Episode Transcript
Why can't I stop thinking about this? Why is this evoking so many more questions about broader systemic issues in our education system and child disengagement with learning? And what's the purpose of education? And what's the purpose of this class and this topic and how the kid's being evaluated in this way? Hey everyone, it's Antonia back with another episode of QuestionAble Strategy, and the voice you just heard was Audrey Wisch. Audrey is a kick ass founder, who has been a really impactful friend in my life. She started her education technology company, Curious Cardinals, right about when my brother and I started Toucan. So I feel really lucky to have had a front row seat to watch her just skyrocket into this incredible leader and CEO. I got a chance to sit down with her to talk about the education system, where it falls short, and how Curious Cardinals is taking an innovative approach by pairing high school students with college mentors with similar interests, similar backgrounds, to help them pursue projects that they actually care about. I learned so much from this conversation, and honestly, I'm excited anytime I get to talk to Audrey because she is one of the best question askers. This is a great episode for any listeners out there who are parents trying to figure out how to get your kids excited about school and set up for success in college and their future careers. But even if you don't have kids, if you're like me and you've been out of school for a bit now, You may have forgotten what it's like to be a kid, whether you were jaded about what you were learning or extra motivated to dig deeper into a subject. Everyone's passions are valuable and they go hand in hand with what we learn in the classroom. Okay, I'm gonna stop hyping this episode up and let Audrey take it from here. This is how an education technology founder asks questions with Audrey Wisch. Audrey, welcome to QuestionAble Strategy. Thank you for having me, Antonia. I am very excited for this conversation because I think that there are few people in this world who are more perfect for QuestionAble Strategy. You have a company called Curious Cardinals that is teaching kids, supporting kids in expressing and exploring their curiosity. So my first question for you is who inspired you to be curious? Who inspired me to be curious? I mean, definitely my parents. My parents have modeled curiosity and passion in their own vein. And I think when you're someone who's passionate, that often goes hand in hand with curiosity 'cause you care deeply about something to be curious about it and other things. I have to give my parents credit. I think I was naturally always one of those kids who ask a lot of questions, and they encouraged and championed that. I think it's easy to get annoyed or dismiss, but when a parent, an adult, takes a child's curiosity seriously, that's very empowering. And speaking of taking your curiosity seriously, every startup begins with that one idea that kind of sits in your head and you can't stop thinking about it and because it's nagging you, you realize, "oh, I actually need to follow this. I think that there's something there." Can you tell me about the questions that you asked yourself to evaluate the idea for Curious Cardinals when it was just a little baby idea. Yeah, what was wonderful was that it was never idea in a silo. It was me tutoring kids individually and working with them and they were so disengaged and uninspired. How do I ignite their curiosity and get them excited about learning? And so it was experience I was doing that led me to one of them ask for math help. I'm not so passionate about math. Let me call Alec, who's an aerospace engineer who loves math. Oh my gosh, Alec's, not just teaching them math, he's showing them how math makes airplanes fly. And suddenly the kid's not just learning the math, he feels genuinely connected to it. Oh my gosh, this is how education should work! So I'm grateful that it really never was just an idea in the abstract, and it started as my own individual experience working with kids that inspired me to galvanize my peers and bring this to life more officially. Because the questions at that stage was like, why can't I stop thinking about this? Why is this evoking so many more questions about broader systemic issues in our education system and child disengagement with learning? And what's the purpose of education? And what's the purpose of this class and this topic and how the kid's being evaluated in this way? And so I was just so intellectually stimulated by that work that it was so motivating to do so much more with it. And then I think once I went from side quest to more official passion project, the first big question was oh my gosh, am I veering from my path? aren't I supposed to be the pre-law gal? Is this right? Is this what I'm supposed to be doing? And so when I distilled at its core why I loved Curious Cardinals so much, and this was summer of 2020 or fall of 2020, I loved the impact we were having. I loved the individual relationships we were building, and I loved that we are using technology to do this in a scalable way. The reason why I was pre-law and aspired to be the next Ruth Bader Ginsburg was because I was passionate about systemic impact, and I love the idea of representing an individual, bringing their case to the court, and having an outcome that wouldn't just affect that one person, but would affect millions of people. And I was like, "oh my gosh. At its core, I am championing individuality. I'm enabling empowerment and possibility through human connection, and we're using technology as the vehicle to do that at scale." Never in a million years would I have thought of technology as the vehicle to enact the type of impact I wanna have in the world, but that question allowed me to realize at its core, my North Star was the same. It was just a very different application of it that I never would've imagined for myself. I can relate to that personally. I studied poli sci and econ. I thought I was gonna go into government. I had no idea that during Covid, I was going to basically by accident, become a tech founder. That was not anywhere on my Bingo card. And so I completely relate to your story in that way. You mentioned Alec, who's your co-founder. How do you and Alec's curiosity, compliment each other? We think so differently. So naturally you give us the same book to read, podcast to listen to, data point to digest, and we ask different questions and we take away different insights. And so I would say that's what's so powerful in our partnership. I am humanities and he is science. I am creative visionary, and he is operational thinker and systems builder. We're just opposites in every single way. I would say our, curiosity compliments one another just by the very nature of you give us one thing and