CEOs You Should Know: Julia Dexter, Co-Founder & CEO of Shoelace Learning

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Yeah. I grew up in northernOntario, North Bay. My origin story
is so connected to the company becauseI really struggled in school. In grade
four, I was in the dumbclass. The teachers called it the dumb
class. It was the three foursplit, the only girl in the class,
and it was because I struggled withreading. I had a speech impediment,

(00:20):
and I think as a kid,I just really wanted to be seen,
and that became a bit of atheme in my life. I stopped
being interested in school at that pointand I started focusing on sports, and
so I started training really hard asa swimmer, and my coaches saw some
potential in me, which gave methis huge motivation to keep pushing hard.

(00:41):
So I swam until I was aboutsixteen and was in a pretty horrible skiing
accident which took me out of swimming. And discovered the sport of kanu kayak
later on in life, and Ibecame an Olympian in two thousand at the
Sydney Olympics. After retiring from sports, I wanted to do something else on

(01:02):
the world stage, something else globallysuccessful, and started my business career from
scratch and over the years built technologycompanies, which led me to the one
that I'm in now. So Igot inspired to get involved in education technologies
specifically because I saw my son gothrough the same challenges at school that I

(01:23):
had had when he was in gradefourth the same time, same challenges,
and I really wanted to use myexperience to help other kids like my son
master reading and do well in schooland just be seen. And so that's
what led us to where we aretoday. Well, thank you for sharing
all that, and we are hereto talk about Cheelace, and I'm very
excited to talk to you. I'vegot a daughter who's twenty one, but
I think any parent that's listening toour conversation right now that has children is

(01:47):
going to be very excited about whatyou and your team do. So before
we get into the weeds on Cheelace, why don't we talk about what the
mission statement is. We have abig mission. Ultimately, we want to
help future generations of learners broaden theirthinking so they can tackle some of the
world's big challenges. And the waywe believe we're going to do that is

(02:07):
to improve literacy, comprehension, andcritical thinking. And so what we do
in our games it's a game basedlearning platform. But what we do is
we help kids master their reading skills, their comprehension skills, and then build
the muscles for critical thinking. Allright, let's do this. Let's get
a little bit more into the weeds. If somebody has been introduced to Shoelace

(02:27):
for the first time, who doyou work with, what exactly do you
do? We focus on teachers becauseteachers have access to kids in grades three
to eight, So we're focused ondelivering for kids in grades three to eight.
And teachers sign up to the program, they use it in their classroom.
And what happens is kids play mobilegames, mobile games like the ones
they would play at home on yourphone, on your iPad, and as

(02:51):
they're playing mobile games, content popsup that they have to read and then
they have to answer questions about thatcontent to go back to the game.
It's almost like if you're playing amobile game and an AD pops up.
Instead of an AD, it's learningcontent, and it's learning a content that
your teacher wants to see if youcan master. So it's basically delivering assignments
through mobile games. Parents use itas well at home. A lot of

(03:14):
kids want to play at home,which is great because it encourages them to
read while they're playing games. We'reusing that screen time for good, but
that's the experience. The kids playthe game, they do the learning,
and then teachers get diagnostic reports andskills reports to show how the kids are
doing over time. So I likethat there's a lot of connection in that

(03:36):
with parents and children, and you'reconnecting a lot of dots there to all
the work that's been done and justnot giving somebody screen time. I did
want to circle back on something.We have a lot of CEOs and a
lot of future CEOs and entrepreneurs thatlisten to this series, and I'd love
to know the origin idea because youtouched on it a little bit early on,
but maybe we could go more intoit because you obviously saw a hole

(03:59):
in the industry used your own experiences. But as an entrepreneur, starting a
business, as we know, isnot easy. Now you've you've grown this
into a worldwide company that we'll talkabout in this a second, because it's
just amazing about how far Shoelace doesstretch. But can you talk about that
epiphany, that idea about what youdid and you started with it. I
thought, you saw a hold inthe industry. I'm going to act on
this leap of faith start a business. Here we go, tell us that

