TrulySignificant.com presents the one and only Roger Egan, Dad, innovator, sold his company to Alibaba, had an epiphany on the education system. The gap- create a new process called Nurture, focused on life skills- critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, etc.
Here how Nurture will help students learn how to learn.
Fascinating conversation. Meaningful content to all parents and grandparents who care.
Visit www.nuture.is
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/success-made-to-last-legends--4302039/support.
Here how Nurture will help students learn how to learn.
Fascinating conversation. Meaningful content to all parents and grandparents who care.
Visit www.nuture.is
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/success-made-to-last-legends--4302039/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hey, welcome back to truly Significant dot com presents. I'm
Rick Tolkeiny. Our very special guest today is Roger Egan.
And Roger wasn't happy with the way his kids were
learning during the pandemic. He realized at school's prioritize academic
subjects and struggle to keep pace with rapid technological and
(00:29):
social change, meaning traditional education can no longer prepare kids
on its own. So what does Roger do. He goes
out and creates a company called Nurture. Totally fascinating to
us because not only are we parents, but we're grandparents
trying to be super grandparents. And so, Roger Egan, you're
(00:51):
on Truly Significant for one hundred reasons this morning.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Thank you for joining us. Hey, Rick, thanks for having me.
Great to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Give us a little bit about your backstory before we
plunge into eighteen questions that curious minds want to answer.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Sure, So, I'm an American entrepreneur from New Jersey. I've
started companies in a few different industries, from insurance brokerage
to my last startup was an online grocery delivery company
in Singapore, so very different path all over the place.
And now we're building an immersive learning media company called Nurture.
(01:30):
So after resigning from my last startup, which was acquired
by Ali Baba, I did that perfect timing. In February
twenty twenty, after eleven year grind wanted to take a
sabbatical year off travel the world, spend time with family,
COVID hit and instead I was in a three month
lockdown in Singapore. But it proved to be a blessing
(01:53):
in disguise because it led me to the idea for Nurture.
So I'm a dad. I have Tucson ten and six, okay,
and I have to admit as a parent. Before that,
I sort of outsourced education to school and said they're
going to take care of it. But like many parents,
during the COVID lockdowns, I got really involved in my
(02:16):
kids learning and had a lot of time on my
hands since I had resigned. I get pretty deep into things,
and I made a very important realization that led me
to the idea for Nurture, which was that I didn't
believe the traditional education system was adequately preparing our kids
for the future of life and work. I'm being a
(02:37):
tech guy and seeing where AI is going, I think
that you know, technological change is only going to accelerate,
and schools aren't putting proper attention on skills which are
life skills I call I call them like critical thinking, creativity,
problem solving, but also I guess most importantly learning how
(03:02):
to learn and think and not what to learn and think,
which is what I think schools for at least traditional
education system focuses more on. And I think that's key
because you're going to have to adapt very quickly and
learn things very fast in this accelerating technological change. So
that's what led me to the idea for nurture. And
(03:23):
then I can go into how we approached solving that
problem or helping to solve that problem.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
That would be fantastic for you to do that. Well,
first of all, you are hero status with us because
it's like if you were and you are this enterprising
entrepreneur you sell your company to Ali Baba. Now you've
moved in to the zone of significance because you are
(03:54):
all about thinking about legacy and what your kids will
be like long after your gone, and this almost ecosystem
of how do you learn versus learning? So you're my hero.
So starting with that, you've said that learning through immersive
(04:15):
play can change everything. Why do you believe that?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, so we sort of believe in what's sometimes called
a constructivist or montssory or mastery based learning philosophy, basically
learning by doing. There's a great book on it called
Lifelong Kindergarten from the creator of Scratch, which is a
programming language for kids out of mi T. But you know,
(04:46):
as an entrepreneur, I've learned that you just learned things
by actually doing them. You know, I went to business school,
but I didn't learn how to be an entrepreneur from
reading books and listening to professors. You had to roll
your sleeves up and actually get in there and do it.
Play is that form of learning by doing for kids,
(05:09):
and it's really important for social cognitive development. And yeah,
that's what we believe in for for helping kids build
the life skills of the future.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Right on. And so you have these foundational values, those
that you hope will be instilled in every nurture child.
