Marine V-22 Osprey Pilot on Military Innovation, Banking Tech, and Education Disruption

Vance Crowe [00:00:01] The crow flies on the podcast. Ahron Oddman, welcome to the podcast.

Ahron Oddman [00:00:08] Thanks. Thanks fans. Thanks for having me.

Vance Crowe [00:00:11] So you're in North Carolina and you have a rather odd job right now considering what's going on with Coronavirus. You are a part of an education startup that prints posters that allows teachers to be able to get kids all kinds of ideas. Only teachers and students are not in the classroom right now. So what is going on in your world right now, Ahron?

Ahron Oddman [00:00:35] Yeah, yeah. That, that's, that's very good setup. I, you know, so right now I lead a company called PSS, and like you said, we, we make tools for students and teachers. You know, our, our purpose is to create meaningful and effective learning experiences for students and teachers. And so all of our products do that. Our main one, which you mentioned, is a poster printing system. And teachers do rely heavily on posters to set their classroom environment right. And you, you know, you, you kind of alluded to the classroom is located in a building with four walls, and they've got tools. They've got the walls that they used to, to help teach lessons and other, other tools in that classroom. And yet they currently aren't in, in the classrooms. They're on Zoom, they're doing a, you know, they're, they're, they're basically doing what we're doing right now using technology to communicate. So, you know, we are, we are really close with our schools and our teachers. We're in over 2000 schools in the US and you know, this, this is a very challenging time for teachers, right? Our, our mission is to partner with them in their, in their hard journey. So we're pivoting like a lot of companies are doing to serve their customers right where they are. You know, our stance isn't, well, we can only serve you in this one circumstance if you behave exactly like we all behave, you know, prior to March 1st. So some of the things we're doing, our, our posters, which have educational content on them, we, we can digitize those.

Ahron Oddman [00:02:14] So we're doing that so that teachers can still use that same content, but now they could use it on Zoom. And you know, quite honestly, I've heard a lot of people say, you know, Corona virus and COVID-19 isn't changing business is just, it's an accelerate, it's accelerating things that would've happened anyway. So in a lot of ways for our company, you know, while we obviously are all very cautious in watching where the virus goes, we are, we're taking that cue from our customers and, and fast forwarding and pulling technology and to help 'em.

Vance Crowe [00:02:48] So you have an interesting view on education right now because you're providing a business service for them. And I think right now people are thinking about education in ways they had never thought about it before. So you have the parents that are sitting there pulling their hair out because they're trying to get work done, and they also have to educate their kids. And then you also have some parents that are like, Hey, my kid was always getting in trouble in school. But now that I can do more hands-on learning, that I can pay attention to what their needs are, like they're doing really, really well. Maybe my teacher was just a crappy teacher, or maybe that situation wasn't right. Like, so you must be hearing this from all angles, but talking to a lot of teachers, what's your take on what's going on in the land of teaching now that Coronavirus is going on?

Ahron Oddman [00:03:32] Yeah, we're, we're hearing a lot of that feedback among other feedback as well. You know, so, so I, I think we've gotta explore the fact that the classroom environment is a powerful one and it's, it's one that has a place in society, right? I, I don't think most of us either in education or serving education would co-sign to the fact that every student should now just stay home and learn via Zoom and the internet at the same time. We've gotta be honest enough and courageous enough to recognize that that environment, which is really great for some students, has limitations. And so, you're right, there are some students that have come alive. I've heard stories of students who didn't get great grades, they weren't really engaged in the classroom, and they're now top performers. 'cause they're learning from home. They're kind of learning at their own pace. And so it's forcing educators to do what they, what they, what they were doing anyway and always have wanted to do, which is to individualize education. That's the big theme in, in, and it is been the big theme in education for the last few years. But again, being an accelerant now, we really get to dig into individualization and say, look, some students probably shouldn't be sent back to the classroom environment, at least not on a full-time basis, because there are things about that environment that just constrain their, their natural potential.

Ahron Oddman [00:05:05] And then there are some students who were really great in the classroom environment, but are struggling now, you know, because they're kind of, they have to be a bit more self-directed and they're leaning a bit more on the resources at home. So I think, we'll, I think hopefully we'll be courageous enough to see a good mix as we return back to school.

