How a Teacher Helped 12,000 Kids Build Businesses

you had to fit into a society that wasn't really designed for you.

“How many boys do you think are in this world right now?”

Being told, sit down, be quiet, pay attention, sit on your hands if you can't keep them to yourself. So, kids are this beautiful eye-opening to the world of the adults that they have around them. So, I had developed a thing,

a system that worked for me by having students run businesses that fueled my creative mind and my entrepreneurial mindset by assisting 12,000 kids to start businesses. And Veronica Salzbury is a strategic sales leader, business education pioneer, and service-driven entrepreneur

with over two decades of experience helping individuals and organizations achieve sustainable growth through sales, leadership, and business development. It quickly became my mechanism to actually connect with kids, right? And identify how to support them in their growth

and within two weeks, three weeks of them being in the classroom, I understood the negative thoughts that they constantly had in their head. All without a conversation of, hey, how would it, what's home, like, for you? [MUSIC PLAYING] It spans the globe, like a super high school, internet Elvis.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone. It's not over, I'm telling how we're--

I'm living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Living Your Legacy Podcast. I'm your host for today, Jason Tyler. And I am here with Veronica Piper, Salisbury.

I want to make sure I got that correct. You got that correct. You can do Piper is just fine. Piper is just fine. All right.

Here. Pleasure having you on the road. Pleasure having you on the road. Let's do it. Let's do it.

Let's do it. Come on. Oh, whoa. You took that further than that. I was going to--

And then we go into this. Ready? One, two, three, four. I took the clip of what touch? Yeah.

That's it. Now you can play. OK. All right. All right.

You're going to be here for a while. You see what you guys are on thumbs? You know what? But I see the competitive nature. Also, I see the Blazers jersey.

So let's talk about that. Well, man, come on. I had to represent both. Oh, we got to represent Shai Town. Shai Town.

I'm born 93. So my parents-- Oh, you got some-- My parents are die hard MJ fans. But I grew up as a LeBron guy, obviously.

You know, no one says the real name that needs recognition. Scotty Pippin. Scotty Pippin. Because does MJ have six rings without Scotty Pippin?

Absolutely not. I don't think so either. Wait a minute. But wait. All right.

Let's say, for example, he doesn't get Scotty, right? But he does have the rest of the team-- exact same team construction, no Scotty. Yeah. Pick another power forward from that arrow.

Let's say-- I'm not going to have one that you can compete. I don't think so. You didn't do all aspects of the game. I don't think so.

Because you're not going to have that all-rounder. The all-rounder. Next to MJ to be able to pull--

“you know how much defense you have to pull away”

from MJ for him to get his shot up? Yeah. Well, I mean, come on. He's going to get it anyway. He's going to get it anyway.

But like, all right, imagine this. Who are the power forwards of that arrow? I'm thinking-- Lizaia, but he was my viewpoint. He could be a versatile.

He was more of the playing the three-- But couldn't-- Clyde was kind of on his way out, though, or on his own. He was still making an impact. I'm thinking more like the Charles Barclay--

I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding was good, but it was not. But it doesn't feel the same. Choose the style he feels, right? He had a specialty, didn't he?

Yep. Hot headed. Very much. But then he plays kind of the enforceor role, too, right? Where he's going to be in the pain.

He's going to make you have to make quick decisions. And then if you have to make that quick decision and pull a defender out of the pain, guess what's coming? Turn it into the window. Jordan gets through the window, and now he's--

“Why does it look like he's coming from the rafters?”

You know what I mean? Wait, that's face show. Yes. Well, I mean, we could talk ball all day, all day and night, and for you guys that are watching this show,

you already know I can talk basketball until the wheels fall off. But I want to talk a little bit about, you know,

this is the audience's first chance

getting to know you Veronica. So give me a little bit of your story. How do I get to the Veronica that's sitting across me today? Well, you just get here. You're here.

You're here. You just show up. Just show up. And here we are. Yeah, we just start chatting.

All right, so you got Chicago here. You got Portland here. Where'd you grow up? So I grew up in a small town out of Portland, and the top of a beautiful hill called Eola Hills.

You might know what if you drink wine. It's wine country, but I grew up on 500 acre cherry farm.

Three wheelers when I was young, working, showing horses.

“Got you, got you, and where does basketball find its way into the picture?”

So unfortunately, we moved off that farm when I was 12. And I'm telling Kofi that sixth grade was the year. And that's a transformational age for kids. And I had had to leave behind horses and security and safety and migrant workers and everything that I had known.