(04:21):
story. Sure, I think thatthe really important piece of that part of
the story is that so my sonhad a problem. It was a problem
that I saw. It was aproblem I thought I could tackle with my
background in technology. But what Idid, and what led to our early
success, was I put myself inthe classroom. I really wanted to understand
what is the teacher experience, whatis the learner experience? And it was

(04:45):
very different than what I thought.I wanted to build a technology that would
help kids be strong readers. Itwas as simple as that. But when
I was in the classroom, whatI was seeing teachers were just managing behavior.
Most of the time. They werereally struggling to teach, and it
was because kids were checking out oftheir education. They weren't interested in their
learning. They weren't interested in youknow PDFs that had been printed out that
they had to answer questions on.And no wonder, these kids are being

(05:10):
delivered the most exceptional you know contentoutside of the classroom, and their bar
is high for what they're what they'reexperiencing. So immediately I got interested in
how we could use games to motivatekids to want to drive their own learning.
But I don't think I would havegot there, definitely not as quickly
had I not seen the real problemthat teachers were facing in the classroom.

(05:31):
And I really advise anyone who's lookingat tackling a problem to really get into
that problem. You know firsthand,understand it, and that's it's just critical
to being able to come up withthe right solution. So you started the
company it looks like maybe about nineyears ago now, and I'm wondering if
you knew you'd be where you aretoday, because you need to share this

(05:53):
with people starting this business in Canada. Now, I know you're probably in
North America, but you work ina lot of cun That makes sense because
you're online so everybody has access toit. But tell us a little about
the growth about it. Everybody wantsto have a sustainable business. But you've
you also under a decade have grownthis business too. Yeah, we have

(06:14):
over six million users in over onehundred and sixty countries. Now. I
started wanting to help one kid,but I always had this vision and passion
to scale. I wanted to beable to scale this at the global level,
and that impacted how we designed ourbusiness model. So since scale was
important to me, we decided accessibilitywas critical, and so we built this

(06:36):
to be a freemium product so anyonecould use it and then they could upgrade
to a paid subscription when they sawthe value, and that allowed us to
really witness this huge amount of growthreally really quickly. And I think something
we've always looked for as a teamis this idea of market poll. You
know, not trying to push yourproduct to the market, but where are

(06:59):
you seeing people are picking it upand wanting to use it without you even
telling them about it, without youeven kind of having to train them on
it, and really leaning into thoseparts of the product to really guide your
roadmap. Yeah, the market pollis critical and something we're always looking for
as we grow the company. IfI could ask, because once again,
you're very entrepreneurial, the growth isextraordinary. A lot of people are going

(07:23):
to say, how on earth didJulia get in that many countries and that
short amount of time? So whatdid you do to market the company and
hook onto this great idea that youhave in Chelace, it was referral.
It's about the market poll it's aboutbuilding something that's working for your users and
working exceptionally well, so well thatthey want to share it. We happen

(07:45):
to be in education, and teachersloved teaching. They love sharing things that
are working. So we are ina market that has exceptional opportunity in terms
of referral. But that's absolutely howwe got there. In the first several
years and spend a time on advertisingor marketing, it was all referral.
As we get more sophisticated, weget more sophisticated about our channels to market.

(08:07):
But at the beginning, it wasreally just one person telling another Julia,
I know you have a great teamwith you, but I'm also curious
about doing research, working with teachersand whether it's psychologists, literacy people,
book writers, whatever it is,because there has to be all these different
tentacles that connect back to you aboutthe latest thing, what to do,
getting the feedback, making sure theexecution is there. Can you tell us

(08:30):
about all the different kind of educationthat you and your team do and who
you work with to get to whereyou are now with you Lace, Yeah,
that's always been so important, andfrom day one that was something that
we really focused on. You know, as an athlete, the only way
you get to be as good asyou are is by building a team around
you of people who are a worldclass and we did the same thing with
this company. From day one,we found people who were building games for