Are there if you were to rank them, is there
a rank or they all truly significantly equal?
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Well, I think that they're linked. Right, So play can
help you be a better problem solver, critical thinking is
also linked to that. You know, in this especially in AI,
where it's really hard to tell what's real and fake
(06:05):
and what news to trust. I think it's it's all
a muscle of I have this exercise with my kids
to ask three questions before you let any information into
your brain. One is it true? Uh? And two how
do I know it's true? And then three what is
(06:26):
the maybe incentive or or of the person saying? It's?
Just just to kind of be aware of of what
hidden agendas people might have. So I find that's a
very very useful filter to to go through all this
information and misinformation or or that that that's they're going
(06:49):
to be exposed to. So yeah, I think I think
those problems solving critical thinking in the age of AI, creativity,
social mode skills, those are those are probably the core
skills that we focus on at Nurture.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
So they're all linked together. Not one is not necessarily
more important than the other. You talked about your two boys.
How are you teaching them to listen factually?
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Listen factually? Yeah, listening with intent? So we uh, you know,
like I said, if you're talking about understanding uh and
and first deciding for yourself and thinking for yourself whether
something is true that they're listening to. I just mentioned,
you know, the three questions that we have them answer.
(07:44):
Is that what you mean by listen factually?
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yes? And now I'll crack that open a little bit more.
We're studying listening here as a moving from a soft
skill to a hard skill, okay, and what we're doing
with our own grown children, much less grandchildren, because we
think it's listening factually, listening empathetically, and listening from a
(08:15):
regenerative perspective. So if you're listening to someone else and
you're building upon ideas layers, that's the kind of skill
set that we're trying to literally train without being helicopter
grandparents and parents. So does that help you understand that
question now about how do you teach listening factually?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
It does? Yeah. I think we've all met people who
are often when we're speaking to them, they're just waiting
for their term to talk and they don't feel heard
or seen. And that's an important social emotional skill. So yes, yeah,
And empathy, as you just is a very important part
(09:02):
of that, right, is you need to also care about
the person you're listening to and genuinely show them that
you you do care what they're saying, and yeah, have
empathy for what they're saying. So I think that's a
big part of listening factually as you call it. Yeah,
(09:22):
we just try to model that behavior in my house.
You know, when I'm talking to my kids, especially the
younger one on down on their level, if for standing
up six year old and just asking sort of clarifying
questions to just and repeating back what I've heard to
(09:45):
make sure they really feel that I've taken the time
to understand what they're saying and listen intently. And yeah,
so we model the behavior, is the short answer.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Very good, dad, That's good. It's not easy, is it,
because there's still a parent adult parent child relationship and
everything that you read about today is speak to your
children as adults so they can begin to grow they're
in their emotional intelligence. But it's hard as a dad,
(10:19):
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yeah, But we try to do that as much as possible.
It's you know, you want to give your kids as
much agency across across the board, right, And there's a
lot of books and it's become popular the anxious generation
and you know, not being a helicopter bomb or dad
(10:45):
letting them. There's this famous thing let them. Yeah, I
think we need to do more of that, and yes
it's important for their growth.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Indeed it is in your view, Roger, what does a
resilient child look like at six years old?
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Yeah, so I think it's My father always told me,
you know, the quote from Winston Churchill, never never, never
give up, and that sort of stayed as my motto
throughout life, and it's really helpful for entrepreneurship, which I
think is more about perseverance than anything else. And resilience
(11:28):
is the ability to you know, not give up, to
take on challenges with a growth mindset, believing that you
can do something. If if you face a setback, you
face it, would you know this was not a mistake
(11:50):
or a failure, but learning opportunity and and and and
approach it with that belief. Every time you face challenge
is and kind of look for ways to go outside
of your comfort zone to learn and grow. So for
a six year old, we often they often face challenging
(12:14):
situations with their siblings or or at school, and you
know what we focus on is just getting back up,
trying again, approaching things with a growth mindset, being resilient
and never giving up.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Very good. Thank you, Winston Churchill. That's one of my
favorite things as well. Roger. We're gonna take a quick
break here and I'm gonna let you tell our listening
audience how they can find out more information on Nurture.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Sure should they go into that now, yes, sir, okay, yes,
So our website is Nurture dot i s, so you
can just go to www dot nurture dot i s.