Since I was two, I moved there when I was two. And the choices that adults make impacts kids greater than we anticipate for. Or that we think about, or that we maybe not desire a care about. But many kids don't get choices, right? Things happen to kids, adults make choices.

And they have impact and losing my horses. I mean, if my family members couldn't find me, I was asleep in the barn on my horses belly, and all hours, I was writing bareback, falling asleep just on my horses. But, you know, I mean, I had that connection to the spirit animal

that I associate closest with. And for that to disappear just one day, not for any choice of my own, it's really, I'm going to use a word traumatic, because it was. Yeah, I know, that's the security for me. And identity.

I mean, I showed I have lots of blue ribbons. It gave me a sense of purpose and control and community. And a world in which I needed that, that avenue and that outlet. And then when that went away, and I moved into town, and my financial security was at risk.

And my, you know, my emotional security was at risk. And again, all of these things are not choices that kids make. And I was fine. I mean, we had housing, we had food. Many kids don't have that privilege or that luxury all the time.

But it was a shock for me, you know? There's an emotional weight. There's a huge emotional weight to the places that adults make. And I tried out for cheerleading. Mmm.

Everybody's always called me hyperpiper.

Gosh, I don't know where that comes from. Who knows? Who knows? Six great, I decide, you know, I don't have horses. I need to do something.

I don't like to be home. I don't like to sit still. Like if I can sit through this 20 minutes, you have one something that is very hard for me to do. So we'll see what happens here.

And we shall see, we already started off with fun wrestling. So I don't know. I don't know. Just to keep me sitting. Just to keep it going.

Yeah. So I decided I was going to try out for cheerleading. All my friends were trying out for cheerleading. You know, I didn't play soccer. Like most little kids are town day and have soccer.

I grew up in a town of 2000 total people. Mmm. Um, graduated with 42. I put on my reunions at my high school. Yeah, they're killer.

I do a really good job with event planning. All right.

“I mean, but is there a vertical for a business off?”

Right. There's a plant planning is so saturated. Uh, here's the thing. Event planning is very saturated, but not with good event plans. True, true.

How have you been to an event where you're like, come on. Come on. I went to March, Madison, saw Coach Case final game on the school's dollar because I teach sports marketing and got behind the scenes, and that was really cool. But I'm not going to say it on live.

But I didn't like that Coach K. didn't shake the other coach's hand because there's kids watching across the globe that I idolize that man anyway. Um, so, uh, yeah, tried out for cheerleading. They needed eight, eight tried out. Hmm.

They went with seven. That's interesting. I got cut. Woo. I got great.

Niners. Share. I just bought season tickets to the Niners, but I do love the Niners. Uh, I have a great cheer for the Niners. Hmm.

And it may be all end with joy. We have to end on that. We have to end on that. Um, the reasoning was no rhythm. Hmm.

I have no rhythm. I think I dance like J.Lo. Shakira. I don't. To the feet.

Uh, no. No.

“I don't think to the, uh, just, uh, the, I think I'm tall and voluptuous.”

Hmm. I was probably 60 pounds in a rail, you know, that how I see myself is not how the outside world sees me. God. Okay.

A lot of metaphors here aren't. Um, um, so then I took up volleyball and basketball and had a lot of success being a support role for my, uh, peers that played year round and had opportunity to play club ball.

And so I, you know, played varsity, my freshman year scored my first points off a baseline

jumper. Hardest shot in basketball. Hmm. Hardest shot in basketball is the baseline three. Hmm.

What are you going to say it is? It's the statistically is. Yes. Thank you. I'll play for myself.

I don't mind a baseline three. I'm not going to be fine. Mine wasn't a three. I was like, feel like it for the shooter, right, like put yourself in the position

for your shot, I feel like because I don't have to think about the right, like if I'm

“shooting on, if, if I'm shooting on this side, if I don't have to think about that side,”

I just have to make sure I don't veer to this side. Right. I'm going to get a straight arc. Right. Come on for me on the base.

I don't have to go. There's no defender. Yeah. If anything, if there's not a defender in my face, yeah, kind of a clear shot. Your lights out.

Well, let me tell you. I was a shooter. I was not a shooter. I'm not a shooter. I was all.

I thought I was, I was, when I was playing ball, I thought I was a second cub of Ray Allen,

like, I thought I was him from three. That was not the case. Not correct. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I got to watch Steph Curry become what he became, and obviously, like, I'm a huge LeBron guy. I think he's the greatest of all time. What we're witnessing him do right now? Have you seen the stats side by side?

