Podcast: Don Wettrick on Teaching Entrepreneurship

We’re listening to the Getting Smart podcast. Where we unpack what is new and innovative in education, I’m your host Caroline, and today we’re talking with Don Wetrich. Don’s father was a teacher, and after attempting career number one, he decided to go back and follow in his father’s footsteps and become a teacher.

He found that he enjoyed growing things and becoming entrepreneurial. After watching Dan Pink’s 2009 TED Talk on motivation, he knew similar principles could be utilized in the classroom and has applied that to his own teaching methods. Don doesn’t believe that every student should become an entrepreneur, but he does believe that they should all think like one.

They should be able to think critically, reframe problems, and collaborate, and that’s what led him to start Startup Ed Foundation. What’s listenin’ in is Don talks to Tom about what students should be learning and future plans for the foundation. Don Wetrich, welcome to the Getting Smart podcast.

Thank Tom. It’s good to join you. What did you become a teacher? I think the better question is like, I told myself I wasn’t and I did. So my dad’s a teacher, my mom’s a stay at home mom, but that makes her a teacher, my

sister was a teacher. The last thing I thought I’d do is that. That I, in my first career, I just going, I don’t know, I kept going to bed at night and saying, what am I doing? How am I moving needle?

This wasn’t satisfied with it. So I guess some of it was just genetics took over that the family way and quite frankly, I’m not gonna lie to you. I wanted to be like my dad. And my dad was like, yeah, our summers as a family were so influential that I think deep

downside I just wanted to do a redo of my childhood. So you went to IUPUI and got a teaching degree. Yeah. I want to, you know, I want to stay first. Middle school English teacher, right?

Yes. Yes. So you’re teaching middle school English. When did your fascination with innovation occur? Yeah, actually it occurred by the way I was teaching.

So after I took a kind of a unique position after I taught middle school for a number of years and I took basically a broadcasting class. And essentially what they did is is that they did the school announcements and I was like, you know, let’s grow this. And so I took a one year class and I turned it into a four year program and we went from

doing the intro and basics to eventually running the cable access channel and doing documentary films and then doing a statewide film fest. So I just liked growing things and being entrepreneurial. But then my other origin as though I watched Dan Pink’s TED Talk eight years ago and how he described how successful companies are ran and what motivates them.

I thought, man, why aren’t we doing that in our schools? And so there was no term genius hour yet, but what he described was kind of the 20% time models we now know. And I asked my students like, hey, we should start this. Like when?

I’m like, oh, it’s Friday. And that was the start of a very rocky and interesting journey. For the last almost six years you’ve taught at Noblesville just north of Indianapolis. Tell us about the innovation program that you’ve been running there. Yeah.

And the class is called Innovation and Open Source Learning. And it’s just that for the first seven ish weeks, we teach you how to think to your how to think for yourself. How to have the employer mindset and the employee mindset. How to look for opportunities.

How to reframe problems. How to brainstorm. How to truly collaborate and not just with the parent share kind of thing. We also took social media very seriously. Why high school students should be on LinkedIn and why you should create your own brand and

be known for something positive. And then the rest of the year is open source learning. So because you can think for yourself, because you’re looking at solving interesting problems, you’re wanting to be entrepreneurial. That building of a network comes a lot easier.

Because especially on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is I think a lot, usually more helpful people that when they see a 16 year old is trying to help or trying to make a difference, you can build a network pretty darn fast. And so, you know, I encourage the students to take that very seriously. And the open source learning part of it is that they, you know, some students as I want

to develop an app and use Python. Well, I don’t do that. But we can look at our network and start, you can start learning from your, from your, you know, network. So you’ve taught how long, 20 years?

Yeah, I think this is my 21st. Yes. And Don, you’re a few days from your last day as a public school teacher. So. Yeah.

Thank you for that career. Yeah, it’s better sweet. I’m sure we’ll talk about the foundation more, but there was a unique proposition and something to grow. And so I’m still going to be in education, just not in the same building every day.

Right. So you, about a year ago, you had the, you took the initiative to, to create the startup ed foundation. Tell us about that. Yeah, the started out foundation was basically there to, in some cases, fostered the entrepreneurial

mindset with students. And honestly, it was, it was helped out quite a bit by the state and the Indiana Economic Development Corporation. They had sponsored a pitch competition and they kept noticing that one, some of their finalists always kept coming from our class.