(08:54):
education that were best of class,researchers and literacy best of class, teachers
best of class, and now we'relooking at people who are understanding how to
build data models best of class,understanding the importance of diversity and inclusion and
cultural responsivity best of class. Andit's always about pulling those individuals in and
getting them to contribute to to howwe're building. So our company is mainly

(09:20):
engineers, engineers and product people.We have a growth team and then we're
always bringing in experts and consultants tohelp inform us on projects that are important
to us at the time. AndI find that way of growing is always
successful. You're a small company,we're only twenty, but we always bring
in people who help us be biggerand better by bringing in their expertise.

(09:45):
Julie, I also like to askour leaders and CEOs about the cool things
that are happening with a company,maybe sharing a good story, because I'm
sure you have handsfuls of that,especially maybe some of the countries where access
isn't as great as we have theluxury here in North America. Let's put
a pin in a great story justfor a second. I'll let you think
about that. But I want toask you about challenges because I know as
an entrepreneur and as a co founderand CEO of a company that is doing

(10:09):
very well right now, there arestill challenges out there. What are they
currently? I'd say the biggest challengeas an innovation company is the ability to
continue to invest in innovation. Ithink especially when markets are challenging, right,
So we're in a phase of challengingmarkets kind of across the board.
Education, technology is no different,and continuing to invest in in innovation is

(10:37):
so critical to a company like ours. But it feels scary, right It
feels scary at times because you're alsothinking about operational efficiency to make sure you
can you get as far as youcan. So I'd say that's the biggest
challenge right now is how do welook at our different sources of income,
whether it be revenue or grants orways that we can keep investing in innovation,

(11:00):
you know, pushing the needle interms of trying to be a best
in class technology for education, becausethere's so much room to push and I
don't want to get stale. Idon't want to get static. I want
to make sure we're always pushing.So i'd say that that would be one
of the bigger challenges. And Iwant everybody that's listening that's a future entrepreneur.
There's a good lesson in there isthat don't stay pad on anything because

(11:22):
it's easy to get you know,lazy about things and take for granted that
everything's okay. You always want togrow, and I think that's what Julia
is talking about. So Julia,that's a great life lesson for everybody that's
running a company out there to don'tstand pat and keep on growing, get
out of your comfort zone and growthe company more and more and more.
With that said, I wanted toask you, and I know it's not
fair to ask about maybe one greatstory, but I would like you to

(11:43):
share maybe something that is either heartwarmingor you said to the team, you
know, we knocked it out ofthe park that day. For either that
family that school that city of somethingthat was really special. Can you share
maybe a story or two with us? Sure, I've got two that comes
to mind. The first one wasa teacher who called me a couple of

(12:03):
years ago and she was in tears, and she told me that she had
had a student who is autistic,non responsive, nonverbal, and our products
built for all kids, So it'sbuilt for kids who are high performers,
but it's also built for kids whoare really struggling, and she hadn't been
able to get this student to respondto her at all. And she was

(12:24):
crying because that day she had openedup the game and put it in front
of the student, and the studentwas able to not only respond to the
game and answer questions, but theywere answering them correctly, so she knew
that the learning had actually gotten through. It makes me almost emotionally think of
it because it was such a specialmoment. The other one that I'd love

(12:46):
to highlight is it was kind ofit was a transformational piece and it was
a challenge. We got an emailfrom a parent whose child was playing the
game, and the question basically said, somebody it applied that somebody who used
a double negative. I ain't.No is somebody who's ill educated. And
she had a real problem with thatbecause because frankly, it's not true.