we ask very different questions, and that's been really meaningful for me because I learn from his perspective. I love now having worked with someone for nearly five years being able to say, "okay, if Alec were here, he would ask, "what's the ROI of that?" And "how can you measure that?" And he would ask X, Y, Z, other questions." And I love being able to ask myself, "what would Alec ask?" And know that that's actually a perfect balance to the type of questions I'm asking for me to be as effective as I can in my role. That's perfect for QuestionAble Strategy. I love that there's kind of a meta nature to your question. It's Asking yourself the question, what questions would somebody else ask? In order to put yourself in their shoes. Yeah, it's a, I think that says a lot about how someone's questions complement you is, if they were at the decision making table with us, what question would they be asking? And if you know someone well enough or they're consistent enough or have enough conviction in their philosophy and how they show up in the workplace, or as a friend or intellectually that you can actually ask that, and it'd probably align with the type of question they would ask. And it really captures the way that somebody has touched you or impacted you if you respect them enough to really get into their shoes and, live inside their mind even for a couple of minutes. Yeah. You mentioned that you're humanities, Alec is science. How do you think being a non- STEM major in school benefits you as a tech founder? I think that learning to communicate your thoughts in the most effective way, I think learning how to conduct research. I'm thinking humanities research, I know there's STEM research as well. Learning how to have a hypothesis, ask a question, go collect the evidence, figure out how to narrate it, and communicate most effectively is a super powerful skillset that has benefited me enormously as a tech founder. I think that learning the critical thinking, the storytelling, the creativity, those are invaluable skills and they are timeless skills. I think that the one thing that I didn't realize and my false assumption about STEM was I wish I understood that so much of engineering or computer science is finding a problem and being able to solve it by whatever you're building. And I'm such a problem solver. And so there's so many reasons why I never kind of deemed myself an entrepreneur or someone who would be a founder. But I think that's one thing I wish I was able to realize was something that I had as a humanities gal, that problem- solver, doer that I so am. And being in humanities, I didn't describe myself in that way, or I think that I was more narrow in maybe the scale or scope of applications. But I think just the thoughtfulness. I read a lot. I like writing. I write our weekly newsletter. "Thinker and doer" is one of our values. 'cause someone once gave me that compliment, and it was like the best compliment ever. They said, "you're the best combination of a thinker and doer." And as someone who was such a humanities gal and wrote historical research that was published in the Stanford Historical Journal, what was crazy as that happened in January of 2021 and then it didn't actually get published til like a year and a half later. And meanwhile, I was building Curious Cardinals. And Alec as well had researched, published the GPS lab and both of them, it took like a year and a half for it actually to be accessible publicly. meanwhile we had impacted thousands of students, generated hundreds of thousands of revenue, whatever. And I was like, "oh my gosh, I would be driven crazy if I stayed in academia." Like the, pace of movement is just mindbogglingly slow. And so it was so empowering to realize in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, you can make things happen instantaneously and have feedback directly. But I never wanted us to fall into the move fast and break things." Because the risk of that is we're serving kids and parents and mentors, and there's a thoughtfulness we hold ourselves accountable to. And so I love this thinker and doer. I think it's such a tough balance to strike. I think the thinker is the humanities Audrey, but if you ask anyone on my team, they'd say, I'm more a doer than a thinker. So it's a tension I intellectualize and ponder often. I think that that aligns so perfectly with the mission of Curious Cardinals, though. The fact that you recognize, oh, "there are people who think exactly like me, but they're scientists. They're asking questions. They're finding problems. They're solving those problems with whatever it is that they're engineering. And I just do that in a different way. And I think that with the students that you're serving through Curious Cardinals, that's the whole point. The whole point is, "oh, you're interested in this? Okay, well let's apply what you're learning in algebra to that interest," or, "oh, you're interested in this other subject? Well, let's talk about how chemistry affects that, or Shakespeare. So I think that you're kind of a poster child for your own company. I try. You know, as they say, eat your own dog food. But I've heard you talk about how you used to do competitive debate. How did debate teach you to ask great questions? That's a great question. And when I was answering the humanities thing, I was tempted to say debate because honestly, when I think about how much I'm scaffolding in meetings or saying context before content, I learned that maybe more so than in my analytical papers in debate. Because you have to signpost for all your arguments and make sure people are actually following along. I actually was having a blog discussion last week with Alec about how impactful debate was and how it should be a mandatory class that everyone has to take, especially in this hyper divisive political environment. How did that help me learn to ask the right questions? Well, what I loved about public forum debate that I did is that you have to prepare pro and con to a resolution. and then it's like a flip of a coin, and then you get either or. I think that if you prepare pro and con and then there's a component where you're asking one another questions, having to prepare both sides and know the other side well and trying to get someone at something that's probably a gap in the argument. You have to be very thoughtful with the questions you ask. I think any question, the right question to ask yourself is, what is the outcome I'm trying to get out of this? Where do I want this question to lead me? And so I think as a high schooler, to be in that position of realizing, okay, each word, how I construct this question is so, important in leading to the outcome I want to win this debate is a very powerful skill to learn. I can absolutely see that. It also, there's an element of kind of putting your own pride