And two, we had done some interesting work in the past with, I hate to use the word influencers, but you know, with other, you know, entrepreneurial influencers. So they asked us to take the finalists and work with them over a summer, you know, give them a travel experience, have them work with some all stars and then kind of blow that out.

Now we do monthly meetups and nights where we have our students literally solve interesting problems and then we fund those solutions for small, other small nonprofits. It just, it’s growing literally by the month because we felt that it’s been hard. And I’m literally talking to the kingpin on this. It is hard to change schools quickly.

Now they will over time possibly, but we felt a lot of urgency. So that’s why we started partnering up with either local tech hubs or most notoriously co-working spaces. So we, you know, when we bring these high school kids together from various schools, they can come together and network, work with each other.

And like I said, work on problems that are real and not just conceptual. So what’s the program of work going to be a started up foundation? You’re going to run these student innovation nights? Yeah, well, and yes. And in some cases, you know, franchise them out more or less.

We’ve, we’re now in six different cities. And that’s been one of the tougher things. I mean, we have to find a local champion. We have to start, you know, looking at how it’s housed. But basically we have nine events on the year.

We can’t do one around Christmas. And obviously over the summer break, it’s we’re looking into that, but we do those events, but then we also have a pipeline of basically internship opportunities, skill development and boot camps. I hate to say a lot of the things that they’re not providing in our public schools, but

a lot of things that we’re not providing in our public schools, even super practical things like, you know, like, well, I shouldn’t give we were in negotiations with some place. There are some companies that would love to have a talent pipeline of students and practical things that they could do now. And they don’t necessarily have to go to college for.

There’s a lot of certifications and there’s a lot of opportunities for students to make great money and not have to go to traditional four year. And not that I don’t think traditional four year is great for some things, but not all things. Are you contemplating an incubator? Well, essentially, that’s what we have with with this finalists.

So again, the state competition is called innovate with N. I am being capitalized for Indiana. And the finalists, you know, obviously they have one winner. It’s a pretty good price package. It’s 10,000 in cash and another 10 in educational help.

But yeah, the finalists in general, we get to work with them over the summer. You know, we walk them through, you know, not only just starting your LLC, but to contemplate what you’re going to need for accounting. How do you pivot? How do you grow?

We even take an immersion trip last year as to New York City, which was amazing. We got to have an event in Atlantic Records. I could spend half day with Seth Godin. It was nuts. But within that travel experience also gives them an opportunity to expand their

network and also see how other people work and how they operate. Do you anticipate doing that not only locally there in Indianapolis, but through a set of partner organizations nationally? Yeah, we had kind of an agreement that our first four locations would be in the state, but now that we’ve already hit those four, we’re starting to expand out.

So our next city is San Antonio. And then, well, I can’t really, we have a couple of cities that they’re almost a done thing, but we’re working out some details. But yes, we were expanding to other cities, which ironically that are usually what we consider, I hate to say, second tier cities, but cities that aren’t San Francisco and

New York City. Right. And those will be partner organizations, franchisees. How are you thinking about those? Yes and yes.

The partners are, we’re trying to put together what would you like to see the talent pipeline look like? So if we had a company X, let’s just say Salesforce, and they said, Hey, this is the, this is the path to being a Salesforce administrator. And if they would want to partner, then that’s what, you know, there’d be some of

the things that we’d offer, but then also franchises in the sense that what we’re doing is not only the monthly programming, but having somebody at a startup location in these cities to kind of have these hubs. Although that is without a doubt phase two or phase one has been interesting getting off the ground.

We officially became a federally recognized 501C3 like three weeks ago. Mind you, we’ve been doing this for a year, but it’s still really early phase. Are you also contemplating like raising a venture fund? You’ve done your homework. Yeah, we have that.

Right now it’s small. You know, right now we just made our first investment. Well, technically, I can’t really call it a venture fund. It’s more like 0% loans without taking equity. So yeah, we offer 0% loans to high school entrepreneurs.