Yes. Okay. He's, he's, top five and damn near every guy. Top five. Yeah.

Damn near every category. Top one. And what's got to grow, though? Point scored. Are you sure about that?

He's got the most points. On average per game. Point's per game. All right. Now we're going to see now you're nitpicking.

Point's per game is a different thing. But I understand, I understand where we come from. Right. Right. But even still, you got, you just watch a 41 year old career veteran who has played

at the highest level is playing some of the best basketball of his career right now. And he's just threw a lob to his son. Yeah, pretty cool.

That's an incredible way.

Have you ever played old man? Old men? Have you ever played against men? And then they can do a hook shot? Old man's right?

No, just or a hook shot. Oh, yeah. How do you defend the hook shot? You don't? No.

You double up. It's actually very surprising to me that Joker doesn't have one. Right. Because I feel like a factor between him or Wendy. Right.

I feel like that's easy pick and it's right there. Who's going to a Wendy hook shot? What do you do? Nothing. Nothing.

Nothing. You give up. And you say nice job. Congratulations. You figured out basketball.

You won. All right. Thank you going. I went back to my high school and played in an alumni game and we were doing really well.

And then we got the old men and I was like, oh, shit. We're in our 20s. Then boys in my class that we won state, girls and boys for three years consecutively could not defend the 70 year old men with a hook shot. With any of their technique in their fundamentals because, you know, basketball has gotten

a little more sloppy. It's different. So yeah, it was really eye-opening because I was like, oh, we got this. Now they were tired. But you know what they did?

How much of those shots went off the glass? A lot. They love the glass. Oh man.

I always noticed that in time I played, like, if I play pick up in the gym, yeah.

Anytime there's an old down screen, first of all, when they play defense, they are a brick wall. They are. They get a wall. Do you know why?

You tell me. They get their feet there before you do.

“So they are fundamentally sound and they know they can't do this, right?”

They got to get their feet there. So as an offensive player, if you're reading and reacting, you're not going to go through a trunk. You'll go through limbs, right? Think about if you're riding a horse through a forest, right?

You see a tree straight ahead of you. You're going to veer your horse or the horse is naturally going to veer to the right or the left to go through and duck the limbs. You're not going to run straight through the trunk. So if you can get your feet there and your body in front of where that person is going to go,

you're done. You've cut off their lane. Very good. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Now, for you guys the audience, you obviously now know that Veronica is very well-versed and basketball. Yes. Piper, though.

Veronica didn't exist in high school as Piper. It was Piper is very well-versed, basketball. Now, you went on to become coach, teacher, work in sports marketing, talked to me a little bit about what is a day-to-day look like for you now in the present. Like, as in today, I woke up in Miami.

That'll make me feel forward for the first time and it feels like so weird. The environment coming out, coming in, especially to film, what is it? What's the feeling like? Yeah, yeah.

“Gosh, Miami, could you get more beautiful people around?”

I don't know. I mean, I'm bored and raised. I've traveled the globe, right? The only place I haven't really been is Africa. I can't wait.

I would love to do the peace walk in Egypt. And I can find beautiful people everywhere. I mean, people to me are beautiful on the inside as well as the outside, obviously. But gosh, everywhere you look and does everybody just exercise all day? Yes.

How do you afford to live here? I don't know. Okay. Well, you're not giving me any answers. I don't have, I've lived here for 30 years.

I don't know how everyone is so fit.

Yeah. I mean, I go to gym five days a week. Yeah. I don't miss it. Like, I can't miss going to the gym because it's a place.

“Is that for your mind or for to fit in from society's perspective of what you should”

look like? For my mental. For a because my cousin was my personal trainer, he passed away in a plane accident. When he passed away, I made the decision like, hey, I'm not going to miss anymore because Kyle wouldn't want that.

So I just go consistently. And so every day I feel like not going, I'm just like, today's not today. Right. Don't accept it. So you're not Kobe's neck.

You're not Kobe's cousin. No. OK. Shout out to Mama mentality though. I do have his book series.

Have you read it? I have not. The Wison Arts series. I got those as a gift from Victor Aladipo, shout out my boy, Vic. Yeah.

And incredible.

“It's like, I think I want you to think like Harry Potter meets like Mama mentality.”

Like it's a fictional series, but filled with like Kobe's isms, you know what I mean? I think that makes him makes Kobe been. Right. Right. Love the series.

