September 3, 2023 • 18 mins
Julia Dexter, the founder of Shoelace Learning, is a woman who has defied great odds to become a successful entrepreneur and athlete. Her journey began when she was labeled “dumb” in fourth grade due to a speech impediment and reading struggles. Despite this, she found confidence in sports and eventually became a national-level kayaker and Olympic athlete.After becoming a single mother and struggling financially, she started building websites and went on to build a company that became Google’s Apps first North American Premier Partner for Enterprise clients.
However, it was her experience with her own son’s reading difficulties that inspired her to start Shoelace Learning.With a deep passion for education and a commitment to helping all kids reach their full potential, Julia and the team at Shoelace Learning have built a world-class education platform that connects popular video games to personalized learning, with a focus on reading comprehension skills.Julia’s story is one of resilience, determination, and a deep desire to make a difference in the world. Learn more about Julia’s journey in this self-penned 12-article series titled The Starting Line.
However, it was her experience with her own son’s reading difficulties that inspired her to start Shoelace Learning.With a deep passion for education and a commitment to helping all kids reach their full potential, Julia and the team at Shoelace Learning have built a world-class education platform that connects popular video games to personalized learning, with a focus on reading comprehension skills.Julia’s story is one of resilience, determination, and a deep desire to make a difference in the world. Learn more about Julia’s journey in this self-penned 12-article series titled The Starting Line.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
CEO You Should Know, brought toyou by Robie Foster Miller Eric Insurance.
This week's CEO Julia Dexter, founderof Shoe Lace Learning. Yeah. I
grew up in Northern Ontario, NorthBay. My origin story is so connected
to the company because I really struggledin school. In grade four, I
(00:22):
was in the dumb class. Theteachers called it the dumb class. It
was the three four split, theonly girl in the class, and it
was because I struggled with reading.I had a speech impediment, and I
think as a kid, I justreally wanted to be seen, and that
became a bit of a theme inmy life. I stopped being interested in
school at that point and I startedfocusing on sports, and so I started
(00:46):
training really hard as a swimmer,and my coaches saw some potential in me,
which gave me this huge motivation tokeep pushing hard. So I swam
until I was about sixteen and wasin a pretty horrible skiing accident which which
took me out of swimming. Anddiscovered the sport of knu kayak later on
in life, and I became anOlympian in two thousand at the Sydney Olympics.
(01:10):
After retiring from sports, I wantedto do something else at the on
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 technology
(01:30):
specifically because I saw my son gothrough the same challenges at school that I
had had when he was in gradefourst 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
(01:51):
all that, and we are hereto talk about Scholes and I'm very excited
to talk to you. I've gota daughter who's twenty one, but I
think any parent that's listening to ourconversation right now that has children is going
to be very excited about what youand your team do. So before we
get into the weeds on choelace,why don't we talk about what the mission
statement is. We have a bigmission. Ultimately, we want to help
(02:13):
future generations of learners broaden their thinkingso they can tackle some of the world's
big challenges, and the way webelieve we're going to do that is to
improve literacy, comprehension, and criticalthinking. 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
(02:34):
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
for the first time, who doyou work with and 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.
(02:58):
And what happens is kids play mobilegames, the games like The Winds
they would play at home on yourphone, on your iPad, and as
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
(03:19):
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
kids want to play at home,which is great because it encourages them to
read while they're playing games. Youknow, we're using that screen time for
good, but that's the experience.The kids play the game, they do
the learning, and then teachers getdiagnostic reports and skills reports to show how
(03:45):
the kids are doing over time.So I like that there's a lot of
connection in that with parents and children, and you're connecting a lot of dots
there to all the work that's beendone and just not giving somebody screen time.
I did want to circle back onsomething. We have a lot of
CEOs and a lot of future CEOsand entrepreneurs that listened to this series,
and I'd love to know the originidea because you touched on it a little
(04:06):
bit early on, but maybe wecould go more into it because you obviously
saw a hole in the industry.You used your own experiences, but as
an entrepreneur starting a business, aswe know it is not easy. Now
you've grown this into a worldwide companythat We'll talk about this a second,
because it's just amazing about how farshoelaced up stretch. But can you talk
about that epiphany, that idea aboutwhat you did and you started with it.
