The Tech Glow Up - Fabulous conversations with innovative minds.

Education is Freedom - James Keyes

• Nathan C Bowser • Season 1 • Episode 36

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Jim Keyes, bestselling author of “Education is Freedom” and former CEO of Blockbuster and 7-Eleven, is a living example of how access to knowledge can transform a life. Jim’s journey began in a tumultuous, disrupted household, where independence was forced on him at an early age. 

Rather than letting these disadvantages define him, Jim embraced education—not to climb the professional ladder, but as the ultimate pathway to freedom: freedom of choice, freedom to chart his own course, and freedom from obligation to anyone or anything.

Key Takeaways

  • Education = Freedom: Learning isn’t just for jobs or money; it provides the ultimate freedom to choose your own path and live adventurously.
  • Turning Disadvantage into Agency: Growing up in a disrupted home gave Jim a unique drive for independence, realized through continual self-education.
  • Self-Reliance through Knowledge: The more you learn, the less you depend on others’ approval or authority, especially in uncertain times.
  • Resilience Over Resentment: Facing public criticism and hardship (even at the Fortune 500 level) is easier with a mindset focused on learning and adaptability.
  • The Power of Curiosity: The single “secret code” to success is staying curious and committed to personal growth at every stage of life.

Jim credits his resilience and self-reliance to his pursuit of learning. He explains that education allowed him to sustain his independence, providing the flexibility to navigate both personal and professional obstacles. Jim’s perspective reframes adversity as a kind of advantage: growing up with less meant greater agency, drive, and the realization that knowledge—and not just money or titles—enables a truly adventurous and autonomous life.

About James Keyes

James W. Keyes is known internationally as a business and social change agent. Currently spearheading several initiatives in the tech, art, and education space, his career has included serving as Chief Executive Officer of two Fortune 500 companies, 7-Eleven, Inc. and Blockbuster, Inc., and serving on numerous civic boards. Now, a best-selling author, Keyes has written Education is Freedom: The Future is In Your Hands.  

Coming from humble beginnings in the small town of Grafton, Massachusetts, Jim’s father taught him “the absolute key to freedom is to learn as much as you can, every day of your life”. Keyes majored in political science at College of the Holy Cross, and graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He earned a MBA degree from Columbia University in New York, and went on to establish himself in corporate America.  

On his quest of lifelong learning, and passionate about aerospace and aviation, Keyes has been a pilot for over 40 years. He is “single-pilot” certified in Textron C525 series Citation Jets, and is also certified to fly helicopters and floatplanes. He is a skilled sculptor, painter, musician, and composer. 

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

Nathan C:

Hello and welcome to The Glow Up. I'm Nathan C, and today I'm talking with Jim Keyes bestselling author of"Education is Freedom" and former CEO of brands like Blockbuster and 7-Eleven.

James Keyes:

Thanks. Great to be with you!

Nathan C:

Where did your journey in innovation start?

James Keyes:

This is my story. I am the poster child, the living, breathing example of the transformative power of education. Not to give me big jobs or let me make a lot of money. That's a byproduct, but the real drive in using education to transform my life was a passion for freedom. Freedom to do what I want to do, be with whom I want to be with, where I wanna be, anywhere in the world to explore, to live a life of adventure, and to have no boundaries whatsoever. And it comes from education. The more I learn, the more I can do. It's pretty simple. It's a very simple formula.

Nathan C:

When did this idea of freedom, education and freedom start for you?

James Keyes:

I didn't intentionally set out to say, I've got an idea, I'm going to use education as a tool! No, it was quite the opposite. I grew up really in a highly underprivileged, let's say, literally no running water in a little three room shack when we grew up. And, the irony is that I had no earthly idea that I was in any way worse off than kids who happen to have bigger houses and fancy game rooms and beautiful cars and things like that. I, it just didn't matter. Interestingly, at a very young age, what I realized that I had, that many of my peers did not have, I had freedom. Now that came from having a totally disrupted household and, mom bailing and dad in the hospital and pretty much having to take care of myself, but I had freedom and that freedom I realized me very independent, but it was only as good as my ability to sustain it by learning enough to take care of myself. So education turned into my path to stay free. I didn't have to be obligated to anyone. Whether it's a job. Whether it's an authority figure, it didn't matter because the more I learned and the more I could do, the more free I became. I had the advantage, let's say, of growing up disadvantaged.