aside in your own opinions. I feel like that teaches you to think critically about things that you're passionate about. That's the most powerful part of public forum debate is that you have to do both sides and you have to flip a coin at the beginning. So you gotta feel excited about both sides. I was googling some of the resolutions, 'cause I was telling Alec about it last weekend and he was like, "some of these are silly." And I'm like, "no. The point is it's a resolution that the answer is somewhere in the middle." Like it's not yes or no, it's not pro or con. At the end of the debate, after 10 rounds, 15 rounds, whatever it is, you're like. "Okay, the right answer is somewhere in the middle. It's a little bit of this and a little bit of that," and I think that's the power of having to argue both sides. And I think that a lot of people in this world and in this country in particular, could learn something from that philosophy. Maybe we gotta make public forum debate mandatory. Per our last weekend's discussion. Maybe I here, I feel like we gotta meet in the middle because my opinion is that we need to make improv mandatory. And I feel like there's something performative about both. Of course, you prepare more for public forum than you do for improv, but I think that they teach similar-ish skills. But they diverge enough that I think we could create an interesting curriculum. Ok, well I need to talk to you more about improv. 'Cause I actually, I had our team do an improv session with the Stanford Improv people for a collaborative exercise. And I was like, I actually thought of you. I needed to text you. That's so fun. I love that. Now I have so many more questions about your improv. I'm always happy to talk about improv, but... It's not about me, it's about you. So talking about interests and passions, I really do want to shift the focus a little bit to Curious Cardinals in particular. How does Curious Cardinals' philosophy actively stoke kids' curiosity? So at Curious Cardinals, we connect K-12 students with college age mentors. Our goal is to help them find their North Star, to teach them the timeless skills in an AI era. We wanna empower kids to live a life of purpose and feel agency in the path they choose. We help with academics. We help with exploring interests in pursuing passion projects. We believe passion and motivation for Friday's tests and your existential North Star are actually hyper interconnected. How do we stoke curiosity? I mean, it's various components. One is that we make very personalized matches. And so a lot of what students' disengagement is and disillusionment is, is that what they're learning in school doesn't appeal to them, doesn't feel relevant to them, feels outdated, doesn't feel like what they're scrolling through on TikTok. Especially during the pandemic, kids were scrolling through Black Lives Matter movement protests millions of people dying in the pandemic. Really horrendous grave legitimate things. And then they were learning geometry and reading Shakespeare and they're like, "why does what I'm learning in school even matter? What I'm scrolling through in my feed feels that much more important." And when you work with a mentor who's close in age to you, who also had their education halted by the pandemic, who also grows up online, you speak the same language. There's a trust and relatability. We make these personalized matches. So if you are like high school Audrey, who lacked confidence in STEM and was the only girl in my honors math class, I could have worked with a female engineer at Stanford who also loved Taylor Swift, who made me feel like I belonged in that classroom. It's about matching students to mentors they can see themselves in. Students are naturally curious when they're learning from someone they look up to. They wanna know, how did you get to where you are? They wanna learn about their life. So there's just a natural curiosity with the learning environment we set with this personalized mentor match. And then the next component is whether it's academic support. We are not just success for Friday's test, we say it's so much greater than that. We wanna teach you to be a learner for life. And so the way we teach and how we empower mentors to lead and engage with students is, okay, yes, we're gonna do this for Friday's test, but I'm gonna teach you this because this is a really important skill in life. And I get it. You think this is not realistic, this isn't meaningful. And again, it's that relatability. But they're committed to stoking interest in a kid. Like I said, with the founding story, I didn't teach math, not 'cause I wasn't capable of teaching a seventh grader math, but because I was not passionate about it. So I was like, "why am I gonna teach a young girl who's not passionate about school in a topic I'm not passionate about?" Part of what's important here is that I'm radiating passion on the Zoom screen about what she's learning in history. She's like, "I'm learning this Supreme Court case." And I'm like, "that's such a cool Supreme Court case! That's awesome." And she's like, "wait, why are you so excited about it?" And so it's really important that the mentors have genuine passion that radiates through a Zoom screen. 'cause that gets kid curious. And then finally it's the passion project offering where a kid comes to us and they love video games and their parent rolls their eyes and we say, "well, what if you could learn how to code a video game?" Or they say they love fashion and their parent goes, "but that's not really a real passion." And we say, "what if you can study the history of fashion and its intersection with gender? Or what if we can analyze fashion businesses on the public market and see which are performing best and why?" Suddenly we're giving legitimacy to your "not real" passion. And so those are just various ways we do it, but it's all about leaning into who a kid is authentically and then empowering them to believe in what they're capable of when they lean into that and do something with it, especially that has a real impact in the world. so much of that really hinges upon the mentors, whose job it is to kind of be a spirit guide for these high school aged children through their passion projects. What specific traits do you look for when selecting mentors? Yeah, and we are constantly, innovating this as well. we look for enormous passion And genuine curiosity. I mean when I started Curious Cardinals, it was like, who are those friends that you just learn from? Who are the friends who you always learn something from, or they always bubble with genuine excitement about this chemistry concept or this Jane Austen book, whatever the niche thing is. That radiant, contagious passion and interest, authentic interest. 