How do you recommend it to you guys? I think it's a trilogy. I have to move them. OK. But talk to me a little bit about just, you know, your background with sports marketing.

Yeah. So being a coach and having the privilege of having amazing coaches in my life that taught me that manner good, most of the time in a world where I was questioning that, right? And experiences that made me question that to a very, very strong survival core instinct. My basketball coaches were phenomenal men and guided me through some of my most traumatic

times. And then I got into education, not necessarily as a primary career choice, but because I was

a young mother and have always been told early on, I needed to work with kids and I needed

to coach and I needed to be an elementary school teacher. So I went to my first college class in elementary education learning how to teach kids math and it didn't make sense to me because my math brain, I have a photographic memory. I learned through interpersonal communication. So if I ever have a problem, I'm going to talk out loud, even if nobody's around, I'm

a staff meeting with myself. Inter-staff meeting. Inter-staff meeting. Well, verbally, I'm loud. I can't do it internally.

It has to be externally. I have to speak it. And I can usually traditionally solve any problem that's in front of me, that I don't quickly have the answer to. I am a very fast processor, people tell me all the time, I speak too quickly, I don't even,

I feel like I'm slow. I feel like I'm slow. I don't find it. I don't find it. And I have my whole job as a student.

It's still the same.

“That's why I have to train your muscle of your brain.”

The average person can take in 10,000 words by listening. So I don't talk to you fast. I'm not 10,000 words a minute. No. No.

However, what our brain does is we fill it with all this nonsense, right? We fill it with trying to make sense of the world around us, trying to pass judgment, trying to make predictions, trying to defend what they're saying or come up with our version of what we want it to be, or mean, or say, instead of listening for intent. And you clearly listen with intent, because that's your career.

Yep. So kudos to you and whoever taught you that, I was raised by a psychologist, so that will do it. And you also don't really interrupt. I try not to, but have you ever experienced a relationship or a communication or a conversation

where it's actually boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and you can and it's healthy. Yeah. Because you want to get to that. Oh, let's figure this out, right? And still, like, I think for me specifically, like, I, like, I guess this is just a feedback

loop that works for my brain, but I like a back and forth that feels, like, natural. But also, I like to just take, I don't like to just bulldoze into the next thing. I'm going to say, I want to give myself a little time to think about it. So like, even as the person I'm speaking to is speaking, I'm taking time to kind of like process what they're saying, kind of come up with what's going on, what's going to come

next, but breathe into it. I used to do this thing a lot where I wouldn't erupt and I would just blur it out whatever

the first thing was off the top of my mind and it got me into a lot of trouble.

And so I had to work through understanding conversation, because I have like crazy ADHD brain. That's beautiful. It's not crazy. It's beautiful.

I think it, well, it works well. It works very well for me now, but when you're young and you don't understand it and you don't know what, like everybody else around me is able to process things in this way and I can't, that you start to create a thought process in yourself and like, oh, I'm broken.

Right. Or I don't fit into society or I'm new sense when I'm not intending to be right. So now you're hitting really onto something that I'm super passionate about as being an educator.

are you repeating the words in your mind?

No. Okay.

“So that's what I do when I try not to interrupt.”

Like when you were just talking, I was repeating everything that you were saying, right? And you set a couple of things. Feedback loop is such a beautiful thing when you're open to it, being raised by a psychologist, change your brain or the on, right? The negative, the small little negative things about having a brain that processes in a beautiful

way when put into an environment that needs to, let's just say, keep you in a box, sit down and be quiet, listen to the teacher. Right. Education was probably a struggle for you, but you learned how to play the game. Yeah.

Yeah. I learned how to mask. You did, right?

And it limited you to some extent.

And I'm short early on. You probably got in trouble a lot for talking or getting up or not sitting still or fidgeting. Class clown was class clown, right? Yeah. A lot of jokes.

Right. And so you learned to survive that way and you learned how that can benefit you at times. But you learned time and place, right? And instead of education actually fitting you, you had to fit into a society that wasn't really designed for you.

“How many boys do you think are in this world right now?”