Nathan C:

In retrospect to be able to look back at, you know, a disjointed, a little bit of a chaotic situation growing up and seeing how 1.) You still had that peace and that happiness, regardless of the monetary aspects of it. And that it very early installed this kind of focus on agency. And it seems like a really clear idea of like, what are my goals and how do I go make them happen? And I feel like for today's workforce, for the younger generations that are coming up for this exact moment, hearing this story it feels like this is the moment. There is a bit of chaos. There is a bit of confusion about what is the path forward. But it seems like you found that in education. I'm curious, if at such a young age you understood that like learning and knowledge and your drive were differentiators, what was the first business that you started? Or like, what was the first sort of entrepreneurial idea that you had? And about how old were you when that came about?

James Keyes:

The first entrepreneurial idea was actually I must have been 7, 8 years old. I wanted to be a rocket scientist. I was a child of the, Apollo era and Gemini, and a guy named Robert Goddard was the father of modern rocketry. He grew up and did his experiments in the adjoining town, Auburn, Massachusetts, Worcester, Massachusetts, where I grew up. So I just had this exposure to space, to rockets, et cetera. And yet, my friends could afford Estes Rockets. Those things that you buy and assemble and you build the, they were kind of expensive, so I could never afford them. So I set out to build my own! If Robert Goddard can do it, I can do it. Now, I wasn't really at seven years old, sophisticated enough to come up with very effective propulsion systems. So I was using a flashlight body, putting fins and a nose cone on it, with glue and then trying to fashion a propulsion system out of a baggie, some twisties from the grocery store bread bags and a couple of other things I had. Nearly blew myself up and burned down the neighborhood in the process! My first entrepreneurial venture, was not exactly a success. But I learned a lot from it.

Nathan C:

Amazing! You've had a very unique position, potentially like in the world on working with some household, global brands. Iconic! Right? And you've been the one who was responsible for setting a vision for not just the company, but you've also kind of owned how those companies think about bringing in technology, bringing in innovation. And some of the times, you've had wild successes and other times you were maybe ahead of the curve. Can you talk a little bit to the skills that you learned building this career, that helped you drive ideas, help other people learn about innovation and technology in that more traditional, sort of business setting?

James Keyes:

Yeah, you want the secret code? All right, here it is! When I set out to write this book, my first three words in the book"Education is Freedom" doesn't sound like on the surface it's an entrepreneurial book or a business book, but it is. It's about learning and leadership is basically about learning. My first three words in the book were the secret code. Total secret code to being an entrepreneur. Ready? Change equals opportunity. Think of that acronym, CEO. I didn't realize that until I wrote those three words down. I stepped back and I went,"Oh, check that out!" Change equals opportunity. I'm gonna own this! It is the role, the very essence of the role of a CEO or an entrepreneur to recognize that all commerce from the beginning of time begins and ends with change. Something changes. Someone responds to it. They're compensated for it. Then what happens? They get big, they get successful. They then are afraid to change, And then they resist change, and then inertia steps in, and then what happens? They decline and sometimes they go away.

Nathan C:

Change equals opportunity! I love how you were diving into there! Founders start in change, right? Like there's a disruptive idea, there is a pain, there is a gap. Often as a founder, as a leader, you are charged with systematizing, formalizing, packaging, normalizing everything that you do. And what you're saying is that like, that model is inherently broken. Because there's always going to be change happening. The person buys your service and becomes wildly successful, or they buy your service and it bankrupts them. You're always in a sea of change and opportunity at the same time. It's easy to write those things in a book. How do you spread that kind of understanding across thousands of stores across continents?