'Cause that so contagious. That peaks curiosity in a kid, especially when it's a kid that thinks they're cool or looks up to them. We look for professionalism and reliability. Like this is someone who's not just looking for a quick buck. This is someone who's gonna take it seriously. We look for someone who really cares about impact. The idea of what do you wish you could have told your middle or high school self? Or who's the mentor you wish you could have had? And you can be that for someone else, really speaks to them. 'Cause they realize I might be one of the most important figures in this kid's life, and it's an honor to take that role. And then of course there's other things like humility and self-awareness and EQ. One of my favorite questions that I love to ask mentors in the interview is, what do you do when a kid asks you a question that you don't know the answer to? There is kind of a right answer for that. It's you admit it, and you humanize that this Stanford student doesn't know the answer to everything, but they know to find it. And then you screen share and show what is the search term? How do I know the source is credible? How do I go after and find this information and humanize that you don't have to know the answer to everything. You just have to know how to find it. I absolutely love that, and by the way, I hope that everybody who's listening to this takes a second and thinks about who are the friends or who are the people in my life who I always learn from? You can pause this right now if you want. I think that's such a good question, and immediately people came into my mind that I haven't spoken to in a long time, but I know that every single time we get together, I learn something new and I develop a new interest, go straight to Google and I look something up so that I know a little something about it for the next time that comes up in conversation. No, it's such a special friend and it's fun. Like I literally visualize when I met those folks at Stanford who were the first mentors. One of them was my SPOT leader, and I literally think of us on that SPOT hike. Stanford pre-orientation, that's SPOT. And I think of every time I was with him, I'd learn from him. And he just was so passionate. he was also my TA in Robert Sapolsky's, Human Behavioral Biology class. And I was like, "I wish they taught us biology like this. This is the coolest class ever." And my other friend who was my first friend I met at Stanford I literally visualized when I first met her and was like, "oh my God, I learned so much from her. She's so passionate and smart." And so I love that question as well. It's a special type of friend. Text them if you think of them. Text them. Tell them you love them. Ask them a question. And speaking of questions as we always do, how do you ensure that your mentors know how to ask strong questions? One of our teaching philosophies is Socratic Method. It's a very customized learning experience. I say it's like Mad Libs though. The constant is the learning structure and methodology. Within the Passion project, there's conducting research, building a portfolio, launching an organization, content creation. And there's a structure and format and approach and different milestones, but you might be conducting research on renewable battery alternatives, like one of our seniors who's going to Stanford next year did. Or you might be conducting research on the impact of being a mom in the workplace on your career trajectory, like one of our mentees did, who won a Scholastic Gold Key. So the topic is the variable, but the constant is the mode. And similarly all the sessions start and end in the same way. They do a "rose, bud, thorn" check-in. They set a clear goal, they end with a reflection and clear action items. Because being a great mentor is like being a great manager. And then Socratic Method, that's one of the core principles. Setting SMART goals, like it's a sixth grader you're working with, it's a 12th grader. You're teaching them to set "specific, measurable, achievable, results-oriented, time-bound" goals. And we're using our technology platform to actually measure adherence to that. And then you're leading with Socratic Method. How do we actually enforce that? That's the technology we have built in where we're monitoring adherence to the methodology. So it's red, yellow, green, are they doing these things? And then on a monthly basis, they get feedback. It's not perfect 'cause it's AI generated, but making it better. And that means you get a monthly touchpoint with us being like, "you lectured X, Y, Z. Here's how you could have done this with more Socratic Method." Just reinforcing at every touch point, what does it mean to be Socratic Method? What does it not? And what's an example when a kid asks you a question, you could give them the answer, or you could ask a series of questions to draw the answer out of them, and how can we empower and equip you with the confidence to do that and guide and mentor in that way? Do you have an example of somebody who came into Curious Cardinals and ended up changing their entire way of questioning? Somebody who that training really, really made an impact on. So many. One of the things we do now is we monitor what percent of time the mentors and mentees speak, and often the more mature, sophisticated mentors speak way less of the session. Because they know how to ask and they know that the best way to teach a kid isn't to tell them, but it's to draw it out of them. My favorite example of that was with my own mentee, who's now a bold, confident freshman at Cornell, who's mentoring three younger girls herself through Curious Cardinals. In 10th grade, we worked on her passion project. We worked on nailing the five body paragraph analytical essay. She came to me as a 10th grader with an assignment to rewrite a scene from Shakespeare's "The Tempest." She was struggling. I asked her "what was the assignment about?" To rewrite the scene. What was the scene about in The Tempest? It was about two people courting each other. "Okay, great. How do you guys court each other these days?" She said, "Snapchat." And I said, "okay, so why don't you write the scene as a Snapchat dialogue?" And she was like, "won't my teacher think I'm a bad writer?" I said, "what's the point of the assignment?" She didn't know how to answer. Socratic method. Keep drawing it out of her asking more questions, and she goes, "oh! To show that Shakespeare's themes are timeless!" That was a perfect example where, yeah, I could have told her "here's what this assignment's about. Here's what you could do." But instead, I did give her one little bone. I gave her one suggestion, but I really was drawing it out of her. And it was a reminder too, that we take for granted. Most often kids don't know why they're learning what they're learning or what they're even being evaluated on. And so before telling them, it's powerful to ask them the