Being told, sit down, be quiet, pay attention, sit down, be quiet, pay attention, stop touching that, stop doing that, stop doing that, stop doing that, sit on your hands if you can't keep them to yourself. Well, there's a funny thing there, right, where we as adults, this goes to, I think more to parenting than maybe the educational system, but I think they play ahead in hand, like

but one hand washes the other, where parenting, right? We tried to emotion, like we're giving commands to a brain that is not fully developed and expecting that brain that is not fully developed to emotionally regulate itself, where we can't even emotionally regulate ourselves to communicate effectively with this younger child. And then the systems that we create around education kind of function in that similar way,

where we're kind of expecting you to have the emotional regulation of an adult and be able to sit still, listen, be intent, study well, all of these different things. And there's not a lot of room for error there, or room for kids to be kids. And I think there's a different way, and to your credit, I want to just say like even in your ability to read me and say like this is probably what your experience was, I can

tell that you're a fantastic teacher. You remind me a lot of the teachers that I resonated with when I was a kid. But yeah, I think in the schooling system, there's a lot of different ways that we can start to look at, all right, these are kids we're talking about here. You know what I mean?

Yeah, and their kids that are having soda for breakfast, and their kids that are pumped full of lucky charms, and lunchables, and lunchables. Shout out to the, I love the lunchables. Not to kids, don't shout that out, but you can regulate and you can have once a month. Hey, you know, I'm not perfect.

I like a good, no one is. When I used to go, when I used to go, but especially when I used to play, when I used to go on field trips, or when I used to play, I played it for, I played travel basketball for a little while, and when I, when we used to go to like tournaments and stuff like that, I was so excited to get on that bus, and figure out who got what lunchable, all right,

you got ham and cheese, that's garbage, you, you go to the back of the bus, who left the pizza one, all right, I got a burger, right, what, what are we doing here, right, a cold burger is what you got, a cold, but I don't care, it was still good, but garbage food, right, garbage food, not nutrition, it was actually the experience you were connecting with, and not necessarily the food, right?

I was learning how to barter in real time. You were learning to be an entrepreneur in your early age, yeah, and all these kids have these skill sets, right, all these kids, so the education system to me is something that we could set and talk probably longer than basketball, but I did develop work-based learning program in the state of Oregon, and was so fortunate to have administrators and community

that supported my vision, and I came from the corporate world, I worked for the gap, and I sold suture to surgeons for a while, and then I got my real estate license, but I was a young mom, so when you get your real estate license, what I didn't realize until I passed

the exam, first try by the way, ask me how many square feet are in a mile, I'm actually

don't, because I think I might be all the best. I don't know the answer, so I can't, I can't fact check you in real time. Yeah, but our audience can't, well, anyway, guys, forget about that. That was like 20 or something years ago, right? I didn't realize that when you get your real estate license, it comes with a fee, so before

“you can actually start selling homes, you have to actually pay a desk fee, and there's”

a lot of upfront money, and so when you're single, you know, a young mom with one income

really get health insurance, so, you know, those little voices that we hear positive and negative that are constantly filling our brain, trying to help us decide who we are and how

“we fit in the society, it kept going back to, you should be a teacher, you should be”

a teacher, although that first class I took at the first college I went to was teaching kids math that didn't make sense to my brain. I don't learn math the way they wanted me to teach it, so I learned math through experience. I learned math through, I learned to speak Spanish when I worked with the migrant workers that picked our cherries, and I learned how to count buckets of cherries, and that's how

I did quick math, and I could look at, you know, Jose's the lot, he was the best picker

that came year after year after year, and brought his team of people, and he always had

the most buckets, that man had it down to a science, and then you people that are watching this don't think that's a skill that's more important than most skills that we value here, I mean, that man could pick a cherry tree on the highest ladder, on the highest wrong as a ladder, faster and more efficiently than anybody I've ever seen in my life, right? And that's a skill set, I mean he could understand science, math, physics, physics,

problems all the time. But what's the bio, can you see as, can you see as you know, thank you, brilliant, his multiple intelligent was off the charts, right? So I learned really quickly how to take the world in around me and how to make it work for me, I've made mistakes just like you, obviously, but I decided to get my masters

in education, I already had my undergrad in business administration in HR, and I started

out also wanting to study Spanish, and then I had to read my first novel, Dear God, have

you ever tried to read a novel in Spanish? New. I learned Spanish similarly to you, my first job was as a mechanic, and I worked as a mechanic on Kaya Ocho, and none of the mechanics in my shop knew how to speak any English, so I had to just kind of adapt in that environment, and then I, oh, yeah, pretty much, I'm gonna be

like, I say, you meet up, and I just kind of figured out, but I only know how to speak mechanics, maybe I should get this right. And then I didn't really really carry that forward. I'm very conversationaly, like I can understand a lot of Spanish, but I'll conversationaly challenged, right?