But we also realized that that’s what? 3% you know, like 3% of our high school kids will be entrepreneurs. And honestly, that’s about right. We’re also trying to look at the needs of the 97%. But yes, we have made one investment right and make another,

but we’re talking about 5000, not like one million. But in some cases for a 17 year old, that’s what they need to get their first prototype off the ground or their first event or whatever. But yeah, we’re wanting to grow that for sure. And that’s one of the reasons why we wanted to be a nonprofit, by the way.

I mean, we take in money to give away money, which is pretty fun. Yeah. I want to back up, Don. It seems like your investigation over the last decade has taught you some important things about what you think young people need to know and be able to do.

Yeah. As we think about, I think the one thing you and I agree on is that we’re all entrepreneurs now. Yeah. Whether you start a business or you go into a big business, we’re all entrepreneurs.

We’re all in sales and marketing. So how do you think about important skills that most young people need these days? Right. Well, I mean, two things jump off the top of my head. One is yes, we’re all, and I’ll give credit to Seth Godin, having that

Lynchpen mentality, that even if you’re an entrepreneur, you can be an entrepreneur. If you’re looking for opportunities within your company, you’re thinking like, you’re thinking like an entrepreneur. So that mindset is king right now. It just is.

I think that we’re in a cultural deadlock where you have a lot of blame. You have a lot of, you can never get ahead in this world because somebody’s to blame, whether it’s politics or whatever. And then we also have the exact opposite in this hustle and grind stuff where, you know, I’ll sleep when I’m dead and I do 21-hour days.

That’s also kind of toxic. But I think having the entrepreneur mindset and having some balance is key. And then also to self-branding. You know, I will look at any 16-year-old in the face right now and say, it is so much easier for you if you do something positive.

If you’re 46 years old and you’re trying to start a company, you’re every 46-year-old. But if you’re 16 and you take to LinkedIn and your messaging is positive and your messaging is I’m going to try and not putting on airs like, hi, I’m a 16-year-old badass and I’m going to be the next Mark Cuban. But, you know, you’re legitimately trying to make the world better.

Your digital brand is so easy. The world wants to see you succeed. So that is the other thing that I mean, like really we work on with the foundation is that we want more of our students to be. And I hate to use the term like influencer because it gets into that whole YouTube game

and everything else. But like once they know that they can document what they do in a positive light, money comes easier, networks come easier, help comes easier. That’s just a huge component of what they’re doing or what they should be doing. Meanwhile, in most classrooms, a lot of schools are telling kids to get off social media. And by the way, I understand why in some cases, we’re not talking about flexing

your abs on Instagram. We’re talking about you finding great mentors and doing awesome things on social media. So there is, I understand some of the pushback, but, you know, if we could teach our kids to harness the power of social media, instead of just staying off of it, we’d really benefit from that.

Well, social media used positively as part of why it’s never been easier to make a difference. It’s never been easier to contribute. It’s never been easier for a teen to have a global impact. I’m a big fan of Greta Thunberg who at the age of 15 launched a global campaign about climate change. You know, that’s a great example of a young person that just said the world is not the way it should be. I have a chance to do something about it.

And she used social media in a super positive way, right? That’s awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So what, so mindset is key. What else is important? You talk a lot about self-awareness and sort of agency for yourself and empathy for others. Those are Yeah.

super important as well, right? Right. Well, and also just that transparency of your digital branding. You know, if, when you put out there to the world that like, you know, you’re just talking about this girl, like, hey, I’m going to make a difference. I’m going to make a change. When you build up that audience, your audience is going to say, okay, now what? So that accountability is also there.

I’ve, you know, this is, this is the lottery ticket mentality. It is fun to talk about the difference you’re going to make doing it. It’s freaking hard, really hard. And that’s also though, when I kind of circle back and have that balance with my kids, some of my students are so like, why am I not rich yet? Like, because you’re 17. Right. And at the same time, like, this is one thing I really appreciate about the foundation, you know, the state helped us out a

little bit in the sense that they don’t think that it’s going to produce the next Mark Cuban at age 17. But she might be the next Mark Cuban or Barbara Corcoran at age 25. You know, this, some of these things take time, but that mind shift change of, you know, some corporations going to help me, the government’s going to help me, you know, where’s my bailout? It’s not, that’s not going to be a thing. And with fewer and fewer corporations hiring fewer and fewer people. And with the day,

you know, the age of automation and outsourcing upon us, if you’re not coming up with some of your own, if you’re not indispensable, then you’re marginal and man, am I trying to convince that to parents right now? Doing things the way that everybody else did for the last 50 years is not a good strategy anymore. I speaking of Seth Godin, I love, love his podcast as well, like Kimbo. He recently talked about being persistently generous for those that you serve.