question and help guide them to that clarity. That's so cool and that's such an important skill for life. I can't tell you how many times I sat in a classroom and somebody would raise their hand and be like, "why are we learning this? What's the point?" But speaking of the students, can you remember one piece of feedback from a student that led to a significant product development? Well with the lesson notes that we started with, we would have a range of quality. We would have one mentor who'd submit the most thoughtful summary of what we learned, how did it go, errors for growth, what we're doing next time. And it would take them like 20 minutes. And then we'd have another mentor that was like, "good job today, Antonia." And we were like, "come on, you need to be more thoughtful. You need to share a summary. Like that's one of our differentiators." And then we realized, is this really the hill we wanna die on? Is this the excellent way we actually wanna ask our mentors to show up, or is there technology that can help them do this and can help us maintain a consistent high baseline? And our approach with technology has been tech or AI to amplify, not replace our mentors. And recording the sessions and launching the AI- generated lesson notes that mentors edit and submit has been such a game changer. At first there was definitely some resistance or feeling like i'm being watched or what's this for? Now It's like if the bot is down, which happened one day, we're getting all these messages. "Where is it? It didn't work. I didn't get my summary." 'Cause they love it and are so reliant on it. And so I think that was a good reminder of you have to be really specific of what do we really expect this person to drive? And for us, the hill we're gonna die on is the live experience. And the async one is where we are leaning in on building technology and tools to uplevel and empower them in ways that we're not wholly reliant on them. But that's just one example of is the feedback so explicit, like, "go build me this?" No. It's more like what are the pain points we're hearing or frustration, and what are the things we care about and how do we bridge the two into a product solution? That's a really good segue into something else that I wanted to ask you about, which is you are very good at posting content on social media consistently that always seems to get ahead of some question that somebody has asked you or a question that you fear parents might have, so you wanna answer it before it becomes a problem. And I know from personal experience it's very, very difficult to stay consistent posting on social media. I have dropped off the grid big time on my own stuff when I was running Toucan, but what I wanna know is, what types of questions do you ask yourself to come up with topics for your content? Girl, I'm out here trying, trying to hold myself accountable to be consistent. It's not easy. What do people care about? What are the questions people are asking? What's relevant to them? It's helpful to be in the arena, whether that's me still mentoring or me teaching all these workshops to parents because I teach a workshop and there's one slide that everyone's taking photos of or raising their hands, ask questions of, and I'm like, "okay, this is something people have a lot of questions about." This is something people are really curious about. That helps, those direct feedback loops. Also, I think being multi-medium helps. Whether I'm testing on Instagram, LinkedIn, or my newsletter, I have somewhere where I get a feedback loop of is this resonating or not? And if it is, I can repurpose it. though I have to actually repurpose, 'cause the mediums necessitate different type of content. I think it's just being close to my user and the people I'm trying to reach, which is a little hard because I would say probably the majority of my followers right now are still like friends from high school, but I'm trying to reach moms. And so the moms are the ones commenting and replying to my stories. And I don't, I haven't built an audience yet. I'm out here working on it. But I am trying to reach parents, especially moms and I'm really trying to understand what are the questions they ask and what's relevant to them. Well, from where I sit, it seems like you have a really passionate group of parents who spread the word about Curious Cardinals. Word of mouth is so important in this kind of industry because you want to have somebody trustworthy interacting with your kid. How exactly do you go about asking your supporters for help? That's a great question. How do I go about asking my supporters for help? It starts with making sure we're delivering value for them. With our happiest customers, let's make sure they're actually happy and having a great experience first. That was really important in this community-driven growth strategy. It was like, Hey, I'm gonna focus on working on with our evangelist parents, getting them to spread the word. But Alec, you need to make sure everyone's having an excellent experience and there is customer obsession because this doesn't work without that." So let's not lose sight. It's very easy, especially in Bay Area, Silicon Valley for people to lose sight on the real target, which is are you actually providing people value and are you providing value that stays, that people stay around and they wanna tell their friends about? 'Cause otherwise this acquisition engine doesn't even work in the first place. So let's not miss the mark on what actually matters here. So I would say that's first and foremost, making sure we're actually providing value. I think that there's something really special when you help someone's kids. And a parent once told it to me 'cause I was like, "it's crazy how generous people are with us." And he goes, "if someone helps my kids, I'll do anything for them." And I feel that magnitude of generosity from our parent base; they're opening their homes, they're hosting Curious Coffee Chats, they're ordering cupcakes with Curious Cardinals on it unsolicited, they're buying yellow flowers. They're sending me gifts. Like it's unbelievable the generosity that we have from our families. They care so deeply. My grandpa was an oncologist for 63 years, and the other day I was sending my dad all this like, fan mail. It's really kind emails from parents I receive about how much they love Curious Cardinals or how much it's touching their family. And my dad was like, "this reminds me of the type of notes your Pop would get." And I'm like, that's so meaningful and special. When you have that, people wanna do good things for you. People wanna help. People almost are touched when you ask for their help because they feel part of it with you. I would say it's different with like advisors, investors, other influential people in the world, but that's been really meaningful and