On our site, you can find our app which is
(13:11):
free for now so we're in free trial data. And
you'll also see the Nurture Academy on our website, which
are a series of blog posts that are really helpful
for parents from everything like you know, screen time and
how to approach that as a parent, digital parenting, digital wellness.
(13:35):
We have doctor Rachel Coward who is our digital parenting expert.
She's a research psychologist focused on the benefits of gaming
for learning and growing, so she's featured in a lot
of those blog posts. But that's where you can find Nurture.
I hope you give it a try.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Excellent. Thank you, Roger, and we will be right back
after this quick message from Marcus Aurelius of all people.
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Speaker 1 (15:51):
We are back with Rodra Egan and he is the
founder of Nurture and as we say it up front,
we think Rodra has moved from success to significance with this.
And when you start to get into Nurture, you're going
to hear about if you put your children at the
center and then you start to put this circle around them,
(16:12):
it goes growth mindset, curiosity, resilience, critical thinking, creativity, and compassion.
And we have been studying here soft skills that should
be hard skills. One of them, Roger is learning to collaborate.
How will Nurture take that from a soft skill to
(16:34):
a hard skill for your targeted age groups of four
to seven plus.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Yeah, So, first of all, if people don't know how
Nurture works, you can imagine a child's TV show with
a set of characters. It could be from our own
originals to different ips that we have coming on, some
pretty big names that we'll be announcing in the coming months.
(17:03):
And we, unlike a regular TV show, we teach a
learning concept through the dialogue and behavior of the characters.
Let's take growth mindset for example, there might be a
challenge that two characters face one character will you know,
approach it with a fixed mindset and have a different
(17:25):
outcome than the one that approaches it with a growth mindset,
and very different from a normal TV show is we
didn't want to make learning a sort of passive, mindless experience.
We wanted to make an active learning experience. So what
happens in Nurtures The characters will follow you, and your
(17:46):
phone or your device will ring as a child, and
you'll answer it and the character and the characters will
invite you to help them problem solve and and you know,
deal with an issue that you know that was introduced
in the first part of the show. So we introduced
the learning concept in the story, and then we practice
(18:07):
and apply the skill in the what's more like a
video game. So it's a new form of interactive TV.
Although I hate that word because it usually means branching
stories and choose your own adventure. This is actually where
you get to participate in the story, which is fairly different.
So how does that help kids with collaboration? So first
(18:29):
of all, we're modeling behavior in the stories from the
characters and the dialogue, and then you know they need
to work together with that team and feel part of
the team to accomplish some of the tasks in what's
more like a video game at the at the end. Yeah,
so that's that's sort of how we how we do it.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Did you test that with your boys?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yeah? So, I mean I built nurture for my voice.
You know, at this stage in in my life and entrepreneurship,
I'm very fortunate to have had some financial success and
being able to do whatever I wanted, and I wanted
something that aligned with my purpose in life, one of
(19:16):
which is to be, you know, help my kids reach
their potential and be the best dad I can be.
So this allows me to do that and build with them,
and then also if I can do that for a
lot of other kids and parents, that's very rewarding to me.
And you know, it's also a great way to build
(19:40):
a good product, right because no one gives unfiltered, direct
feedback like a five or six year old I have
to tell you whether whether you're on the right track
or not. They're very honest and if they don't like it,
they will throw it away and not play it. So, yeah,
we get real time feed back in my household. Building together.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
It's brutal. Yeah, it is absolutely brutal. Yeah, I'm trying
to teach my grands how to play drums and golf
antique life lessons inside that at the same time. So
we're we're not at the sophistication level of nurture, but
(20:24):
we're on the outside of it because we're we're trying
to build that concept of resilience and critical thinking and
strategy and game playing, not winning, but in geography and geometry.
I mean, so it's like, you know, crazy grandparents. I
just love what you're doing, and I want to thank
(20:47):
you for what you just said about purpose helping kids
reach their potential. We talk about epiphanies here all the time,
and you've worked your butt off and your boys may
not appreciate everything that you've done in your entrepreneur entrepreneurial career,
but you have prepared yourself for this moment in time.