Or read a novel. But read a novel. And I'm gonna automatically challenge as my, as I can talk to you about it, and we talk basketball. We can talk entrepreneurship, we can talk marketing, we do all that, but ask me to actually

proofread or proofread an essay for you, I'm gonna add a comma every three words, just add that comma. Oh, you're gonna pass, add a comma, who cares how it's spelled? I know what you're trying to say.

“So that's how I am also, but I was lucky enough to go live in Mexico and Kwernavaca”

between my sophomore and junior year of high school, and living there, I mean, the

first few nights just crying myself to sleep, not because I was scared, or lonely, or home

sick, or I had a bad host family, exhausted. And then everyone said, the second, you dream in Spanish, you will no longer be exhausted, and I can remember the night that I fell asleep, and I woke up, and I was like, yes, are you me there? I've my brain was now, no longer hearing the word, Belonco, and thinking white, Belonco

was Belonco. Belonco was white, right? So you do this thing when you're learning another language, where you translate it before you, it processes, and as soon as you actually stop that translation process, now you've become bilingual, or by, you write, so what were you talking about?

So anyway, I started teaching, developed work-based learning, took what I had learned in the private sector, and I'm just about training and development and hiring, and coaching young people to have careers and transfer it into a classroom environment and high school setting. So by the time I was two years in, three years in, we were running businesses out of my classroom and students were then developing their own business plans, and they were giving themselves

their own grades, and they were evaluating themselves on performance rubrics that they had created. And, you know, it's really interesting, you can tell a lot about family dynamics and parenting when you tell a kid for the first time. Okay, here's your rubric that you created at the beginning of this semester that was going to tell you what grade you earned, now evaluate yourself and tell me overall, are you proficient

in what your job was, are you exceeding, or do you need improvement in areas, are you still developing, and kids that come from very accepting homes where they're validated, they're accepted, they're acknowledged, will actually score themselves very accurately, kids that are seeking approval, or maybe a little neglected, to actually value themselves and score themselves slightly lower than, you know.

I almost thought it would be the opposite, but I don't want you to have perfectionist mentality

“parents that are constantly on them, right, you need to do this helicopter parents, right,”

you have to be better than your best friend, you have to be better than everyone else around you, individualistic mentality, you have to be the best, score themselves way higher than

It's not even I'm trying to get one over, it's actually their fear mechanism kicking in

because if I don't score a perfect negative consequences are coming on the heel of that. Yeah, and actually those kids in, you know, neglect or abuse, and they score themselves

“a little bit lower, they have such negative self-esteem because it's their fault, right?”

So kids are this beautiful eye-opening to the world of the adults that they have around them, and it quickly became my mechanism to actually connect with kids, right? And identify how to support them in their growth, and within two weeks, three weeks of them being in the classroom, I understood their motivational strategy, intrinsic versus extrinsic. I understood how to work with them to fill those holes in their thinking.

I understood the negative thoughts that they constantly had in their head. All without a conversation of, hey, how would it, what's home like for you, right?

I never had to ask that. I got it with a very quick little exercise, and a couple of that

with learning kids' learning profiles, what multiple intelligence, are they growth mindset, are they bright-brain, left-brain, in the middle, you know, how do they learn best? So would do exercises about, you know, I'd learn through talking, you probably learn through doing and listening. I definitely, through doing, I do a lot, like, I think in anything that I'm trying to do, my best thing to do is just observe someone that is already, like,

I observe, and then do. And then reiterate. So visual. Yeah. So, you know, there's eight different prevent, not proven. I mean, everything's a theory, right? That's eight different. The gurus of learning multiple intelligence say there's eight of them. Right. You know, I can't, I would have to work really, really hard to play an instrument during COVID when I was teaching. We all had to do something new. My classes all had to

do something new. And so I said, I'm going to teach myself guitar. So I called my, I dated a boy at a San Diego that was a, he was a star of a band, he, you know, bass player, lead vocals, songwriter. I called him. I said, all right, Steven, here's my challenge for my one student, Kevin and I are going to compete and we're going to both practice guitar. And at the end of this semester, we're going to have a show off, right? And the class is going to vote. Who's the best guitarist?