James Keyes:

Well, there are three elements to change to being able to manage through change that I have captured in the book. I call it the what to learn, in order to be able to manage through any times. Those three things are first, embracing change. That's the underlying premise. The second is confidence, because it's fear. It's the lack of confidence that creeps in, that inhibits change. Why do companies like IBM grow so big and they're massive and they own the computer space and then they can't adapt and some startup like Dell comes in and kicks their butt? Because IBM gets so big that they're resistant to change. I saw it at 7-Eleven. I saw it at Blockbuster. Successfully tackled it at 7-Eleven. Not so successfully tried to tackle it, made some great progress, but didn't get there with Blockbuster. But the fundamentals are the same. Change, confidence, and then here's the third piece. And this is, if I left anything on the table with Blockbuster, it was and if I wanted to do it again, it would be this: Clarity. Because you see, you can have the best strategy in the world, which I believed we had at Blockbuster. Something called total access, making convenient access to media, entertainment, available to anyone, anywhere, anytime, whether it's in store, in a kiosk, by mail, or even streaming. Yes, we did. But, when the investment community collapsed in 2008 and we had a billion dollars of debt, the clarity of that message and simplicity of that message to keep not just my investors happy, but my shareholders had to be happy, my customers had to be happy, and understand the opportunity. But my suppliers too had to be happy. And really what happened to Blockbuster is the suppliers gave into their fears. Suppliers being the studios. We only had six big providers of content. And when one took our credit terms from 90 days, so in other words, we'd buy a movie we didn't have to pay for 90 days. That was a huge advantage. When they got scared and said, we're gonna put you on cash terms, and then the others followed immediately because no one wanted to be the last man standing, that pulled 300 million in liquidity out of the company almost overnight. And we were forced into a restructuring that was not really planned, nor was it really necessary unless a change like that occurred. Now, could I have done a better job of communicating the strategy, the liquidity that we had to those suppliers, the importance of them staying on board where we're heading in the future? Yes. Perhaps I could have done a better job with that. But that clarity is so important. Simplicity. The ability to communicate effectively, all of that rolled into a package that I call clarity. So those three things. Change, have the confidence to do something about it, and the clarity or simplicity to be able to not only lay out a vision for where you're going, how are you gonna navigate through the storm, but the direction you're going in. Because if you can't explain it, then your team can't follow it and your stakeholders can't stay on board.

Nathan C:

I feel like, especially early entrepreneurs and I talk with a lot of innovation products. What you're doing in the most precise development or technological terms is often what we think about, in those terms of clarity. And I love that you called out, I had so many different kinds of customers that I needed to be communicating with, that I needed to be managing, that I needed to have that clarity with. And it's not just the studios, it's not just the shareholders, it's not just the board but it's also the consumers. Those are so many different layers to be playing on. And if you are just focused on one of them as a global leader you're falling short. And sometimes, at no real fault of your own, right? Nobody planned on losing 300 million in liquidity. Going back to confidence and change, what is your approach as like, not just a leader, but as a person for receiving such a horrible piece of news, that could be personalized into critique of your own acumen. Where do you find the confidence to move forward and to know that you have another at bat, you have another play, another day to work?

James Keyes:

Well first of all, I'll give you an example of what happened to me. This is such a critical element of leadership and people you know, you get all these leadership lessons and classes and all this stuff, and people don't really see the impact of a leader with confidence. And here's the criteria. It's not personal. It is not personal. Lemme repeat that. It is not personal. It is business. And when you do the best that you can with the best information that you have at your fingertips, and you don't win the game, you can't then take it personally. You have to get back at bat and do it again and learn from the things that happened last time. And as long as you're learning along the way, the mistakes are never really mistakes. They're learning opportunities, they're tuition. And this is something that a lot of people forget. Here's what happens when you take it personally. When all of that starts happening. The press turns, you know, they're very quick. All of a sudden I, my picture shows up in the New York Post with the Pinocchio nose, that's not fun, and it hurts. Now two ways I can respond to that. I can either say it ain't about me. I understand why they did it. Maybe somebody even leaked that information'cause they've got a different motive. They're trying to make some quick money trying to crush us, push us into bankruptcy. It isn't about me, it's business. As long as I think that way, then I'm not going to react as the victim because the victim says, oh, woe is me. They're picking on me. They're bad. Blame this person. Blame that person. I'm the victim now. And victimhood is not leadership. Victimhood is never ever going to be leadership. Now it happens all the time. You see people, I won't name names, but it happens. A leader has to be able to withstand the arrows that are gonna come from all kinds of directions and recognize it's not about me. My ego is not going to be bruised by all of these negative things people are saying. If I'm doing the best I can. With the best information I have and trusting in my team to be with me on this boat, trying to steer it through this storm. It sounds good. I can say that oh, I don't take it personally no. I was fine, you know. No! It hurt and I did. I was vulnerable to that insecurity that comes from being besmirched in the press, attacked and accused of lying and things like that. And you go wait, wait. We did not have a liquidity crisis until those studios bolted on me. So here's what happened. I was at an event at Bill Gates' House. Called The CEO Summit. When you're leading a big Fortune 500 company, you get to do some pretty cool stuff and it's a pretty small community ultimately. So here I am at Gates' house and I'm looking around. I'm a little starstruck'cause I was pretty young compared to a lot of the other leaders at the time. And you know, Bezos was there, Meg Whitman and, you know, lot of Fortune 500 CEOs and I'm looking around saying, this is pretty cool. And I go over to get some dinner, at the little line, you know, picking up some shrimp or something like that, and who's next to me but Warren Buffet. And Warren said, so Jim, how are you doing? Good to see you again. What are you doing now? You know, he had followed my success at 7-Eleven and I had some correspondence with him in the past. I became apologetic. I was like, oh yeah, I'm at Blockbuster. You know, Warren, I'm getting the crap beat outta me. The press is all over me. I was in the New York Post with a Pinocchio nose. This really sucks. I'm just not sure. You know, I don't know. I'm not sure what to do now. Maybe I don't know if I'm gonna stay or not. And he looked at me and here's the turning point we all need sometimes that muse. And Warren looked at me and said, Would you rather be on the bench watching somebody else up there doing that?" And I was like,"Well, no! Of course not!""I wanna be in the game!" He was like, well, dust yourself off. Get back at the plate and take another swing. You'll be fine as long as you're doing the best you can. And it was exactly what I needed at exactly the right time because we're human beings. We're naturally going to be vulnerable to our own insecurities and our own ego that says, oh, they're picking on me. And I began to drift down that path of victimhood and become a quitter. And I thank God I didn't go down that path. I don't think I ultimately would have, but I was, I was slumping a little. And when he said that I did dust myself off, I stayed in the game. I saw it through, we had strategic deals. I got Dish to the table. I almost had to deal with Google. I was this close to it and ultimately was able to successfully restructure the company, get a sale to Dish Network, and then Dish gave it a chance to see another day.

Nathan C:

Wow! Thank you, for sharing that. That's so amazing! In the span of just a few moments, you know, my heart sunk as I was posing the question about how do you deal with that sort of change and then, you know, back up to the skies imagining, you know, I often talk about how important just having one person believe in you can be for like a founder or a creator, somebody with a big idea. Just like one person saying,"I think you could do it!" It can be so transformational and to have of all people, Warren Buffet. Right? Like, how do you not have confidence if Warren Buffet's like, yeah, so what? 200 million?

James Keyes:

Yeah, we all need friends around us that can pull us up off the ground and tell us to dust ourselves off. I'm a big believer and in fact, one of the things that I've been talking about a lot is that knowledge is the antidote to fear. Clearly, the more understanding you have, the more knowledge you have, the less you have to fear. But there's always that element of unknown. There's always something that you don't know. And you won't get the answer to. No matter how much you dig. Then what? Now here's where I invoke Yoda, because when Yoda was teaching Luke how to be a Jedi. He taught him the skills necessary. He had to have the knowledge necessary to be a Jedi. But then there was this other element. What about those things you don't know? What about those things you can't control? That's when you must have the Force be with you. And I like to use that in my own case. Everybody can interpret it however they want, but I interpret it as my faith. And it can be a universal faith, it can be a faith in God, it can be a faith in a religion, it can be a faith in the universe. It can be a faith in yourself. But it's that balance between what we know and our faith that it will work out. And so you collect the best knowledge you can, the most knowledge you have, and then you proceed with faith in yourself. That you'll be able to accomplish it. If you don't have the either or both, you'll fly around in circles.