(04:28):
I thought, you saw a holein the industry. I'm going to
act on this leap of faith starta business. Here we go, tell
us that story. Sure, Ithink that the really important piece of that
part of the story is that somy son had a problem. It was
a problem that I saw. Itwas a problem I thought I could tackle
with my background and technology. Butwhat I did and what led to our
(04:49):
early success, was I put myselfin the classroom. I really wanted to
understand what is the teacher experience,what is the learner experience? And it
was very different than what I thought. I wanted to build a technology that
would help kids be strong readers.It was as simple as that. But
when I was in the classroom,what I was seeing was it teachers were
just managing behavior. Most of thetime. They were really struggling to teach,
(05:12):
and it was because kids were checkingout of their education. They weren't
interested in their learning. They weren'tinterested in you know, PDFs that had
been printed out that they had toanswer questions on and no wonder, these
kids are being delivered the most exceptional, you know, content outside of the
classroom, and their bar is highfor what they're what they're experiencing. So
immediately I got interested in how wecould use games to motivate kids to want
(05:35):
to drive their own learning. ButI don't think I would have got there,
definitely not as quickly had I notseen the real problem that teachers were
facing in the classroom. And andI really advise anyone who's looking at tackling
a problem to really get into thatproblem. You know firsthand, understand it,
and that's it's just critical to beingable to come up with the right
(05:56):
solution. So you started the company, it looks like maybe about nine years
ago now, and I'm wondering ifyou knew you'd be where you are today,
because you need to share this withpeople starting this business in Canada.
Now. I know you're probably inNorth America, but you work in a
lot of countries and that makes sensebecause you're online, so everybody has access
to it. But tell us alittle about the growth about it. Everybody
(06:17):
wants to have a sustainable business,but you also and under a decade have
grown this business too. Yeah,we have over six million users in over
one hundred and sixty countries. Now, I started wanting to help one kid,
but I always had this vision andpassion to scale. I wanted to
be able to scale this at theglobal level, and that impacted how we
(06:42):
how we designed our business models.So since scale was important to me,
we decided accessibility was critical, andso we built this to be a freemium
product so anyone could use it andthen they could upgrade to a paid subscription
when they saw the value. Andthat allowed us to really witness this huge
amount of growth really really quickly.And I think something we've always looked for
(07:04):
as a team is this idea ofmarket poll. You know, not trying
to push your product to the market, but where are you seeing that people
are picking it up and wanting touse it without you even telling them about
it, without you even kind ofyou having to train them on it,
and really leaning into those parts ofthe product to really guide your roadmap.
(07:26):
Yeah, the market poll is criticaland something we're always looking for as we
grow the company. If I couldask, because once again you're very entrepreneurial,
the growth is extraordinary. A lotof people are going to say,
how on earth did Julia get inthat many countries and that short amount of
time. So what did you doto market the company and hook onto this
great idea that you have in Cheelace? It was referrals. It's about the
(07:49):
market poll, it's about building somethingthat's working for your users and working exceptionally
well, so well that they wantto share it. We happen to be
in education, and teachers love ofyou know, teaching, They love sharing
things that are working. So weare in a market that has exceptional opportunity
in terms of referral. But that'sabsolutely how we got there. In the
(08:09):
first several years, we didn't spenda time on advertising or marketing. It
was all referral. As we getmore sophisticated, we get more sophisticated about
our channels to market. But atthe beginning, it was really just one
person telling another Julia. I knowyou have a great team with you,
but I'm also curious about doing research, working with teachers and whether it's psychologists,
(08:30):
literacy people, you know, bookwriters, whatever it is, because
there has to be all these differenttentacles that connect back to you about the
latest thing, what to do,getting the feedback, making sure the execution
is there. Can you tell usabout all the different kind of education that
you and your team do and whoyou work with to get to where you
are now with Shuelas, Yeah,that's always been so important and from day
(08:52):
one was something that we really focusedon. You know, as an athlete,
the only way you get to beas good as you are is by
building a team around you, peoplewho are world class. And we did
the same thing with this company.From day one. We found people who
were building games for education that we'rebest of class researchers and literacy best of
class, teachers, best of class, and now we're looking at people who
(09:13):
are understanding how to build data modelsbest of class, you know, understanding
the importance of diversity and inclusion andcultural responsivity, best of class. And
it's always about pulling those individuals inand getting them to contribute to how we're
building. So our company is mainlyengineers, engineers and product people. We
(09:35):
have a growth team and then wewere always bringing in experts and consultants to