(21:09):
We think, so this is just a this is just
a significant stage for you. Do you wish that this
would have happened sooner? Is this or is this right time?
Right place? No?
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Well, first of all, you bring up an important part.
I think sometimes parents, especially you know, ones in very
high powered or stressful jobs, can lose sight of of
of that their most important role in life is to
be a parent. You know. It's it's the success factor
(21:46):
means that you have an entire generation of self actualized
global citizens that you know, it just would make the
whole world better if you do a good job at
it right. And so, yeah, I have to admit in
my early startups, I'm not a workaholic, but I you know,
(22:07):
startups take a lot of hard work and my family
sacrifice to let me follow my entrepreneurial dream a bit.
And especially when I was you know, in my past startup,
I was a big younger. My kids are very young,
and I just had to I just did what it took.
(22:27):
But when we were acquired by Ali Baba and I
resigned and I had some time for reflection, I realized
I didn't have the balance right. And so this time
with going into entrepreneurship, I had to have more of
a balance and and and hopefully involve my family and
my kids along and take them along the journey with
(22:50):
me and have that connection. So that's that's why I
chose this type of a startup that you know, I
could do with my kids and bring them on the
journey and spend a lot of time with them. But yeah,
I do wish that I had learned that earlier, and
(23:13):
you know, but it's not too late.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
And that's right now. I'm on, Yeah, are you, Roger,
are you implying or suggesting or inspiring dads to get
involved earlier because you're now at the ten and six
year old If you could have done this when they
(23:37):
were three and seven or two and five, would that
have been more timely? It's just or is those skill
sets that you're the are so core to nurture? Are
those more acceptable and understandable at six and ten?
Speaker 2 (23:58):
No, I think you can start early well, and first
of all, on on the dads side, yes, getting more
involved earlier, you know you have Why do we why
do we focus on four to seven year olds at nurture?
It's because those are the years there's the most cognitive development,
(24:23):
developmental growth, and it's not like they're baked after that,
but but it's it's the formative years and it's most
importantly when they're learning the most from their parents, right
as opposed to when they start to go to school
and learn from their peers and they're spending much less
time with you. So you know, you are their entire
(24:46):
universe at this sage, like literally everything. And to acknowledge
that and appreciate it and and use that for their
learning and development is why I think starting earlier is better.
It wasn't that I wasn't, you know, involved at all.
(25:07):
It's just I didn't do it intentionally as I am now.
And I think, like you said, talking to kids more
like they are adults, they can learn things much earlier
than people think they can. I think, you know, we're
teaching financial literacy and some of the adventures and nurture,
(25:27):
and of course for a four to seven year old,
that just means what is money? How do I? You know?
What can I do with my money? I can spend it,
I can save it, I can give it and give
it to charity and things. So very simple concepts, but
I think setting that base early is really important.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
It's sure is sure is last not. In preparation for
this show, I read that children three to six as
forty thousand questions during that during that time frame, And
while on holiday recently with our grandchildren, our three year
(26:10):
old grandson said what is cash? And I said, and
now here's your dad? So I love the fact that
you've got the financial side involved. Okay, a final question
for you, and then we're going to wrap up. Imagine
it's twenty forty, a generation has grown up on nurture.
(26:35):
What kind of world do you hope that you've built.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah, I think a world full of self actualized, meaning
you know, it's gone as far as to reach their
potential in whatever area that is the most passionate about. Empathetic.
I think there's a lot of tribalism in the world
and we need to better understand each other and our
(27:02):
different feedpoints, and like you mentioned earlier in the show,
that factual listening or intentional listening is really important, and empathies,
in my mind, the base skill for being able to
do that effectively. Yeah. I think there's a lot of
other things, but I think if we had those that
(27:25):
would be the most important and make our world much
better place to live in.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Absolutely, Roger Egan, this is going to be your social legacy.
You're at the right place at the right time in
our opinion. Thank you so much for being on today,
and please hang on for a minute after the show.