Nathan C:

I gotta give that space. You really got me. There's so often, right? Like founders are described as having it's not quite predestination, right? But it is like this force that is driving them regardless and, to put a name to it, to have that be part of the strength that you bring, to your work as a leader and as somebody trying to do really hard things. it fits right into your three Cs.

James Keyes:

Well think about it, do you know any successful person that isn't a believer?

Nathan C:

In the mission, in the people?

James Keyes:

Something. Yes! Now, a religious person can say, well a believer is a person of faith. Sure, okay. Well, a believer in themselves is a person of faith. They have faith in themselves, you know. But you've got to have a belief in something. It's such an important element of confidence that, yes, I can do this! Maybe it's calling on a higher power to help you do this. Maybe it's a belief that, even if I don't have all of the knowledge to accomplish this, the universe will conspire to make it happen.

Nathan C:

Ooh! So I wanna tag on this because you have a glow up that you're working on. It seems like, write this book, this mission of sharing this idea that education is freedom. What's the glow up that you're working on now and what are you hoping to see in the next six months?

James Keyes:

Okay, so, my glow up, if you will, is a belief that education and learning enhanced by technology, this is an important element, is literally the key the future of humanity and peace on earth. Which has always been elusive for humanity. Let me unwind that a little. Think of all the problems in the world that we've had throughout history, what causes it? Fear, somebody's afraid of something. Maybe a little greed in there, but greed causes fear. Think about it in the simplest terms. Remember I said clarity, right? So think of the simplest terms. When you're afraid and you're a kid, one of the first things you're afraid of is the monster in the room. What do you do? You call for mom and she turns on the light and she goes, oh, look at that. Look under the bed! There's no monster. Now I have nothing to be afraid of because I have knowledge that there really isn't a monster in the room. And if you think about knowledge and education throughout history, the more advanced humanity is, the less we have to fear. We don't have natural predators anymore. The less we need the old fight or flight, and yet it still shows up on the battlefield. It shows up in the boardroom. It shows up in the classroom. You know, somebody's mad at you, they're ready to beat you up. It's like, why? Come on. What are you afraid of? It's ultimately rooted in fear. Someone's gonna make you look bad, show them up, take something from you, take their girlfriend, et cetera. But it's all fear related. If this is the case, most of the issues with humanity are rooted in misunderstanding. Your culture's different from mine. That scares me. Your beliefs are different from mine. That scares me. I'm not sure that reflects my values, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Right? So what do you do? Well, you use knowledge to overcome that fear. Well, technology today, and I look at this from a scale perspective. I use technology to be able to transform 7-Eleven. We had no scale. We had plenty of stores, but we had no buying power because we didn't know how to leverage that buying power. We couldn't manage each store to tailor its assortment to each individual neighborhood. We had to have one assortment for every store. And so what we did is we brought in technology on a centralized basis. That made us more decentralized. It kind of defies logic, but the centralization of data and capture of data allowed us to be more effective at store level. Now, take that same model and apply it to the way we teach and learn. Today it's very decentralized, but there are some fabulous educational tools. Khan Academy is off the charts in its ability as a tutorial device to help kids learn math outside of the classroom. Why not bring those same tools inside of the classroom? We worry about kids being bored, not engaged, et cetera, because they're living on their device. Why not bring that device in the form of LED screens into every classroom and light up that learning experience so it's fun and engaging for young people. This is all possible with the power of technology. I'm not an educator. I'm not a technologist, but I know scale. And we have 55 million kids in this country. So here's my objective. My objective is to build the internet of education technology, deploy it on a national basis so that every classroom, every kid has access to the best tools. Set out a goal that the president would launch and say a JFK moment. JFK in 1962 said, we're gonna put a man on the moon in this decade. Not because it's easy, but because it's hard. I want a leader in this country, ideally the president, to stand up and say, we're gonna have 100% literacy by the third grade in this country. Talk about transformative act. If every American kid by the third grade is fully literate. And then we're gonna be in the top three of developed countries in math and science and reading in this decade. Possible with the use of scale and technology. I'm calling this the mega idea. Make education great again! I've gotta put it in terms that this administration will understand. It takes national leadership to be able to say America will be the best. Education has always been the enabler for America to succeed, both in national security. You think the future of warfare, it's gonna be cyber. It's gonna be data, not gonna be tanks and trench warfare like we had in the past. We have to have scientists in school today, learning math and science and engineering, we have to have the best education system in the world for America to compete on the global scale. This is what I wanna try to bring my leadership to the table, to inspire others to say we're not gonna sit aside and let America any longer be middle of the pack when it comes to education. We should be the best and let's use technology to get us there.