help inform us on projects that areimportant to us at the time. And
I find that way of growing isalways successful. You're a small company,
we're only twenty, but we alwaysbring in people who help us be bigger
and better by bringing their expertise,Julie, I also like to ask leaders
(10:00):
and CEOs about the cool things thatare happening with a company, maybe sharing
a good story, because I'm sureyou have handsfuls of that, especially maybe
some of the countries where access isn'tas great as we have the luxury here
in North America. Let's put apin in a great story just for a
second. I'll let you think aboutthat. But I want to ask you
about challenges because I know, asan entrepreneur and as a co founder and
CEO of a company that is doingvery well right now, there are still
(10:24):
challenges out there. What are theycurrently? I'd say the biggest challenge as
an innovation company is the ability tocontinue to invest in innovation. I think
especially when markets are challenging. Right, So, we're in a phase of
challenging markets kind of across the boardof education. Technology is no different,
and continuing to invest in in innovationis so critical to a company like ours.
(10:52):
But it feels scary, right,It feels scary at times because you're
also thinking about operational efficiency to makesure you can, you know, get
as far as you can. SoI'd say that's the biggest challenge right now
is how do we look at ourdifferent sources of income, whether it be
revenue or grants or ways that wecan keep investing in innovation, you know,
(11:13):
pushing the needle in terms of tryingto be a best in class technology
for education, because there's so muchroom to push and I don't want to
get stale. I don't want toget static. I want to make sure
we're always pushing. So i'd saythat that would be one of the bigger
challenges. And I want everybody that'slistening that's a future entrepreneur. There's a
good lesson in there is that don'tstay pat on anything because it's easy to
(11:35):
get you know, lazy about thingsand take for granted that everything's okay.
You always want to grow, andI think that's what Julie is talking about.
So Julie, that's a great lifelesson for everybody that's running a company
out there, to don't stand patand keep on growing, get out of
your comfort zone and grow the companymore and more and more. What that
said, I wanted to ask you, and I know it's not fair to
ask about maybe one great story,but I would like you to share maybe
(11:56):
something that there's either heartwarming or yousaid to the team, you know,
we knocked it out of the parkthat day for either that family, that
school, that city of something thatwas really special. Can you share maybe
a story or two with us?Sure, I've got two that come to
mind. The first one was ateacher who called me a couple of years
ago and she was in tears,and she told me that she had had
(12:20):
a student who was autistic, nonresponsive, non verbal, 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
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
(12:45):
game and answer questions, but theywere answering them correctly, so she knew
that the learning had actually gotten through. It makes me almost emotional thing,
right because it was such a specialmoment. The other one that i'd love
to highlight is It was kind ofit was a transformational piece, and it
was a challenge. We got anemail from a from a parent whose child
(13:07):
was playing the game, and thequestion basically said somebody. It implied that
somebody who used a double negative Iain't no is somebody who's ill educated.
And she had a real problem withthat because because frankly, it's not true.
And so she went on social mediaand it became almost a viral tweet,
tweet, you know, don't usethis program. And it made us
(13:30):
really reflect why did that even getin there? Why had Because we build
every piece of our content, wereview every piece of our content, we
didn't understand how that got there,and we learned by digging into it,
it's actually a piece of content that'sused in the US curriculum right now.
And that made us really kind ofreally question, is this what's right just
to align just to very specifically alignedto curriculum, or do we want to
(13:54):
be better? And we decided wewant to be better, So we pulled
down all of our content at thatpoint and we started rebuilding the content historical
studies, social studies, and wedid it with a lens of what we
call JEDI 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
(14:16):
been years now of building content thatwe believe as bests 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,
right, that's the mirror they cansee themselves, but also others have perspectives
(14:37):
that matter too. Those are thewindows into other ways of thinking, and
that's something our kids are really missingthese days, especially as we get technologies
that are reinforcing kind of the samemessage 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 are learningin a way that they're challenged to think
of other perspectives and to recognize theirown matter. So that was the other
(15:01):
story that I think, you know, truly transformational and has guided us and
our vision, you know, forthe future. Well, thank you for
sharing both of those, and ifI may say, that was a very
bold move and I think this isanother life lesson for all leaders out there
and entrepreneurs and people to run companiesis that integrity was online for the company
and you saw it fit to godown and change up and get better right
(15:22):
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, andwe did. And I tell you it
motivates every single one of our teammembers to know that we're building, right,
I bet it does. Thanks forsharing all of that very cool stories.