Yeah. So I love how Seth talks about find your small audience, you know, find what you love the work you need to do, a place where you can serve a group of people uniquely, and to be persistently generous. Right. So it’s seldom an overnight success, but it is about teaching yourself to understand what other people need and how you can be persistently generous for what initially might be a small group of people. You know, Tom, I’m glad you mentioned that. I

really am. I need to hear that today, because we started in a county just above Indianapolis, and we’ve served their needs, but then the word got out, and I feel this pressure now to expand rapidly. And it’s been difficult, difficult in the sense that I’m also a full-time teacher. We have a team of three other people, but yeah, you’re right. You know, sometimes working small scale and just building that out is really important and being as helpful as you can for sure,

which ironically enough, we’re starting to find other networks and other people that are providing sometimes similar things. And that’s the one thing I love about being a foundation. We’re not in competition. Matter of fact, Odegon, we just crossed paths and she even said, help me out. And she said, she just talked to you. And she’s like, hey, we need to help each other out because, you know, we don’t necessarily have any proprietary blend on things. We just want to

be able to point students and parents to great resources. And I think that’s going to be a winning formula. Oh, Sarah, Henry Holm. Yeah. Whit. Yes. Thank you. Whatever it takes. Yes. Whatever it takes. Right. Yeah. It’s a great, great program. Kind of also teach high school kids entrepreneurship in after school and weekend programs. Yeah. So coming across those people has been wonderful. Yeah. So I guess in you teach entrepreneurial mindset, which is spotting

opportunity and learning to deliver value, but you also teach the basics of entrepreneurship about how to start up an organization. So kids, yeah, you teach a kind of a mini MBA for entrepreneurs, right? Well, I mean, for those that are ready, I mean, truthfully, the class is called innovation and open source learning. And I’m going to borrow from Tina Sealy here at Stanford, but you know, there’s four quadrants. There’s imagination, there’s creativity, there’s

innovation, there’s entrepreneurship. Any kid has an imagination for them to be creative as a level higher. If you’re working on something that’s creative that now becomes innovative, and it’s, and there’s a demand for it, which normally innovative things there is, it should be entrepreneurial. So I try to shepherd them to, you know, pass just the innovative. And yes, working with them in smaller groups of, okay, here’s what you need to do.

Which is again, one of the things now we do, like with the foundation, is that all these kids had a pitch competition, and some of them had an idea or a concept, which is great, you know, they identified a need, they, you know, but now the hard part is, yeah, setting up your LLC, making sure that you know what you’re doing. Do you have, you know, legal representation, if it is something good, is it protectable? What is your protectable market? Do you have,

you know, do you need accounting already? How are you going to scale? What is your mission? All those things. You’ve had the good fortune to raise enough money to get started, right? Yeah. Do you have a long-term goal for this? Yeah, like some of the bigger goals, again, is to try to start coming up with partners that also have at minimum internship opportunities. In essence, we’re trying to showcase what a successful

high school experience could be without just grade chasing and without just standardized test chasing. We’re hoping that we’ll be able to find some corporate partners that they might be able to have a talent pool for high school kids right out of high school. And again, if you want to go the traditional route, that’s awesome. We just want to have a little bit of balance for that. And then, yeah, grow the venture fund as well, but create a new normal for students. I’m hoping this doesn’t

sound too pie in the sky. But one of the things that we enjoy is that our events, and I pointed this out to Hunter, last month we had an event and the guest of the night was a family homeless shelter. And he shared with them the problems and they had 35 minutes to come up with a three-minute pitch for this group. And I looked at him, I said, Hunter, tell me what you see. And there’s like four or five different groups, brainstorming and whiteboarding. And he says, well, I see them

brainstorming and whiteboarding. I said, but what do you not see? They’re not on their phones. They’re engaging. They’re going to make a pitch that’s real. I think this is also a mental health play. I think that our kids are so unconnected with each other that having an opportunity to go to a cool co-working space, work on a problem that is real, it’s not an essay, it’s not a conceptual, it’s not a theoretical, and then provide value makes you feel good.