I've got one final question for you. Thanks again, Roger,
and tell our listeners one more time. How they can
find out more information on nurture.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
You can go to a Nurture do I. That's our
website and get our app and see our Nurture Academy
resources for parents there.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Very good. Thank you sir and folks. As we always say,
we wish you success on your way to true significance
and visit truly significant dot com today to honor those
that have lifted you up. AB great week,
Hey, welcome back to truly Significant dot com presents. I'm
Rick Tolkeiny. Our very special guest today is Roger Egan.
And Roger wasn't happy with the way his kids were
learning during the pandemic. He realized at school's prioritize academic
subjects and struggle to keep pace with rapid technological and
(00:29):
social change, meaning traditional education can no longer prepare kids
on its own. So what does Roger do. He goes
out and creates a company called Nurture. Totally fascinating to
us because not only are we parents, but we're grandparents
trying to be super grandparents. And so, Roger Egan, you're
(00:51):
on Truly Significant for one hundred reasons this morning.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Thank you for joining us. Hey, Rick, thanks for having me.
Great to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Give us a little bit about your backstory before we
plunge into eighteen questions that curious minds want to answer.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Sure, So, I'm an American entrepreneur from New Jersey. I've
started companies in a few different industries, from insurance brokerage
to my last startup was an online grocery delivery company
in Singapore, so very different path all over the place.
And now we're building an immersive learning media company called Nurture.
(01:30):
So after resigning from my last startup, which was acquired
by Ali Baba, I did that perfect timing. In February
twenty twenty, after eleven year grind wanted to take a
sabbatical year off travel the world, spend time with family,
COVID hit and instead I was in a three month
lockdown in Singapore. But it proved to be a blessing
(01:53):
in disguise because it led me to the idea for Nurture.
So I'm a dad. I have Tucson ten and six, okay,
and I have to admit as a parent. Before that,
I sort of outsourced education to school and said they're
going to take care of it. But like many parents,
during the COVID lockdowns, I got really involved in my
(02:16):
kids learning and had a lot of time on my
hands since I had resigned. I get pretty deep into things,
and I made a very important realization that led me
to the idea for Nurture, which was that I didn't
believe the traditional education system was adequately preparing our kids
for the future of life and work. I'm being a
(02:37):
tech guy and seeing where AI is going, I think
that you know, technological change is only going to accelerate,
and schools aren't putting proper attention on skills which are
life skills I call I call them like critical thinking, creativity,
problem solving, but also I guess most importantly learning how
(03:02):
to learn and think and not what to learn and think,
which is what I think schools for at least traditional
education system focuses more on. And I think that's key
because you're going to have to adapt very quickly and
learn things very fast in this accelerating technological change. So
that's what led me to the idea for nurture. And
(03:23):
then I can go into how we approached solving that
problem or helping to solve that problem.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
That would be fantastic for you to do that. Well,
first of all, you are hero status with us because
it's like if you were and you are this enterprising
entrepreneur you sell your company to Ali Baba. Now you've
moved in to the zone of significance because you are
(03:54):
all about thinking about legacy and what your kids will
be like long after your gone, and this almost ecosystem
of how do you learn versus learning? So you're my hero.
So starting with that, you've said that learning through immersive
(04:15):
play can change everything. Why do you believe that?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, so we sort of believe in what's sometimes called
a constructivist or montssory or mastery based learning philosophy, basically
learning by doing. There's a great book on it called
Lifelong Kindergarten from the creator of Scratch, which is a
programming language for kids out of mi T. But you know,
(04:46):
as an entrepreneur, I've learned that you just learned things
by actually doing them. You know, I went to business school,
but I didn't learn how to be an entrepreneur from
reading books and listening to professors. You had to roll
your sleeves up and actually get in there and do it.
Play is that form of learning by doing for kids,
(05:09):
and it's really important for social cognitive development. And yeah,
that's what we believe in for for helping kids build
the life skills of the future.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Right on. And so you have these foundational values, those
that you hope will be instilled in every nurture child.
Are there if you were to rank them, is there
a rank or they all truly significantly equal?