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
(15:45):
is there. What's the plan goingdown the road for cheels? What other
things do you have in mind thatyou want to bring to the table.
Well, very simply, we'd liketo attract ten million new users in the
next couple of years. We're alsobuilding out our assignment worry what I was
just talking about in terms of contentthat shows many perspectives, and to do
(16:06):
that, we're working with communities topublish their stories. So we're getting communities
to tell their stories and our curriculumteam 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 on rightnow, but really the reach is very
important to me. I want tomake sure that we are growing and continuing
(16:26):
to grow and getting in the handsof as many kids as we can support.
So you know, ten million newyearsers. So if anyone's listening and
they have kids in grades three toeight, it's a platform that can help
them and that they'll love so well. You're talking when you're talking to iHeart,
so people will be listening. Juliete. I'm very excited, and I
think you're going to get to thatgoal because it really is amazing what you
(16:47):
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's maybe one or two
takeaways that you would like our listenersto go away when it comes to Shoelace,
what would it be That there isa great opportunity for kids to be
(17:07):
engaging on mobile devices in games andlearning and strengthening their literacy, strengthening their
ability to comprehend and becoming strong criticalthinkers. 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 so yeah, I encourage everyone to check it out.
And I know that most of ourlisteners have already googled and saw exactly
(17:30):
where you are. But for theones that happen, maybe social media channels
you might be on, and ofcourse the website what is that, Yeah,
shoelace Learning dot com outstanding. Well, listen, this has been a
tree, Julia. I love totalk to people like you that come up
with a great idea but then executeit and it really takes a lot of
intestinal fortitude, hard work, takinga leap of faith and chance out there,
(17:52):
and you've grown into something just extraordinary. So it is our pleasure to
talk to you. Continue success,and thank you so much for joining us
on CEO. You should know wereally appreciate your time. Thank you so
much. Julia Dexter, founder ofShoelace Learning, the CEO you should know.
Read a bio, see a photo, and hear the extended interview at
(18:15):
WMANFM dot com. This is JohnRoby of rfme Insurance. This said that
a good leader sets the bar highbecause he or she wants to reach goals
and make the best of their teams. We're proud to introduce you to some
of the community's leaders on the CEOSeries
CEO You Should Know, brought toyou by Robie Foster Miller Eric Insurance.
This week's CEO Julia Dexter, founderof Shoe Lace Learning. Yeah. I
grew up in Northern Ontario, NorthBay. My origin story is so connected
to the company because I really struggledin school. In grade four, I
(00:22):
was in the dumb class. Theteachers called it the dumb class. It
was the three four split, theonly girl in the class, and it
was because I struggled with reading.I had a speech impediment, and I
think as a kid, I justreally wanted to be seen, and that
became a bit of a theme inmy life. I stopped being interested in
school at that point and I startedfocusing on sports, and so I started
(00:46):
training really hard as a swimmer,and my coaches saw some potential in me,
which gave me this huge motivation tokeep pushing hard. So I swam
until I was about sixteen and wasin a pretty horrible skiing accident which which
took me out of swimming. Anddiscovered the sport of knu kayak later on
in life, and I became anOlympian in two thousand at the Sydney Olympics.
(01:10):
After retiring from sports, I wantedto do something else at the on
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 technology
(01:30):
specifically because I saw my son gothrough the same challenges at school that I
had had when he was in gradefourst 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
(01:51):
all that, and we are hereto talk about Scholes and I'm very excited
to talk to you. I've gota daughter who's twenty one, but I
think any parent that's listening to ourconversation right now that has children is going
to be very excited about what youand your team do. So before we
get into the weeds on choelace,why don't we talk about what the mission
statement is. We have a bigmission. Ultimately, we want to help
(02:13):
future generations of learners broaden their thinkingso they can tackle some of the world's
big challenges, and the way webelieve we're going to do that is to
improve literacy, comprehension, and criticalthinking. 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
(02:34):
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
for the first time, who doyou work with and 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.