And I said, so I'm going to do Tesla love song. Have you heard Tesla love song? No. He starts dying. He's like, why don't you start with smoke on the water? And it was like, why? He's like, Tesla love song is one of the hardest guitar songs to play. It's like an eight minute guitar

“solo. I love it. You should listen to it. It's beautiful. That's like trying to graduate immediately”

to like, that's the origin when you didn't have any even taken. Well, I took a little bit of, I took a little bit of guitar in high school and like, you start the class off with like, you know, just learning classical guitar and regular like learning the read tablature. And then you graduate by the end of the class, you're doing like blues progressions and learning how to do solos and stuff. That's like trying to go straight into blues progression because the blues is like, where you

really start to cut the teeth on the guitar. Yes, it's like a couple strings, right? So I learned ba ba ba ba ba ba ABC. I lost just so you know. I gave it a good college try. But Kevin killed me because he wasn't teaching every other class, right? Or traveling. I mean, I taught from all over the world during COVID because I could flights were dirt cheap, which is great. And that experience opened my eyes to the fact that I don't like to be solid Terry. I want to be all over the globe.

“And yeah, I had been keeping myself in this box, right? Because I thought that's what I was supposed”

to do. That's how I was supposed to live. I had to have health insurance. I had to contribute to my retirement. I had to go into the classroom every single day. I was a factory worker, right? Like most educators. They clock in and they clock out and they get their half an hour lunch and they, you know, you're by the, they're by the clock constantly. So I had developed a thing, a system that worked for me by having students run businesses. It fueled my creative mind and my entrepreneurial

mindset by assisting 12,000 kids to start businesses. And I got to speak, you know, at conferences, about work-based learning and all the while, my home life wasn't great. So I took up coaching and at one point in time, I was coaching five teams all in the same season. And I had a newborn in a two-year-old and they were with me non-stop. I was pretty much a single mom of four. My older

kids, my son, is an amazing lacrosse player. So he was on club lacrosse. So we were traveling everywhere

for him. My daughter was in her elementary school years and she was one of the teams like Coach. I also coached my son and basketball, but I started my own non-profit club team. So kids, you know, you had the privilege to be able to travel. It's about $10,000 in Oregon for a kid

Tournament of Champions in Chicago a few times. Oh, nice. And the kids fundraised every, every single cent. That's a, that's such a great tournament. Yeah. And they fundraised it all. We got our butts kicked. Yeah. Oh, yeah, it was baseball. It's not West Coast. No, that's the highest, that's the highest level, especially like for most kids. Yeah. If you make it to, if you make it to that Nike Tournament, you're like, all right. Yeah, we made it. We might be McDonald's all married. Right. Right.

I mean, even if you lose like 102 to five, which we did, it was very humbling. But the kids worked for every cent of it. You know, they fundraised the whole thing. I put on fundraisers. So they could earn money. They had to go door to door. They had to collect cans. We did a bottle drive. You know, I mean, just the difference for allowing people with less to have the same opportunity

has always been something that's super important to me. So coaching basketball, I got to coach

Alia Goodman. Oh, Emily Benjamba. We meet, we beat Cameron Brink. Oh, my god. No way.

“Well, that's how it's a team. Oh. But my girls at one given time, they were eighth graders. We won”

state, by the way. But so they were just a bunch of farm girls from a small rural town and Erica Evans. I let her take the reins at the end of the game to win to win this tournament. And we could, they could move in and out of defenses. And they're all numbered in the middle of a play. They could go from a full court press with a drop on the sides, fall back into a half court play on the line, man to man to the gap to a diamond and one to a box and one to a three on two

press high to a one three one to a, I mean, it two one two. And they were all numbered and a team could not figure out what do you think where are they going to run next? And because you're flowing through your play, like that's what they would that's actually say. Well, move it. I mean, they were so dialed in that's so efficient to so fun to watch. And then one of the last tournaments, she's this beautiful basketball mind. She now coaches by the way. And she let me sit on the bench this last season

with her, which was really cute because I don't coach anymore after COVID. But I went to watch her coach and she didn't know as coming and my whole thing is hands up on defense, right? Because you're 5,000 times bigger when your hands are up. Absolutely. Yeah. So if opening play hands up on defense, when the tip hands up on defense score off the tip, hands up on defense, going to do a full court press, right? In a man to man or a one to one or right, whatever. Or a three to or whatever.