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Well, I think that they're linked. Right, So play can
help you be a better problem solver, critical thinking is
also linked to that. You know, in this especially in AI,
where it's really hard to tell what's real and fake
(06:05):
and what news to trust. I think it's it's all
a muscle of I have this exercise with my kids
to ask three questions before you let any information into
your brain. One is it true? Uh? And two how
do I know it's true? And then three what is
(06:26):
the maybe incentive or or of the person saying? It's?
Just just to kind of be aware of of what
hidden agendas people might have. So I find that's a
very very useful filter to to go through all this
information and misinformation or or that that that's they're going
(06:49):
to be exposed to. So yeah, I think I think
those problems solving critical thinking in the age of AI, creativity,
social mode skills, those are those are probably the core
skills that we focus on at Nurture.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
So they're all linked together. Not one is not necessarily
more important than the other. You talked about your two boys.
How are you teaching them to listen factually?
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Listen factually? Yeah, listening with intent? So we uh, you know,
like I said, if you're talking about understanding uh and
and first deciding for yourself and thinking for yourself whether
something is true that they're listening to. I just mentioned,
you know, the three questions that we have them answer.
(07:44):
Is that what you mean by listen factually?
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yes? And now I'll crack that open a little bit more.
We're studying listening here as a moving from a soft
skill to a hard skill, okay, and what we're doing
with our own grown children, much less grandchildren, because we
think it's listening factually, listening empathetically, and listening from a
(08:15):
regenerative perspective. So if you're listening to someone else and
you're building upon ideas layers, that's the kind of skill
set that we're trying to literally train without being helicopter
grandparents and parents. So does that help you understand that
question now about how do you teach listening factually?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
It does? Yeah. I think we've all met people who
are often when we're speaking to them, they're just waiting
for their term to talk and they don't feel heard
or seen. And that's an important social emotional skill. So yes, yeah,
And empathy, as you just is a very important part
(09:02):
of that, right, is you need to also care about
the person you're listening to and genuinely show them that
you you do care what they're saying, and yeah, have
empathy for what they're saying. So I think that's a
big part of listening factually as you call it. Yeah,
(09:22):
we just try to model that behavior in my house.
You know, when I'm talking to my kids, especially the
younger one on down on their level, if for standing
up six year old and just asking sort of clarifying
questions to just and repeating back what I've heard to
(09:45):
make sure they really feel that I've taken the time
to understand what they're saying and listen intently. And yeah,
so we model the behavior, is the short answer.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Very good, dad, That's good. It's not easy, is it,
because there's still a parent adult parent child relationship and
everything that you read about today is speak to your
children as adults so they can begin to grow they're
in their emotional intelligence. But it's hard as a dad,
(10:19):
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yeah, But we try to do that as much as possible.
It's you know, you want to give your kids as
much agency across across the board, right, And there's a
lot of books and it's become popular the anxious generation
and you know, not being a helicopter bomb or dad
(10:45):
letting them. There's this famous thing let them. Yeah, I
think we need to do more of that, and yes
it's important for their growth.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Indeed it is in your view, Roger, what does a
resilient child look like at six years old?
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Yeah, so I think it's My father always told me,
you know, the quote from Winston Churchill, never never, never
give up, and that sort of stayed as my motto
throughout life, and it's really helpful for entrepreneurship, which I
think is more about perseverance than anything else. And resilience
(11:28):
is the ability to you know, not give up, to
take on challenges with a growth mindset, believing that you
can do something. If if you face a setback, you
face it, would you know this was not a mistake
(11:50):
or a failure, but learning opportunity and and and and
approach it with that belief. Every time you face challenge
is and kind of look for ways to go outside
of your comfort zone to learn and grow. So for
a six year old, we often they often face challenging
(12:14):
situations with their siblings or or at school, and you
know what we focus on is just getting back up,
trying again, approaching things with a growth mindset, being resilient
and never giving up.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Very good. Thank you, Winston Churchill. That's one of my
favorite things as well. Roger. We're gonna take a quick
break here and I'm gonna let you tell our listening
audience how they can find out more information on Nurture.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Sure should they go into that now, yes, sir, okay, yes,
So our website is Nurture dot i s, so you
can just go to www dot nurture dot i s.