grounding and also so motivational with our parent base. I think that speaks volumes about you and Alec and the entire team that you're able to build such an energized community. Trust me, it's hard. I've tried, I've worked really hard at it. What's amazing about a healthy community is that in some ways it's self perpetuating. Once you've gotten it to a place where it just kind of grows organically, it's a really beautiful thing. You mentioned that it's a bit different from finding advisors, mentors, investors, et cetera. You actually posted a video today on Instagram that I loved. And it won't be today when this episode comes out. So you guys will have to fish through Audrey's Instagram feed, but this video is about making the bold ask. Where the worst that somebody could say is no, but it's still really daunting to actually put yourself out there. I have a story about how I learned this lesson as a kid. Wait, I want to hear. It is the most valuable lesson that my dad has ever taught me. So I was a kid and I had come up with an idea for a company. I was working on it with my dad and my little brother, and we had come up with branding for it and a name, and started working through the trademark process. It was basically Curious Cardinals on steroids. Like we just thought, "okay, let's just see if we can build a company from scratch." I must have been in middle school at some point, and I went to an event with my dad, and Chris Hughes, one of the founders of Facebook, was speaking at the event. I said to my dad afterwards, I said, I wonder if he would care about my little idea. He would be the right person to talk to about it." And my dad said, "go talk to him." And I was like, look at me. I'm 11, 12 years old? No, I'm not gonna do that." And my dad said, "go. just go and talk to him. The worst he could say is no. But if you don't say anything to him, the answer is already no from the beginning." And so I went up to him. I'm probably like four foot five and tapped on his back 'cause I couldn't reach his shoulders. And I said, "Hey, Chris, I, I'm Antonia. I really loved what you had to say at the event. I have this startup idea, it's in the social media space, and I was wondering if I could have your card." And he said, "of course you can have my card!" And he gave me his business card. I ran back to my dad and I was like, "look at what I got!" I was so excited that I think I still have it. That's when I really learned, if you don't ask the answer's no. So you're setting yourself up for failure. I love that. That's so sweet. I love that your dad did that. You need someone to push you to do it. And I'll say it's very powerful that your dad did that because it is not the most naturally feminine tendency, honestly. I've had women who will respond to me like, are you sure that's not too much? Are you sure you wanna ask that?" Or, I often see the reticence more in women than men I also have a great girl dad who empowers me and pushes me and emboldens me. But it was a female family member who, once I was saying a campaign I was doing and I was asking all these people and she was like, "are you always asking?" I was like, oh my god, I am a founder. And the hard thing is you have to ask. All that you have is your network and the supporters in your ecosystem. And the worst they can do is say no, but hopefully you're doing something of value or it might be worthwhile or interesting to them. And that was a moment where I had to defend, but also acknowledge my insecurity. I'm not still insecure about it, but it is something. If I'm in the room and the person is there, I'm not gonna let myself not ask. As you go through it, sometimes it feels a little less scary, but like, as I was feeling today, as I shared on my Instagram reel, they responded quickly and positively. And I was like, "oh my God!" That never gets old. And I think especially when you're being thoughtful with the ask, it's one thing to ask someone for their time or advice, that's a lot, but if you're inviting someone to be part of something you're building. Or the thing I was asking was for someone to be a judge of our "timeless skills in a AI era" for our summer program. And we're doing a competition that students are gonna pitch to awesome judges. Who doesn't wanna be part of that? Who doesn't wanna hear younger kids pitch? So I think it's also reframing. And I was teaching my current mentee this because she's organizing a learning day and she needs to get a sponsor to fund the day. And she's gonna pitch Curious Cardinals. And I told her, "I'm not gonna be the person 'cause I'm too helpful with her. It's gonna be my tough co-founder, Alec gonna ask what's the ROI?" At first she was excited. And then one session she was a little sheepish. And I was like, "what's wrong? Do you not like it?" And she was like, well, I don't wanna ask too much of you. And I was like, "whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You are gonna do us a favor, you're gonna pitch this for us, that it's gonna be so compelling that we would be stupid not to say yes. That's how you pitch. I don't want you being sorry or apologetic 'cause yeah, I'm not gonna give you the money then, but you are gonna share with me the clear value you're gonna provide and I'm gonna be grateful you presented it with me." And so I think it's that reframe and I think it's especially necessary to teach that reframe in women. I could not agree more. And I love that you shared that because my question to you honestly was going to be, I think everybody has a story about when they learned how to make the bold ask, how they learned that skill. and I think it says a lot about a person, how they've learned it. And speaking of learning, you've led 40 plus workshops for parents to understand how to use AI It's been like a hundred now. Oh my gosh. Okay. Then my data is outdated. You've led over a hundred workshops. I'm like, where has the time gone? How have I done that? That's so much, and I think it's so important, these workshops for parents on how to use AI, how to support your kid in an AI world, how to really take advantage of the tools that are going to shape their entire skillset. It all really boils down to questions 'cause you have to ask the right questions in prompts when you're talking to AI. What are the key elements of asking the right AI prompt questions that really seem to click with parents? I have a few principles I teach them like intro to prompt engineering, though I don't say "prompt engineering" 'cause that always scares everyone. One is the more you know where you wanna go, the better AI will be to help you get there. So you can think of AI like a GPS navigation system. If you wanna go somewhere fun, it might bring you to a bar or a children's amusement park. If you wanna go somewhere fun that's kid friendly, within a 10 mile radius, it's gonna bring