Yeah, or a three to or a one, three one or whatever we're running to fit the needs of the other team,

right? And then it's always first thing out of my mouth is hands up on defense. And so I walked

into the gym, and she didn't know I was coming. And I just sat down across from her, you know, in the bleachers. And I just had to say hands up on defense because our girls didn't have their hands up. And she was standing like a coach should, right? Especially of young kids. And she looks, she just looks and she spots me and she just points me and she's like points at the head coach spot. And I was like, it's my ran over there. And she's like, sit, sit in the head coach. I was like,

I'm not your head coach, but I'll sit in this since spot. You know, it's beautiful. Now, I have to have to have to. We got to wind down here in a second. I do have one question that I ask of all my guests on this show. And it goes back to we're here at Inside Success. Right. If you could talk to the audience out there and give them one key tip for success,

“what would that tip be? One tip for success. Well, success is dependent on your own perception”

of what you want to be successful in. So in business. In business, um, understand yourself and your, and your passion and your reason for being a business. You're why you're why you know, that's a real hot topic, right? In education. When you can understand your why anything is possible, but if you don't understand why you do what you do, you should just be a sleep all day.

Right. I agree. Understand your why or your purpose or ultimately what you want to gain out of

what you're doing every single day. What's what's your purpose or what's your reason? And it doesn't have to be what everyone else tells you it should be. It can be. It doesn't, it doesn't have to be like this big grandiose thing either. I think just be if you find purpose and connecting with five people a day and letting them tell their story, do that. That's it. Right. That's as simple as it is. People decide if they want a lavish lifestyle, a mediocre lifestyle, or a simple

lifestyle. And there's nothing wrong with any of them. And chase your dreams of what makes you feel content and whole and happy. And if you have an addressed your generational trauma and your childhood trauma and gotten back to your childhood self, you're going to have a hard time in life. 100% agree. Yep. Yay. As we kind of wind down the show here, guys, if you are still tuned in at this point, I want to make sure that you check out her episode, which will be coming out shortly

after this podcast episode air. So make sure you do that and get a deeper dive into her story.

“Where can people find you on social media if they want to give you a follow, see what's going on?”

Yes. My personal as we're on a kids up, Piper, not so. It's very bit for quadrants is the

There's a, there's a lot going on over and forth. There's actually four different quadrants

two, four quadrants, right? Make sure you guys go and follow her on socials. It has been an extreme

“pleasure. Now let's hear that Niners chant. Oh, I have to get up. Oh, all right. Can I do that?”

Uh, I mean, we'll see you on the center cam. Kids that work. That works. Okay. All right, Niners. This is our year. We're not allergic to race, right, Kelt? I almost wore my kiddo jersey. Almost. Okay. Oh, it's a little close. Is that what it's going to show? Why? Uh, pull this back. Yeah, a little bit more room back there. Okay. We're going to take off the heels because I don't I don't want to break an ankle. Screws in my feet. Well, I'm ready. Okay. Push on back.

“Push on back. Whoa. Back. It's for my more end defense. Get it? That's it. That's a”

simple. You want to do it with me? It's simple as again. I have for it. I'm ready. So you got to start like this. Oh, all right. Let's try to keep my ankle. Yeah, don't do anything. So you understand it goes push them back. Push them back. Way back. I can follow you on this part. They're early part. You lost me. It's like the flask. You do the flask? No. You do this. You do this one. I got my back. You don't do the gritty? No, I don't do the gritty. I got my shoulder.

“Show me what you did to the sprinkler. Well, bad ankle, but I do my granddad's two say.”

How was it? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. It was good and buggy. That's a lie. And then, and then there's the kick. And then you go. That's the next slide. There we go. Yes. That's my usual thing. That's my usual thing. Yeah. That's your line. I don't listen to customers like that, those.

Ah, maybe that. Yeah. You got. Okay. You guys saw it here first, all right? We got to get this

kind of stage coach. Oh, man. All right. Get ready. Ready? Ready? One, two, white with scope. What were we going to left or right? So left? I mean, I would see right. Funny that you see left. I'm right. Uh-huh. Left, roll, push. Yep. All right. Okay. And don't dance. Let's go seven, five, three, five, six, seven, eight. Push them. Okay. I'm not doing the jump. I'm not doing it. Okay. There you go. Great. Five, six, seven, eight. Push them back. Push them back.

Wait. Yeah. Yep. There we go. There we go. So when the Niners went the Super Bowl this year, eat those hocks. I don't even know if the sea hocks are going to the Super Bowl. I'm more of a,

I'm more of a go birds. I'm more of an eagle's man myself. Well, I know the dolphins will never get.

Yeah. Nope. Nope. The dolphins aren't getting back. Well, they had their time. All right, y'all, that's another episode piece. Bye.