On our site, you can find our app which is
(13:11):
free for now so we're in free trial data. And
you'll also see the Nurture Academy on our website, which
are a series of blog posts that are really helpful
for parents from everything like you know, screen time and
how to approach that as a parent, digital parenting, digital wellness.
(13:35):
We have doctor Rachel Coward who is our digital parenting expert.
She's a research psychologist focused on the benefits of gaming
for learning and growing, so she's featured in a lot
of those blog posts. But that's where you can find Nurture.
I hope you give it a try.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Excellent. Thank you, Roger, and we will be right back
after this quick message from Marcus Aurelius of all people.
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Speaker 1 (15:51):
We are back with Rodra Egan and he is the
founder of Nurture and as we say it up front,
we think Rodra has moved from success to significance with this.
And when you start to get into Nurture, you're going
to hear about if you put your children at the
center and then you start to put this circle around them,
(16:12):
it goes growth mindset, curiosity, resilience, critical thinking, creativity, and compassion.
And we have been studying here soft skills that should
be hard skills. One of them, Roger is learning to collaborate.
How will Nurture take that from a soft skill to
(16:34):
a hard skill for your targeted age groups of four
to seven plus.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Yeah, So, first of all, if people don't know how
Nurture works, you can imagine a child's TV show with
a set of characters. It could be from our own
originals to different ips that we have coming on, some
pretty big names that we'll be announcing in the coming months.
(17:03):
And we, unlike a regular TV show, we teach a
learning concept through the dialogue and behavior of the characters.
Let's take growth mindset for example, there might be a
challenge that two characters face one character will you know,
approach it with a fixed mindset and have a different
(17:25):
outcome than the one that approaches it with a growth mindset,
and very different from a normal TV show is we
didn't want to make learning a sort of passive, mindless experience.
We wanted to make an active learning experience. So what
happens in Nurtures The characters will follow you, and your
(17:46):
phone or your device will ring as a child, and
you'll answer it and the character and the characters will
invite you to help them problem solve and and you know,
deal with an issue that you know that was introduced
in the first part of the show. So we introduced
the learning concept in the story, and then we practice
(18:07):
and apply the skill in the what's more like a
video game. So it's a new form of interactive TV.
Although I hate that word because it usually means branching
stories and choose your own adventure. This is actually where
you get to participate in the story, which is fairly different.
So how does that help kids with collaboration? So first
(18:29):
of all, we're modeling behavior in the stories from the
characters and the dialogue, and then you know they need
to work together with that team and feel part of
the team to accomplish some of the tasks in what's
more like a video game at the at the end. Yeah,
so that's that's sort of how we how we do it.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Did you test that with your boys?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yeah? So, I mean I built nurture for my voice.
You know, at this stage in in my life and entrepreneurship,
I'm very fortunate to have had some financial success and
being able to do whatever I wanted, and I wanted
something that aligned with my purpose in life, one of
(19:16):
which is to be, you know, help my kids reach
their potential and be the best dad I can be.
So this allows me to do that and build with them,
and then also if I can do that for a
lot of other kids and parents, that's very rewarding to me.
And you know, it's also a great way to build
(19:40):
a good product, right because no one gives unfiltered, direct
feedback like a five or six year old I have
to tell you whether whether you're on the right track
or not. They're very honest and if they don't like it,
they will throw it away and not play it. So, yeah,
we get real time feed back in my household. Building together.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
It's brutal. Yeah, it is absolutely brutal. Yeah, I'm trying
to teach my grands how to play drums and golf
antique life lessons inside that at the same time. So
we're we're not at the sophistication level of nurture, but
(20:24):
we're on the outside of it because we're we're trying
to build that concept of resilience and critical thinking and
strategy and game playing, not winning, but in geography and geometry.
I mean, so it's like, you know, crazy grandparents. I
just love what you're doing, and I want to thank
(20:47):
you for what you just said about purpose helping kids
reach their potential. We talk about epiphanies here all the time,
and you've worked your butt off and your boys may
not appreciate everything that you've done in your entrepreneur entrepreneurial career,
but you have prepared yourself for this moment in time.
(21:09):
We think, so this is just a this is just
a significant stage for you. Do you wish that this
would have happened sooner? Is this or is this right time?
Right place? No?