(02:58):
And what happens is kids play mobilegames, the games like The Winds
they would play at home on yourphone, on your iPad, and as
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
(03:19):
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
kids want to play at home,which is great because it encourages them to
read while they're playing games. Youknow, we're using that screen time for
good, but that's the experience.The kids play the game, they do
the learning, and then teachers getdiagnostic reports and skills reports to show how
(03:45):
the kids are doing over time.So I like that there's a lot of
connection in that with parents and children, and you're connecting a lot of dots
there to all the work that's beendone and just not giving somebody screen time.
I did want to circle back onsomething. We have a lot of
CEOs and a lot of future CEOsand entrepreneurs that listened to this series,
and I'd love to know the originidea because you touched on it a little
(04:06):
bit early on, but maybe wecould go more into it because you obviously
saw a hole in the industry.You used your own experiences, but as
an entrepreneur starting a business, aswe know it is not easy. Now
you've grown this into a worldwide companythat We'll talk about this a second,
because it's just amazing about how farshoelaced up stretch. But can you talk
about that epiphany, that idea aboutwhat you did and you started with it.
(04:28):
I thought, you saw a holein the industry. I'm going to
act on this leap of faith starta business. Here we go, tell
us that story. Sure, Ithink that the really important piece of that
part of the story is that somy son had a problem. It was
a problem that I saw. Itwas a problem I thought I could tackle
with my background and technology. Butwhat I did and what led to our
(04:49):
early success, was I put myselfin the classroom. I really wanted to
understand what is the teacher experience,what is the learner experience? And it
was very different than what I thought. I wanted to build a technology that
would help kids be strong readers.It was as simple as that. But
when I was in the classroom,what I was seeing was it teachers were
just managing behavior. Most of thetime. They were really struggling to teach,
(05:12):
and it was because kids were checkingout of their education. They weren't
interested in their learning. They weren'tinterested in you know, PDFs that had
been printed out that they had toanswer questions on and no wonder, these
kids are being delivered the most exceptional, you know, content outside of the
classroom, and their bar is highfor what they're what they're experiencing. So
immediately I got interested in how wecould use games to motivate kids to want
(05:35):
to drive their own learning. ButI don't think I would have got there,
definitely not as quickly had I notseen the real problem that teachers were
facing in the classroom. And andI really advise anyone who's looking at tackling
a problem to really get into thatproblem. You know firsthand, understand it,
and that's it's just critical to beingable to come up with the right
(05:56):
solution. So you started the company, it looks like maybe about nine years
ago now, and I'm wondering ifyou knew you'd be where you are today,
because you need to share this withpeople starting this business in Canada.
Now. I know you're probably inNorth America, but you work in a
lot of countries and that makes sensebecause you're online, so everybody has access
to it. But tell us alittle about the growth about it. Everybody
(06:17):
wants to have a sustainable business,but you also and under a decade have
grown this business too. Yeah,we have over six million users in over
one hundred and sixty countries. Now, I started wanting to help one kid,
but I always had this vision andpassion to scale. I wanted to
be able to scale this at theglobal level, and that impacted how we
(06:42):
how we designed our business models.So since scale was important to me,
we decided accessibility was critical, andso we built this to be a freemium
product so anyone could use it andthen they could upgrade to a paid subscription
when they saw the value. Andthat allowed us to really witness this huge
amount of growth really really quickly.And I think something we've always looked for
(07:04):
as a team is this idea ofmarket poll. You know, not trying
to push your product to the market, but where are you seeing that people
are picking it up and wanting touse it without you even telling them about
it, without you even kind ofyou having to train them on it,
and really leaning into those parts ofthe product to really guide your roadmap.