(13:09):
And so she went on social mediaand it became almost a viral tweet,
you know, don't use this program, and it made us really reflect why
did that even get in there?Why had we Because we build every piece
of our content, we review everypiece of our content. We didn't understand
how that got there, and welearned by digging into it, it's actually
a piece of content that's used inthe US curriculum right now. And that

(13:33):
made us really kind of really question, is this what's right just to align
just to very specifically aligned to curriculum, or do we want to be better?
And we decided we want to bebetter, So we pulled down all
of our content at that point andwe started rebuilding the content historical studies,
social studies, and we did itwith a lens of what we call JEDI,

(13:56):
you know, justice, equity,diversity, and inclusion to make sure
that we're being culturally responsive. Andit's been a really interesting exercise. It's
been years now of building content thatwe believe as best of class that brings
in lots of different perspectives. Andthat is so critical because if we're trying
to teach critical thinking, you needto teach kids that their perspective matters.

(14:20):
Right, that's the mirror they cansee themselves, but also others have perspectives
that matter too. Those are thewindows into the other ways of thinking,
and that's something our kids are reallymissing these days, especially as we get
technologies that are reinforcing kind of thesame message over and over again. We
need to help them broaden their thinking. And that's what we're committed to,
is really making sure that kids arelearning in a way that they're challenged to

(14:43):
think of other perspectives and to recognizetheir own matters. So that was the
other story that I think, youknow, truly transformational and has guided us
and our vision you know for thefuture. Well, thank you for sharing
both of those. NF. Isay, that was a very bold move
and I think this is another lifelesson and for all leaders out there and
entrepreneurs and people that run companies,is that integrity was online for the company

(15:05):
and you saw it fit to godown and change up and get better,
right right, It was an opportunity, you know, we kind of got
kicked in the stomach a little bit, but we should have been and we
could address it and be better,and we did, and I tell you
it motivates every single one of ourteam members to know that we're building right.
I bet it does. Thanks forsharing all of that very cool stories.

(15:26):
I did want to ask you aboutthe future, and it's very clear
that you're growing. You continue tonot only be sustainable, but the growth
is there. What's the plan goingdown the road for Shoelace. What are
the things do you have in mindthat you want to bring to the table.
Well, very simply, we'd liketo attract ten million new users in
the next couple of years. We'realso building out our assignment library what I

(15:48):
was just talking about in terms ofcontent that shares many perspectives, and to
do that, we're working with communitiesto publish their stories. So we're getting
communities to tell their stories and ourcurriculum team is writing questions around those stories,
and that's how we're helping broaden thecontext for learners. So those are
some big pieces that we're focused onright now, but really the reach is

(16:11):
very important to me. I wantto make sure that we are growing and
continuing to grow. And getting inthe hands of as many kids as we
can support, so you know,ten million new users. So if anyone's
listening and they have kids in gradesthree to eight, it's a platform that
can help them and that they'll love. So well you're talking to iHeart.
So people will be listening, Julie, and I'm very excited, and I

(16:32):
think you're going to get to thatgoal because it really is amazing what you
have and I just love what youand your team are doing for everybody worldwide.
And as we put a bow inour conversation, I know it's probably
hard to just talk about one thing, but if there was maybe one or
two takeaways that you would like ourlisteners to go away when it comes to
Shoelace, what would it be Thatthere is a great opportunity for kids to

(16:53):
be engaging on mobile devices in gamesand learning and strengthening their literacy, strengthening
their ability to comprehend and becoming strongcritical thinkers. And it's not a nice
to do, it's a must do. It's something that we need to do
for our future generations. And soyeah, I encourage everyone to check it

(17:14):
out. And I know that mostof our listeners have already googled and saw
exactly where you are. But forthe ones that haven't, maybe social media
channels you might be on, andof course the website what is that,
yeah, Shoelace learning dot com outstanding. Well, listen, this has been
a treat, Julia. I loveto talk to people like you that come
up with a great idea but thenexecute it and it really takes a lot

(17:36):
of intestinal fortitude, hard work,taking a leap of faith and chance out
there, and you've gone into somethingjust extraordinary. So it is our pleasure
to talk to you. Continue success, and thank you so much for joining
us on CEOs. You should knowwe really appreciate your time. Thank you
so much.