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Well, first of all, you bring up an important part.
I think sometimes parents, especially you know, ones in very
high powered or stressful jobs, can lose sight of of
of that their most important role in life is to
be a parent. You know. It's it's the success factor
(21:46):
means that you have an entire generation of self actualized
global citizens that you know, it just would make the
whole world better if you do a good job at
it right. And so, yeah, I have to admit in
my early startups, I'm not a workaholic, but I you know,
(22:07):
startups take a lot of hard work and my family
sacrifice to let me follow my entrepreneurial dream a bit.
And especially when I was you know, in my past startup,
I was a big younger. My kids are very young,
and I just had to I just did what it took.
(22:27):
But when we were acquired by Ali Baba and I
resigned and I had some time for reflection, I realized
I didn't have the balance right. And so this time
with going into entrepreneurship, I had to have more of
a balance and and and hopefully involve my family and
my kids along and take them along the journey with
(22:50):
me and have that connection. So that's that's why I
chose this type of a startup that you know, I
could do with my kids and bring them on the
journey and spend a lot of time with them. But yeah,
I do wish that I had learned that earlier, and
(23:13):
you know, but it's not too late.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
And that's right now. I'm on, Yeah, are you, Roger,
are you implying or suggesting or inspiring dads to get
involved earlier because you're now at the ten and six
year old If you could have done this when they
(23:37):
were three and seven or two and five, would that
have been more timely? It's just or is those skill
sets that you're the are so core to nurture? Are
those more acceptable and understandable at six and ten?
Speaker 2 (23:58):
No, I think you can start early well, and first
of all, on on the dads side, yes, getting more
involved earlier, you know you have Why do we why
do we focus on four to seven year olds at nurture?
It's because those are the years there's the most cognitive development,
(24:23):
developmental growth, and it's not like they're baked after that,
but but it's it's the formative years and it's most
importantly when they're learning the most from their parents, right
as opposed to when they start to go to school
and learn from their peers and they're spending much less
time with you. So you know, you are their entire
(24:46):
universe at this sage, like literally everything. And to acknowledge
that and appreciate it and and use that for their
learning and development is why I think starting earlier is better.
It wasn't that I wasn't, you know, involved at all.
(25:07):
It's just I didn't do it intentionally as I am now.
And I think, like you said, talking to kids more
like they are adults, they can learn things much earlier
than people think they can. I think, you know, we're
teaching financial literacy and some of the adventures and nurture,
(25:27):
and of course for a four to seven year old,
that just means what is money? How do I? You know?
What can I do with my money? I can spend it,
I can save it, I can give it and give
it to charity and things. So very simple concepts, but
I think setting that base early is really important.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
It's sure is sure is last not. In preparation for
this show, I read that children three to six as
forty thousand questions during that during that time frame, And
while on holiday recently with our grandchildren, our three year
(26:10):
old grandson said what is cash? And I said, and
now here's your dad? So I love the fact that
you've got the financial side involved. Okay, a final question
for you, and then we're going to wrap up. Imagine
it's twenty forty, a generation has grown up on nurture.
(26:35):
What kind of world do you hope that you've built.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah, I think a world full of self actualized, meaning
you know, it's gone as far as to reach their
potential in whatever area that is the most passionate about. Empathetic.
I think there's a lot of tribalism in the world
and we need to better understand each other and our
(27:02):
different feedpoints, and like you mentioned earlier in the show,
that factual listening or intentional listening is really important, and empathies,
in my mind, the base skill for being able to
do that effectively. Yeah. I think there's a lot of
other things, but I think if we had those that
(27:25):
would be the most important and make our world much
better place to live in.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Absolutely, Roger Egan, this is going to be your social legacy.
You're at the right place at the right time in
our opinion. Thank you so much for being on today,
and please hang on for a minute after the show.
I've got one final question for you. Thanks again, Roger,
and tell our listeners one more time. How they can
find out more information on nurture.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
You can go to a Nurture do I. That's our
website and get our app and see our Nurture Academy
resources for parents there.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Very good. Thank you sir and folks. As we always say,
we wish you success on your way to true significance
and visit truly significant dot com today to honor those
that have lifted you up. AB great week,
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