You being able to be a problem solver, instead of going on Twitter and doing call out culture, oh, the world’s terrible. Everybody’s okay. What are you doing about it? And I think that’s the thing that long term, we want to create, if you’re not going to do this within your school, we’re going to come to your city and we’re going to take your kids out. We’re going to feed them. By the way, we always feed them free. Our events always cost nothing. First 15, 20 minutes, you

come there, eat pizza, drinks, you meet kids from other schools. Oh, I’m a front end developer. Oh, cool. Well, I do graphic design. Oh, we should talk to each other. We do those things. Then they start working with real people. In a day and age, well, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Well, for crying out loud, no people. So if we have a good talent pool of students and then we have some really cool CEOs that get it, matchmaking. That’s also a really big thing we want to do.

We want to do this more for obviously Indiana, which is why we’re expanding to these other cities. But yeah, just like bringing people that would like to know these kids in some ways is kind of an entrepreneurial boys and girls club. If I could take a really strange comparison. But yeah, and get this also again, to be the new normal. When these kids are, by the way, our return rate is very high. If we get a kid to come to one event, there’s kind of this, dude, that was pretty cool.

And then they come back and then these students have a different way of thinking. I know it’s cliche, but they start thinking differently. They don’t have this, let’s all get together and complain about politics. They have this, ooh, let’s listen to this nonprofit and see what we can do to help authentically. Yeah, that’s awesome. Your new normal to summarize would be the opportunity to work on problems that mattered in diverse teams connected to the community, the chance to work

in a few real workplaces, the opportunity should they stumble into an impact idea that start an organization, a campaign or a business, right? Yes. Our mantra are we create seekers and peakers, not moners and grounders. Opportunity seekers. Opportunity seekers are always listening to people whine. And if people are whining, they’re okay, there’s a solution there. And those are opportunity seekers when they get together in groups of four or five, now you become a peaker

and that these kids can start talking about trends, can start looking at things and then start collaborating and they can peak around the corner. They know what’s coming next by actually listening and then start like getting other opportunity seekers together. And that is our most impactful thing. If you get around these four or five students, all of a sudden they’re like, they’re amazing because they compare notes, they compare trends. They talk about, you know,

oh, do you see that last post from Gary? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, what he’s talking about, what does that look like here in Indianapolis? Well, it looks like this, oh, we should do something about it. Boom. Seekers and peakers, not moners and grounders. I love that. I had lunch with Rick Miller, the president of Olden College last month and he ended our lunch by saying, learning things that matter, learning in context, learning in teams, envisioning what has never been

and doing what it takes to make it happen, do that 20 times and you’ll be employable forever. Isn’t that awesome? That’s awesome. Yeah. Well, okay, 20 times. So I offer about 10 events a year, so after two years, there you go. That’s the cycle. I think you and I agree, that’s what a big chunk of secondary education ought to look like, right? Right. Well, not that we already haven’t paid him lip service once, but let’s do it again. Seth Godin, Ledgepin, education be boiled

down to two things, solving interesting problems and leadership. Boom. And that leadership of, okay, we need to get this done. Like that cool brainstorm sesh was cool, bro, but now we need to get it done. That’s been the consistently hard part. Because man, some of my students have had wildly crazy awesome ideas that getting it off the ground was the hard part. There’s obviously some basic skills that fit in here. Like how and where do you see those fitting in? You learn the communication skills

and the problem solving skills in just in time sprints to solve the problem that you’re most interested in. You know, like the communication side, yeah, some of that’s just by repetition and being at the right place at the right time. But some of this is also like normally week three of our curriculum is, okay, here’s how you document your journey and why you should have a LinkedIn channel. Here’s why the algorithm is for you on LinkedIn video. Like and if you’re uncomfortable

with it, you only have like 10 followers right now anyway, so just start doing it. So some of it’s very deliberate. Because I’m serious, we really take the whole digital brand seriously. I’ve had some pushback of like, oh, you’re just trying to get them to be, you know, Instagram influencers. I’m like, no, no, or not. But at the same time, that kid that developed a kick ass app that no one knows about, no one knows about it. Right. And we’re all in sales, we are all in marketing.