Nathan C:

Mic drop moment. Oh my goodness! There's like six things that I'm struck with. First on the terms of clarity and vision, you shared this like outrageously huge vision, right? An internet of education technology accessible to everybody that's gonna like, make us literate a hundred percent literate by the third grade. That's some like outrageous transformation. You've got the confidence and what I love is in the moment where a lot of people are worried about how to maintain the status quo of education, where they're concerned about where funding and resources and vision are coming from, your vision is incredibly aware of the challenges and the working modes for the moment, and you're not skirting around any of those challenges. But like accepting them as, you know, the stakes to play the game and running straight toward it.

James Keyes:

Yeah.

Nathan C:

I did not expect, like I'm gonna engage the president to transform education, was one of the things I would hear in the podcast today. So, thank you for challenging my preconceived notions on how this happens.

James Keyes:

Since when are we sitting around clutching our pearls and saying, oh, what are they teaching my children? And, you know, there's nothing we can do. The teacher's unions are controlling us. I'm gonna pull my kid outta school and homeschool'em. And it's like, whoa, wait a minute and think about it this way. If we leverage the power of the best technology available and amortize it across 55 million kids, there's no public school in the country with a hundred kids that could ever afford have the quality of tools that we were able to provide by making them available across 55 million students, right? So there's no homeschool that could ever afford the sophistication of the technology. If you can go to send your child to the classroom and have them watch on an LED screen, an operation at Sloan Medical School or UT Southwestern, that's a learning experience you could never replicate at home with your iPad. So why not leverage the scale of our national system to give kids the best education tools that are available anywhere in the world. And then imagine, I I mean we talk about peace on earth, right? If America builds this for American students and we build the best education system in the world, why wouldn't we then share that with the world? Instead of having to provide aid to different countries, let's provide them access to the best education tools so they can all help themselves. Because those children in remote corners of the planet will now, even if all they have is access via phone, they will have access to the best literacy tools, math tools, science tools, anywhere in the world. And if you believe that the ultimate antidote to fear is knowledge and the ultimate solution for things like terrorism, crime, abuse, poverty, why wouldn't we educate the world and help people help themselves? Kind of compelling, isn't it?

Nathan C:

It is! Jim you got me thinking on so many levels and I'm like super excited for this vision. I'm on board in so many ways, but I have to ask just because I can't not. You know, that ability to be flexible to ride the wave, to have confidence in such a moment of disruption feels like it's easy for people who look like you and me to say on a podcast, but maybe isn't as accessible to everyone out in the world. And like similarly, the global south is typically last in innovation last in access. Often when you know technology is going to save the world, the technology happens and the save of the world thing sometimes comes out. How do you approach, you know some of these real concerns about technology as a savior for the moment, or innovation, I'm curious to know your thoughts on how do you look at the other side?