(07:26):
Yeah, the market poll is criticaland something we're always looking for as we
grow the company. If I couldask, because once again you're very entrepreneurial,
the growth is extraordinary. A lotof people are going to say,
how on earth did Julia get inthat many countries and that short amount of
time. So what did you doto market the company and hook onto this
great idea that you have in Cheelace? It was referrals. It's about the
(07:49):
market poll, it's about building somethingthat's working for your users and working exceptionally
well, so well that they wantto share it. We happen to be
in education, and teachers love ofyou know, teaching, They love sharing
things that are working. So weare in a market that has exceptional opportunity
in terms of referral. But that'sabsolutely how we got there. In the
(08:09):
first several years, we didn't spenda time on advertising or marketing. It
was all referral. As we getmore sophisticated, we get more sophisticated about
our channels to market. But atthe beginning, it was really just one
person telling another Julia. I knowyou have a great team with you,
but I'm also curious about doing research, working with teachers and whether it's psychologists,
(08:30):
literacy people, you know, bookwriters, whatever it is, because
there has to be all these differenttentacles that connect back to you about the
latest thing, what to do,getting the feedback, making sure the execution
is there. Can you tell usabout all the different kind of education that
you and your team do and whoyou work with to get to where you
are now with Shuelas, Yeah,that's always been so important and from day
(08:52):
one was something that we really focusedon. You know, as an athlete,
the only way you get to beas good as you are is by
building a team around you, peoplewho are world class. And we did
the same thing with this company.From day one. We found people who
were building games for education that we'rebest of class researchers and literacy best of
class, teachers, best of class, and now we're looking at people who
(09:13):
are understanding how to build data modelsbest of class, you know, understanding
the importance of diversity and inclusion andcultural responsivity, best of class. And
it's always about pulling those individuals inand getting them to contribute to how we're
building. So our company is mainlyengineers, engineers and product people. We
(09:35):
have a growth team and then wewere always bringing in experts and consultants to
help inform us on projects that areimportant to us at the time. And
I find that way of growing isalways successful. You're a small company,
we're only twenty, but we alwaysbring in people who help us be bigger
and better by bringing their expertise,Julie, I also like to ask leaders
(10:00):
and CEOs about the cool things thatare happening with a company, maybe sharing
a good story, because I'm sureyou have handsfuls of that, especially maybe
some of the countries where access isn'tas great as we have the luxury here
in North America. Let's put apin in a great story just for a
second. I'll let you think aboutthat. But I want to ask you
about challenges because I know, asan entrepreneur and as a co founder and
CEO of a company that is doingvery well right now, there are still
(10:24):
challenges out there. What are theycurrently? I'd say the biggest challenge as
an innovation company is the ability tocontinue to invest in innovation. I think
especially when markets are challenging. Right, So, we're in a phase of
challenging markets kind of across the boardof education. Technology is no different,
and continuing to invest in in innovationis so critical to a company like ours.
(10:52):
But it feels scary, right,It feels scary at times because you're
also thinking about operational efficiency to makesure you can, you know, get
as far as you can. SoI'd say that's the biggest challenge right now
is how do we look at ourdifferent sources of income, whether it be
revenue or grants or ways that wecan keep investing in innovation, you know,
(11:13):
pushing the needle in terms of tryingto be a best in class technology
for education, because there's so muchroom to push and I don't want to
get stale. I don't want toget static. I want to make sure
we're always pushing. So i'd saythat that would be one of the bigger
challenges. And I want everybody that'slistening that's a future entrepreneur. There's a
good lesson in there is that don'tstay pat on anything because it's easy to
(11:35):
get you know, lazy about thingsand take for granted that everything's okay.
You always want to grow, andI think that's what Julie is talking about.
So Julie, that's a great lifelesson for everybody that's running a company
out there, to don't stand patand keep on growing, get out of
your comfort zone and grow the companymore and more and more. What that
said, I wanted to ask you, and I know it's not fair to
ask about maybe one great story,but I would like you to share maybe
(11:56):
something that there's either heartwarming or yousaid to the team, you know,
we knocked it out of the parkthat day for either that family, that
school, that city of something thatwas really special. Can you share maybe
a story or two with us?Sure, I've got two that come to
mind. The first one was ateacher who called me a couple of years
ago and she was in tears,and she told me that she had had
(12:20):
a student who was autistic, nonresponsive, non verbal, 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
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
(12:45):
game and answer questions, but theywere answering them correctly, so she knew
that the learning had actually gotten through. It makes me almost emotional thing,
right because it was such a specialmoment. The other one that i'd love
to highlight is It was kind ofit was a transformational piece, and it
was a challenge. We got anemail from a from a parent whose child
(13:07):
was playing the game, and thequestion basically said somebody. It implied that
somebody who used a double negative Iain't no is somebody who's ill educated.