you to a much more precise destination. So the more specific you are with the input, the more satisfied you will be with the output. That resonates a lot because I think it feels uncomfortable to people to be that specific and frankly, not everyone's that good at being that specific. Actually the best prompt engineers I find are great managers. They know how to give directions. They know what they want. Most people don't know what they want. And if you have a murky definition of what you want, yeah, AI's not gonna help you get a clearer one. It's probably gonna give you an outcome that you're gonna be frustrated with and maybe give up. And that leads to lesson number two, which is treat AI like your coachable sidekick, not your servant. You have to give it feedback. It's not natural to people to interact with it, and that's how you utilize it to your advantage. And then my lesson number three is AI is not your end-to-end destination. It's one stop in the journey. I like to distill how I use AI into two buckets. Bucket one is idea generation, and bucket two is idea refinement and polishing. I rarely use it end to end, like to generate my idea to polish it. Like to do a post, never do it end to end. I might have an idea, but it's a little bit jumbled or it doesn't sound as succinct and polished as I wanted. But now I have my personal sidekick and what would've taken 30 minutes to edit, takes five minutes to edit it. Or I'm an ideas gal, so I'm barely in bucket two, but let's say I am like having writer's block or I don't know where to start, I use AI to get me off the ground. But I'm not gonna have it bring me end-to-end execution. I'll run with it and take it from there. I was working with one of our mentors, this amazing, brilliant Harvard student who was interning for us, and she saw how AI positive we all were, and she gave me a deliverable and I told her, this is a sloppy use of AI. I should not be able to know you used AI. It's like it's how the sausage is made. I don't really care how you used it, but I should not be able to tell in the output that you used it. And this is like you gave it one prompt, put it on a Google Doc and gave it to me. We hired you because you are very smart and you are thoughtful, and you were a critical thinker not to prompt something I could have prompt on my own." I'm very honest. Feedback is my love language. I tell it to people the way it is. and that's something that I think a lot of people misunderstand with AI too, is they think it's like lower quality of work or we're gonna all sound like robots. No. If you know how to use it thoughtfully, you should not be able to tell that you used it on the other side. I think it's great that you're teaching this to parents, especially, I mean, kids are gonna learn this and they're gonna pick it up at school, but they're also really gonna need that guidance from their parents. And parents are the ones who are really scared and uncertain about what AI is gonna do for their kids and their kids' education in particular. Speaking of parents, I feel like parents nowadays either think that their kids are really struggling or are in denial and think that their kids walk on water, that they're the smartest, most capable kids ever. How do you straddle the two at Curious Cardinals, and do you actively do anything to adjust parents' perceptions of their children to be more fair? That's a very thoughtful, interesting question that I'm gonna grapple with beyond this podcast interview. I love the questions that we ask in the consultation call. We ask questions like, what's your child's personality? Of course. What are their interests? What do they like to do in their free time when no one's telling them what to do? What's their greatest superpower? I love asking parents that because even the parent who's like, my kid is a little shit," which we've heard before, has something to say. Maybe it's how funny they are or how they know how to get what they want, whether it's their parents or their friends, they're like a great salesman. And then we ask what are the greatest areas for growth? And I think that what we try to do in the consultation call with the many other questions we ask is we try to understand their kid holistically. They might be coming to us for something very narrow like math help, because they want an A on Friday's test. And we try to understand so what environments does your child thrive in? If they don't thrive in the math classroom, where do they thrive? Oh, they thrive in the soccer field. Why? What does that say about them? And so I would say taking a holistic stance to understanding their child allows us to reorient. Whether someone's a little too flowery and flattering, or someone's a little too hard on their kid, usually everyone has something to grow in, and everyone has something that's a superpower, and it's about helping them understand there's a pathway forward for their kid. That opens up so much more compassion for the child because in fairness, growing up right now sucks. I, I would be terrified, quite honestly to be a kid in 2025. I think there's so much pressure. There was pressure on us too growing up, by the way, and it only seems like that pressure has grown. And you've talked about how you elected not to take computer science in high school because you were afraid of getting a bad grade, which then even back a couple of years ago, meant that your chances of getting into a top college were limited. Because there's so much pressure on kids to perform because the cost of failure is so high, can you speak more about how the fear of failure can stunt kids' curiosity? It's such a beautiful, important question. The fear of failure does stunt kids' curiosity because they don't wanna try things that they don't know they're gonna be great at. And how many things do we know that we're gonna be great at? There's a lot of things that we're great at now, and when we tried them, we were terrible. It's embarrassing or cringeworthy looking back at the first draft or the first blog post or whatever it might have been. And I did say that, I said that in high school I didn't take computer science, not because I wasn't interested, but because I thought get a bad grade and it would tarnish my chances of getting into Stanford, which is such a terrible reason not to try something. But there wasn't a space to try that that felt safe. Whether that's peer pressure, like you're joining a club and you don't wanna show up in front of your friends or joining a sports team in a way that's not your most flattering self, or that's a grade on your transcript that just feels so permanent. It's hard to find spaces to fail, and you need to learn to fail because life is not an upward trajectory. There's gonna be adversity and bumps along the way, and that doesn't matter. It's not how many times you fall, it's how