James Keyes:

You're absolutely right. And you started with the word"but." I am not gonna accept any buts. Because the buts are what kill us! It's the, but what about the teacher's unions? They're gonna block this. But what about the cost? It's gonna be expensive. Yep. But what about the difficulty? It's gonna be hard? But what about, you know, this tool may indoctrinate may be used by evil people to indoctrinate children. Yep. All those"buts" are there. And this is what I encountered at 7-Eleven. I encountered at the American Red Cross. We did the same thing for the American Red Cross. Very decentralized organization. A lot of"buts." Oh, we can't have centralized systems. We're local. We have to be nimble at the, and when we build it, and then all of a sudden they see what's possible, the"buts" go away. All the naysayers go away. The excuses go away because it's such a powerful tool. It's so transformative. It's just like, you know, none of us 20 years ago, sitting around in a bar drinking beers would've said, Hey, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna get on my phone, I'm gonna call a stranger, and they're gonna come pick me up in their car and drive me on the other side of town. And you'd be like, that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. I would never get in a stranger's car! Remember the days I grew up in the days of hitchhiking and then it went away because no one would get in a stranger's car. Technology enabled a sense of safety in doing the unthinkable, jumping in a total stranger's vehicle and going on the other side of town at two in the morning, right? But we do it every single day. This is the power of technology. When we build this, they will come, the"buts" will go away and the opportunity will be there. Now there's one other thing in doing this, that, as you said, some people not only can't wrap their head around it, they're afraid they aren't gonna be able to afford it. Perhaps they don't have the vision. Perhaps they'd be afraid of it, et cetera, et cetera. This is where I see our responsibility. The subtitle of my book,"The Future Is In Your Hands." I mean that as each of us individually and those of us who have been privileged enough to have enjoyed some success in life, I think have an obligation to take what got us here, which was big vision. I didn't get to run 7-Eleven'cause I thought small. I had to think big. And what I wanna do is share that big thinking and take a leadership role. So that others who would never think this is possible can be inspired by it, and I can create a grassroots support'cause even if the president doesn't have time, and maybe he doesn't for this initiative, I'll go after it on a state level. I'll try to take Texas and transform it. If I can't make it happen in Texas, if I have to wait for the next administration, I'll do it. But I am committed to help share this vision because I know it is possible. It is doable. This isn't, gee, would this work? The tools exist. All I'm doing is showing a way a path to scale this in a way that we can accelerate the transformation of education in America and the acceleration of education across this globe. It'll happen organically over the next 50, 60, a hundred years. Why not let's happen now. Let's do it! Let's just get it done.

Nathan C:

Let's just do it. I love it! On each episode of The Glow Up, we do make time for a community spotlight. I'm curious, is there an organization that you think is doing great work that could use a little bit of extra attention?

James Keyes:

Well, there is a foundation by the same name called Educationist Freedom. It is primarily in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and now, helping in schools providing counselors in public schools trying to help kids understand that the, opportunity is there and that the future is in their hands. The mission of the Educationist Freedom Foundation is to convince young people that college may not be for everyone, but opportunity is, and the path to unlimited opportunity is to keep learning as much as you possibly can.

Nathan C:

Is there anything based on where you're at now, with the foundation or the book, that you're looking for, do you have a call to action for us and how can people learn more and connect with you online?

James Keyes:

Yeah, a couple things. One, I hope they can find at jameswkeyes.com. I've got a website, K-E-Y-E-S. And, I do have a request. I hope that, people will enjoy the book, but I don't want you just to buy the book. What I hope people will get this book, but give it away because I want help in spreading the word that the answer to us individually, collectively is for us all to take responsibility for our own knowledge and critical thinking. So much we can do to improve our world collectively if we all do that and I hope you'll find that message is loud and clear in the book and you'll share it with others.

Nathan C:

Oh my goodness! What a fantastic place to wrap it up for us today. James Keyes, bestselling author of"Education is Freedom," former CEO of just some small brands like 7-Eleven and Blockbuster, lifelong learner. James, it was so great to chat with you today. Thank you for joining me on The Glow Up.

James Keyes:

Appreciate the opportunity and thank you to everybody, all of your listeners, really appreciate it!