him, visit with him, and how do you get involved in this? This could be a perfect opportunity for some people that are watching and listening today to really do something in this next opportunity in their life. Whatever that is, to give back, to get involved, to help our future leaders in this state be successful. This is awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I told you, big corporate career, right. So I spent 20 years, got a big corporate career, but this role, um, I'd always said, someday I'm going to go back and teach, someday I'm going to go. Yeah, I want to be an adjunct professor somewhere and teach. But when this role came available and now where I am at now, I finally see that I can do it now. I don't have to wait till someday. I have don't have to wait until retirement, I want to do it right now. And the impact that I get to see every day from the supportive entrepreneurs, from the students that are learning something from the next generation that's coming up, for me has been changing. If I could be so dramatic, like it really is a feeling of, maybe for the first time in my career, that I'm really adding a ton of value to other people's lives and it just feels like a mission now for me.
Speaker 1:You know I get that feeling, I understand that feeling and you know I am so blessed to have such a great career at Walmart for almost 30 years and many other things I've done. But what you're talking about now, no matter where you are in the space of your career, this is an opportunity to really do something great for the next generation. That's right, that's absolutely right. And if you're not, in this state, arkansas, learn how to do it and learn from Phil and others how to move that to other states. We need this everywhere, no question.
Speaker 2:I am certain your podcast has tremendous business leaders, right. They come at all stages. Some of them are much large companies. They've never gone through an entrepreneurship experience.
Speaker 2:Those skill sets are so valuable to the next generation of students, right, understanding entrepreneurship is so valuable to sitting in front of somebody who's trying to build something for the first time. But you know, the first time I take a company, I take a founder who wants to build a CPG-like product, right, and I can connect them with somebody who's done it here in Bentonville for 30 years selling Walmart or other cases Like that's valuable for that student to learn from and to kind of see. You know, we don't have it ready yet but we're building a program right now that is designed to help entrepreneurs in the CPG space in this community and we absolutely do and there's. It's shocking that there's no core accelerator kind of built around. How do we help entrepreneurs in CPG? And yet there's so much thinking, there's so much great thinking, great skill set around here that would be interesting in getting that space. We're trying to figure out how to build that right now.
Speaker 1:Well, just before our podcast today, phil met our entrepreneur, podcastvideoscom, eric Howard, and he is an entrepreneur. He's a very successful business, soloist business and entrepreneurs can't stay sealed. They got to watch the next, watch the next. Eric has built podcastvideoscom Huge vision for it. It will happen and so I know you guys are going to connect Wonderful. I'm so glad because you're, because he's going to be very, very passionate about this. There's so many people listening today and to get involved. So that's so get involved. I I say come, get involved in this no doubt, no doubt we will.
Speaker 2:We will always accept people who want to kind of give back and support, and so we'll get involved and, like you said, like I mean there's mentorship is a great way to do that we are always looking for.
Speaker 2:You know, one thing we we haven't talked to yet about is like we're always looking for projects too. Like we have students who are hungry to learn the skill sets of innovation, hungry to learn the skill sets of how do I build a new whatever, how do I solve a problem. But oftentimes they don't have enough life experiences to really know problems, and so we spent a lot of time in classes like New Venture, development and others, just talking about how do you find a really good problem. But the truth of the matter is we'd love the community to come source them. We'd love the community to come to us and say, hey, our company's got a problem, we've got issues over here, or I've got an idea that I'd love to have a group of students working on with me. We want those and we'd love to have a group of students working on with me.
Speaker 1:We want those and we'd love those projects to come. You know, that's one reason I so enjoy you coming, phil, because it you know, most of us business leaders are heads down and working. That's right. Every day our heads are down and what you do you really open up the doors to all this opportunity for current business leaders, future business leaders and students.
Speaker 2:Yes, and then how to give back, if you're attorneys or business leaders or whatever, and so wow, Look, if you want to justify it right, if you want to justify it like it's got to be part of my job too, then call it recruiting, because the truth of the matter is the students that are coming through the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and we'll talk about mcmillan, a second innovation studio the students that are coming through there are some of the most well-rounded, most prepared students. They are the. Their resumes scream I've had these experiences. I can do it for you too. So oftentimes people bring us projects and they want students to work on them, but they really want to recruit good students and they get to see really great talent coming through these programs.
Speaker 1:If I was a business leader today, in the space that you're talking about, in fact, in this studio, when you walked in, you've seen a lot of young people. That's exactly what we're doing here. We're bringing these young people in to work with us. They're phenomenal. They're going to have great careers someday. Someone's going to recruit them out of here. That's what we want. Yeah, okay, them out of here, that's what we want. Yeah, okay, eric, I hope you don't get mad at me for saying that, but that's what we want. We want them to move on with great careers that's good and with us or others to have great careers, and that's exciting. Okay, now we've talked about the business incubation piece. We talked about the student programming a bit.