Right. So it sounds like your view of the world, your view of human development right now is this is a mixture of skill sprints and problems that matter. Is that fair? Yeah. Yeah. Well, because the students like, they don’t feel that it’s real here. And by here, I mean, schools. Yeah. Like I might one of my favorite statements to make is I did not go to college to learn. I went to college to go to get a degree. Because at age 47, just turned 47,

it doesn’t matter what I know, I have a degree. Well, that was horrible in 1995. Now, what do you know, it’s going to be a skill based economy. If you have skills, great. And like more and more employers are not going to care if you have a famous college by your name. If you can do, you’re hired. If you can say that you do because you have a diploma, but you can’t actually show for it, you’re not. So that skills acquisition is where we really need to start

looking at. In summer’s pick, some bummed out that you need to step out and do this stuff evenings, weekends, and that we can’t make this the centerpiece of secondary and post-secondary. How soon can that happen? Let me give you a bit of hope. Because I agree, it was a gut punch because this is where I start coming off the rails. Because what I’m trying to push schools ain’t buying because this might not increase your test score. Because this might not help your SAT score.

Right. And that was the hard part. However, when I’ve been going to these other towns, and all of a sudden these students have been A, winning some awards, B, connecting with people that the rest of the town is jealous of, and C, they started becoming those problem solvers. All of a sudden, the superintendents go, hey, you know what? Maybe we should start doing this in our classrooms. It’s the long term I’m looking for. So the immediate, and by the way, I got to give

credit to Chris, this was a stab to my heart from Gary Vaynerchuk. This is exactly what he told me two years ago. He’s like, you can’t wait around for schools to change. That’s BS. And so in some ways, this is the very long term game of us doing events in your town, just not on school grounds. If the school superintendent starts hearing about our kickass content, awesome. Now we can rock. But until then, I don’t have the time. I’ve been doing this,

Tommy, we’ve been on each other’s radar for about six or seven years. How many schools have I converted a few? Yeah, a bit of drop in the bucket to what I should be. Yep. And listen, both of us are working around the edges. And even in private schools, where they’d have more theoretically have more room to innovate, private schools often feel trapped by parents in university. In tradition. So, but it does feel like we’ve turned a corner where there’s more and more

people talking about new profiles of a graduate. It does feel like we’re moving to a skills-based economy where even leading companies say, I don’t give a shit if you have a degree. I’d show me what you know, show me what problems you’ve solved. So it feels like it’s changing. I think the next decade is going to be really, really pivotal. I do too. And that’s just, you know, the necessity part. It’s the mother of all mentioned. I think that some, like all in college, obviously they’re in kind of

their own league, but like, I think in some cases, the universities are starting to change this out of fear and just in marketing conditions. And then this is the thing though that I’m deeply, deeply concerned about is the schools that are starting to be open to this is the vast minority, vast minority. And so, yes, I agree, we’ve made some headway, but at the speed of which we’re moving, needs to be picked up a little bit. Yep. Well, we’re both going to work on that.

I want to say again that I really appreciate the 20 years that you’ve put in as a classroom teacher and all the innovation that you’ve brought to the public schools that you’ve served. And the Getting Smart team is super excited about StartedUp Foundation. Where can people find out more about what you’re doing? Sure. StartEdUpFoundation.org. We have a fun little podcast where we talk to some interesting

people, started up podcasts. And then you can, my favorite spot is LinkedIn. You can find me Don Wetrick or on Twitter at Don Wetrick as well. That’s awesome. Don, thanks again. And good luck with the new foundation. We’ll check in next year and see how you’re doing. Appreciate you, Tom. Thanks. Thanks to Don for sharing his entrepreneurial journey. We’re excited to hear how things unfold at the StartUpEd Foundation. If you liked today’s episode, please rate and review us so your friends

can find us too. For the Getting Smart podcast, this is Caroline signing off. Thank you.