And she had a real problem withthat because because frankly, it's not true.
And so she went on social mediaand it became almost a viral tweet,
tweet, you know, don't usethis program. And it made us
(13:30):
really reflect why did that even getin there? Why had Because we build
every piece of our content, wereview every piece of our content, we
didn't understand how that got there,and we learned by digging into it,
it's actually a piece of content that'sused in the US curriculum right now.
And that made us really kind ofreally question, is this what's right just
to align just to very specifically alignedto curriculum, or do we want to
(13:54):
be better? And we decided wewant to be better, So we pulled
down all of our content at thatpoint and we started rebuilding the content historical
studies, social studies, and wedid it with a lens of what we
call JEDI 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
(14:16):
been years now of building content thatwe believe as bests 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,
right, that's the mirror they cansee themselves, but also others have perspectives
(14:37):
that matter too. Those are thewindows into other ways of thinking, and
that's something our kids are really missingthese days, especially as we get technologies
that are reinforcing kind of the samemessage 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 are learningin a way that they're challenged to think
of other perspectives and to recognize theirown matter. So that was the other
(15:01):
story that I think, you know, truly transformational and has guided us and
our vision, you know, forthe future. Well, thank you for
sharing both of those, and ifI may say, that was a very
bold move and I think this isanother life lesson for all leaders out there
and entrepreneurs and people to run companiesis that integrity was online for the company
and you saw it fit to godown and change up and get better right
(15:22):
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, andwe did. And I tell you it
motivates every single one of our teammembers to know that we're building, right,
I bet it does. Thanks forsharing all of that very cool stories.
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
(15:45):
is there. What's the plan goingdown the road for cheels? What other
things do you have in mind thatyou want to bring to the table.
Well, very simply, we'd liketo attract ten million new users in the
next couple of years. We're alsobuilding out our assignment worry what I was
just talking about in terms of contentthat shows many perspectives, and to do
(16:06):
that, we're working with communities topublish their stories. So we're getting communities
to tell their stories and our curriculumteam 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 on rightnow, but really the reach is very
important to me. I want tomake sure that we are growing and continuing
(16:26):
to grow and getting in the handsof as many kids as we can support.
So you know, ten million newyearsers. So if anyone's listening and
they have kids in grades three toeight, it's a platform that can help
them and that they'll love so well. You're talking when you're talking to iHeart,
so people will be listening. Juliete. I'm very excited, and I
think you're going to get to thatgoal because it really is amazing what you
(16:47):
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's maybe one or two
takeaways that you would like our listenersto go away when it comes to Shoelace,
what would it be That there isa great opportunity for kids to be
(17:07):
engaging on mobile devices in games andlearning and strengthening their literacy, strengthening their
ability to comprehend and becoming strong criticalthinkers. 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 so yeah, I encourage everyone to check it out.
And I know that most of ourlisteners have already googled and saw exactly
(17:30):
where you are. But for theones that happen, maybe social media channels
you might be on, and ofcourse the website what is that, Yeah,
shoelace Learning dot com outstanding. Well, listen, this has been a
tree, Julia. I love totalk to people like you that come up
with a great idea but then executeit and it really takes a lot of
intestinal fortitude, hard work, takinga leap of faith and chance out there,
(17:52):
and you've grown into something just extraordinary. So it is our pleasure to
talk to you. Continue success,and thank you so much for joining us
on CEO. You should know wereally appreciate your time. Thank you so
much. Julia Dexter, founder ofShoelace Learning, the CEO you should know.
Read a bio, see a photo, and hear the extended interview at
(18:15):
WMANFM dot com. This is JohnRoby of rfme Insurance. This said that
a good leader sets the bar highbecause he or she wants to reach goals
and make the best of their teams. We're proud to introduce you to some
of the community's leaders on the CEOSeries
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