Speaker 1:Now Macmillan Innovations. That's named after the CEO of Walmart, doug Macmillan, who I had the opportunity to work with him from years and years. He's such a fine individual. He's doing a great job at Walmart today. I'm so proud of where Walmart is and where it's going in the future, and Doug is so instrumental in that. He's just a great guy, number one. In fact. He would be upset if I mentioned this. I'll do it anyway, but he was recently voted as one of the most well-liked and respected CEOs in the country and he would blow that off if I said it. He would never say it, but I'm saying it for him.
Speaker 2:So talk about Macmillan sure institute so the the third arm of the office of entrepreneurship innovation is the macmillan innovation studio. Um, the studio started oh boy, I should have my dates down, but it's probably eight, nine years ago. Yeah, sounds um and uh. In it early, early stage it was trying to figure out what it stood for, but eventually what it turned into was we want to figure out how to train students in, I would argue, the art of product management, right? So how do I really train someone at the early stage of understanding how to identify a problem, how to truly understand the impact of that problem to the customer right and truly understand?
Speaker 2:We use a tool called human-centered centered design. We teach them all about, like empathy and understanding the customer, huge focus on customer discovery and interviews right in hopes that you can take a problem, understand the problem and then come up with really unique solutions. And then, if those solutions become, those are what we call design teams. Those design teams then build these unique solutions and if those solutions make sense, then we move on forward into product teams and start to build out the. How do I make a proof of concept out of this solution? How do I actually create that product for the first time? How do we test and try um iterate to ensure that the solution we thought we put on paper over here is actually going to work for the end user?
Speaker 2:yes or whoever that is, yeah wonderful Now.
Speaker 1:I was reading an article about the Macmillan Studio, innovation Studio, recently and it was so great. It talked about the impact it's having on those students and those students' involvement and, all and again, another way of teaching and giving back to these young men and women to really again get their career going.
Speaker 2:No question, no question. We have every semester right. What happens is organizations around our community come to us with problems. In fact, I told you before I went on, projects like this is a great one for community members to come with. Right now we have problems at our company. Let's take, I'll give you an example of Sam's Club.
Speaker 2:Sam's Club came to us a while ago and said we'd like to better understand the potential of a Gen Z customer in a club model. Right, club models are typically, you know, large families, you know bigger. You know it's like we want to understand that with the mites of a gen z customer. So we they hold a group of students together. They always have one project manager, so one student's responsible for it, and that team of volunteer students that all work together throughout the semester. And they did a ton of customer discovery, a ton of interviews, a ton of empathy mapping, a ton of understanding who that customer was, and then built out what they thought was a great solution for sam's club. It had to do with a membership model that's tied to apartment complexes. There's a lot of detail behind that.
Speaker 2:But what's fascinating is the students really got to know the problem. They really got to understand the needs of a club model, right. I worked at Sam's Club 10 years. I get the club model well right and then came back with a very viable and reasonable solution. And we do that every semester with companies all around the world, not just large companies like Sales Club. We'll get to deal with smaller companies as well, or even nonprofits, right?
Speaker 2:One of our organizations, one of our health organizations, was having this problem in the postpartum space, right. So you have women and they're pregnant, they give birth, and what they were finding is like a very small percentage is women were coming back for kind of postpartum treatment afterwards, and because of that they were not especially in poorer communities. They were attracting issues and challenges afterwards that weren't caught because they just weren't coming back for the normal appointments. And so they went to the students and said help us figure out new ways to kind of create and solve for these patients to come back after giving birth. And the students gave some great solutions on how that could work. So they get to play in a variety of spaces healthcare and retail, and supply chain and logistics. So you have to give us interesting solutions to problems.
Speaker 2:And so we get all these interesting projects for students to solve. And what's great is they bring a different mindset to it. Right, not always the problem is going to be accepted, not every time is the company going to say that's the most brilliant thing ever, let's go and implement this across the whole world. But they get to see a different mindset because, honestly, our Gen C students, our undergrad students within the university, think differently than you and I do. Wow, yes, and so bringing that different thinking to the table, bringing the skill sets that we've trained them, suddenly gives different solutions that we can think through. And then you go back to. You get to see some of our most talented students at the university from a recruiting standpoint, and so many times these students get recruited as well, right, what I like about that is that you look at your core customer as retail.
Speaker 1:You look at your core customer and we're always wanting to grow our business, and now there's a way to grow our business in a different to a different generation space where you're really not in, and I know, I think it's brilliant. I think that, again, one of the things that I love about Walmart, sam's and other great companies is that the most consistent thing in most companies is change. And when you're asking the right questions how do we grow our business? And then you see this opportunity where you can grow your business in this different generation, and then the Macmillan Innovation Studio addresses that question and finds a solution. And that's what you said earlier. I think is so important is that we love to work on problems and you have you have individuals, really smart individuals, to help you do that.