many times you get up. That's what makes the most successful people is resilience. And where did I learn that? I think I learned that through sports. I was a serious runner. Learning that I wasn't always gonna be better and better. Specifically in seventh grade, I was like the best mile runner in New York. And then I stress fractured both my shins. I went through puberty and I didn't beat my seventh grade time til like 10th grade and I still showed up, took myself super seriously, was like, "I'm gonna run in college." But that was really demoralizing, to feel like, oh my God, I'm not better than my seventh grade self. I honestly think that was the best preparation for entrepreneurship I could have asked for because you're not always gonna be upward trajectory hockey stick. That's just not life. And you need to learn to keep showing up if you believe in the pursuit that you're driving towards. If you're like, this is the thing I wanna do, or you really believe this needs to exist in the world, and there's not many spaces for that. I think debate also helped. You're not gonna win every debate round, but you got a next round to show up for in 30 minutes, quit pouting and get to it. And I, think that there's not many spaces for feedback loops in school. You have an essay that's due in two weeks and then you get a grade two weeks later and it feels so grave. You need to give kids chances, just shots at bat because that's what life is all about. Without that, there's not even a space to be curious because it feels like the downside of failure is so costly that it's not even worth the upside of what could come out of it. That's such a shame. That's something that's so broken in our education system, and that's definitely something we're facilitating for kids at Curious Cardinals, like this is a safe space where they can fail. Frankly, they can try something they don't even like. No one's gonna know. It doesn't matter. Honestly, I'd say it's a positive data point because now when you say, I don't know what I want, but I know I don't like blank, blank, and blank. Great. You have three things you know you don't like. That's a start. That's somewhere that's better off than you came, not knowing anything. We need to make sure that. If things are graded, there's space for improvement. When you give comments on an essay, I don't know if you remember this, like every kid would just go to the back of the essay and see what their grade was. No one was reading through the teacher comments, and that's such a shame. You need to give kids a chance to implement the teacher's comments and show I can be a better version of myself, or this is not so permanent, that the outcome is so costly that I feel this crippling anxiety to not be picture perfect. I love that message and it's a great place to start to wind this down. And so I'm gonna ask you a question that I ask everybody that I have on this podcast, which is, what is one question that you like to work into a conversation, whether it's at work or in a social setting that really helps you get to know someone? So many questions. I'm definitely that person too, where people are like, whoa, like lots of questions. Like, thought we were just talking about the news. Rattle them off. What's what's your greatest source of motivation? What have you learned about yourself recently? What do you like to do in your free time when no one tells you what to do? What type of content do you like to consume and why? What's something that's inspired you recently? Who's someone who you've learned the most from and what have you learned from them? I like what's your greatest source of motivation? I love them all. Audrey, this has been so, so, so fun. Thank you for coming on the podcast and for chatting with me. You're such a great friend and I really look up to you. I think what you're doing is amazing. So anytime I get to chat with you, I learn a lot. So I always learn from you. Thank you. I feel the same way. Thank you for being an amazing friend and supporter and love your podcast. So I'm honored to be on and thank you for all your thoughtful questions. I always learn from your questions especially. Audrey left us with so many questions, that whole string at the end. Mm. I absolutely loved it. I decided for this segment to pick the one that I asked you to pause the episode for midway through, and if you don't remember, the question was, Who is someone in your life that you always learn something from? I got a chance to go to this fantastic event hosted by Stanford in New York, and part of the event was a live recording of the Future of Everything podcast. If you hadn't heard of it, the podcast is awesome. Everyone should go check it out if you wanna hear from thought leaders across Stanford University. And it's hosted by Professor Russ Altman. During the networking portion of this event, I kind of cornered Professor Altman and he was nice enough to chat with me and let me ask a million questions about podcast production, interviewing, research, everything. And in telling him about QuestionAble Strategy, I mentioned how I always ask my guests for a question which I go out and try for myself in the wild, And that's when I asked him, someone in academia who teaches others for a living, who is someone in your life that you always learn something from? And I found his response to be very earnest. He immediately had an answer and he told me about his friend, this professor of biochemistry at UCSF, and he said that every time they get together, his friend has some new discovery or interest to share, and he speaks so energetically and excitedly about his work and the world. And he could just listen to him talk all day. I thought that this was a really sweet answer and almost accidentally the perfect person to ask this question to. Professors are always teaching others, so it's fascinating to flip the script on them a little and ask them who they learn from. Even teachers are constantly learning. We might forget that. So, like I said, I didn't really do this on purpose, but I guess this whole interaction was pretty appropriate for this episode about peer mentorship. This has been an episode of QuestionAble Strategy. I'm your host, Antonia Hellman, and if you like what you just heard, go back. We've got some great episodes already up with practical tips that you can apply to asking questions in your everyday life. And in fact, here's a question that you can go and ask your friends: Have you listened to QuestionAble Strategy?" And if their answer is no, just send them the link. And while you're at it, follow subscribe, leave a review. It all helps. Let me know what you're interested in hearing about and who you're interested in hearing from. Where there's a will, there's a way, and we can get them on the podcast. Till then I'm Antonia Hellman, and I will see you next time.