Speaker 1:Yes, no question. Yeah, I'll run it. Okay, this has been exciting. This is why I love having you here. It's like a fresh air talking to you. And okay, now there's one other topic. I know your area is not infinitely involved in it, but I know that you're very knowledgeable about it, so talk to us. What's happening in South Arkansas?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah it was a little him, uh um, I mean, here's what's. What's crazy is I don't know how this stuff works. I I have no idea how they find, like this, pot of gold in southern arkansas but I don't even read, but in the, I think it's barium, like yeah, they can, they can pull lithium out of. If you've not read it, I think, go read about it. This is fascinating, but Arkansas now has the potential to produce like the world supply of lithium for the next I don't know how many years 30 years or something, 35 or something. We just have to pull it out. Now.
Speaker 2:What's interesting is, as companies are starting to invest in South Arkansas and try and figure it out. The infrastructure is not there yet, right, and I think the fear, or the concern at least, is the state's got to figure out how to make this in an industry that stays in the state. That gives the benefit of the state of Arkansas, right? The last thing you want is to pull the lithium out and then ship it off somewhere else, to make the battery somewhere else or ship it off to other places, and so you're starting to see this entire state support of how do we better help this industry grow within our state.
Speaker 2:The Dean Needy, kim Needy, is the Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Arkansas and she has just taken it upon herself to pull together resources from all around the state, from different walks of life, different experiences that bring different skills to the table to help that entire community think through if they're going to build up like they're going to, what could they learn from what's happening in Northwest Arkansas?
Speaker 2:What could they learn from other parts of the state or the country so that they do housing right, they do healthcare right, they get ready for the workers that are going to be there, so that they hire the right talent or that they train the right talent up right, and all with a very altruistic view of we just want to help right. It is not by any means North Dakota, arkansas, saying this is how you need to do it right. It's very much saying we love the fact that you guys are about to build an amazing industry down there. We're about to put a whole bunch of engineers from our college hopefully down there to work Right and we want to help, yeah, and so you're starting to see all this structure coming around, just the support of what's going on down there and it's it's super exciting.
Speaker 1:You know, I think this is one of the most innovative things that's happened in our state all the time. I mean there know what the future is going with this, and it would be so great if we don't have to import this from other countries and all we have it here in our state. It's going to give, like you said, opportunity for jobs and so much more for our state, so we'll have to keep watching that.
Speaker 2:We'll definitely keep an eye on that one. The reliance that I think our entire country has on lithium from other countries, a big chunk of it being in China Right. If Arkansas can help solve that for the whole US, that's a huge it would be.
Speaker 1:Okay, we've covered a lot of territory. It's been awesome. Okay, as we wrap up, phil, what are some closing thoughts that you have? I've got a couple, but you go first. What are some closing thoughts that you have? I've got a couple, but you go first. What are some closing thoughts?
Speaker 2:What gets me most excited is the generation that's coming and their passion for change.
Speaker 2:We see so many students coming through our program right now that have an eye for I want to solve a problem, I want to make the world a better place. They have very, a very social view of wanting to make change and make make good for the world. And and so I'm sitting in this unique spot right now where we are providing a variety I mean I listed maybe half of the total programs we do. We do so much at the university, we do so much just in the entrepreneurship innovation space, and yet we're providing each one of these students a unique experience to be able to build those skills to be able to maybe create change or learn how to create change five, 10 years down the future. Right, my hope is that your audience, those listening, those who see what's going on in the University of Arkansas, can see that the talent we are building is going to help Northwest Arkansas and the state of Arkansas as a whole thrive. Yes, Right, and this is where our next version of talent is going to come from.
Speaker 2:This is where our community is really going to benefit, because if we can get these students that are coming out here to stay, if we can keep them in our community, then we're going to continue to build rich talent. That's going to be the next generation of leaders, the next ones that are making these podcasts, the next ones that you're going to be interviewing, right, because they're making the change of the future. And what's exciting for me is I see them at the age of 22. I see them now and where they're going to go, and we get to influence them and impact them in such a meaningful way Wonderful.
Speaker 1:A couple of closing thoughts I have is number one there's a space for you to be involved here, to get involved, to be a mentor, to be an investor, to let them help you with your business. There's so much here for you to get involved in, and my encouragement number one is and we'll make sure you have all the information you need to contact Phil in his office get involved, okay, because you heard what Phil had to say this is our future, yes. The second thing I want to close with Phil is I want to thank you. I want to thank you for your passion. I want to thank you for what you're doing. I want to thank the University of Arkansas for making this opportunity available to our state and to the people of this state.
Speaker 1:But, phil, thank you. You're always such a great guest. I love and learn every time that I see you and I just want to say from all of us thank you, thank you very much, thank you so much. It's a joy to do this. Well, it's been great to have you. Phil will be back. We'll go bathe in the spring and get it back here To our guests. Thank you, it's been so wonderful getting to know so many of you Don't hesitate to reach out to me, send me ideas, suggestions. I love that to hear from you. Thank you for what you're doing best to you and your businesses and all the things you do. Uh, keep keep tuning us in. We really appreciate that. And so, phil, again, thank you absolutely everyone. Have a wonderful day. Thank you very much, everyone. Goodbye.