Vance Crowe [00:05:25] So you're a guy that has a degree from Harvard, right? So you had to have known how to navigate the game better than almost everyone else in the world. Did you do well in the classroom setting?

Ahron Oddman [00:05:40] I did, yeah. I, I did well in the classroom setting. I took to it, you know, I was, I probably fall in that bucket of, of, of students that, that needed that, that environment or where it just kind of fit my learning modality, which I think were all programmed to learn in different ways, in different modes. So the classroom environment always did suit me, suit me pretty well. What I, what I would say is, is I had a resource that a lot of kids have, but not enough kids have. And that's, I also had very supportive parents who were engaged in my education. So it was really a one-two punch, right? The classroom environment set gave a lot of resources, obviously a lot of lessons, but then my parents always set the tone. So even kind of our, our previous discussion a few minutes ago where we see some kids thriving in this kind of remote learning environment, and some kids not thriving is a third party there, there's a, there's a student, there's a teacher, but the third party are those home educators. And they, they play a huge role and they, they played a huge role for me.

Vance Crowe [00:06:51] So you were at one point in banking before you got into education, so it seems like, you know, a winding path that you would be running, you know, an education program, whereas before you were at a startup for banks trying to get them more online. How, how in the world did this transition happen?

Ahron Oddman [00:07:11] You, you know, it happened, it happened pretty na pretty naturally. I know this industries seem pretty far apart, but the underlying theme behind those two is that in both what I'm doing currently in education at PSS, what I was doing previously at nCino with banking and financial services, is we were trying to bring tools and technology to the people in the trenches of those industries. So, you know, no one would look at me and say, well, you were, you know, you were a financial services wizard, you know, you understood, you know, lending and credit in financial needs. And at the same time, no one would say you're an educational genius. You, you understand, you know, the, the tough elements of how to educate a society. The, i I don't claim to be a domain expert in any of those. You know, my domain is technology and change management, which those things, you know, those two things are kind of ubiquitous and really industry agnostic. Although I, I, I deeply care about both of those industries.

Vance Crowe [00:08:18] This has gotta be your Christmas then, man, because like, there is no time when people have been like, we're going digital and all the people that were lagging behind or, so in the ag world, which I spend a lot of time in agriculture, one of the big things that you heard all the time was, Hey, I would let you guys move this system to be an online where, where farmer Joe could just buy online, but he really needs somebody there, and you gotta be there and, you know, import the data. He's never gonna wanna do that. Well, when coronavirus hit and all of a sudden those salespeople couldn't go out. Turns out farmer John did know how to use the internet. He did know how to order things online, and he didn't need that salesman.

Ahron Oddman [00:08:56] Yep. That's, that's one, I mean, that line that you said farmer, John doesn't wanna do it. You know, there's so that line has so many cousins and, you know, the parents of that thinking are really, it's always been done this way. Right? And that's said in every industry. It was said to me a lot in the military, it, it was said to me a ton in banking. You know, when we were taking banks, community banks, regional banks, and really the the largest banks in the us we were taking them online. We were taking customer data into the cloud and encouraging our lenders to put online applications, put mobile loan applications out there. And they, well, you know, I, you know, a lot of my population, or we, we, we, we work with ag lenders, they're actually some of my favorites. But, you know, our, our lenders just don't wanna do it. They're not tech savvy, which you, you know, in the ag space, like that's gotta be one of the most tech savvy industries with what, with what they're doing with harvesting and, and yields and those sorts of things. So we always just leaned in and said, well, that, yeah, that may be true. You know, your customer well, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna pretend you don't, but I've got a feeling your customer orders things on Amazon, right? The numbers just kind of bear that out. I've got a feeling that your customer keeps in touch with their family, you know, via FaceTime or, or Zoom or what have you. And we just lean into it. It's, it's, it's always a slow slog until it's not.

Ahron Oddman [00:10:29] Right? I'm this big proponent of the power rule versus kind of the bell curve where things kind of bell curve things happen really predictably. And you can model them out in, they're linear. And, and, and actually that doesn't really represent real life. Real life is more dominated by the any 80 20 rule, right? The power curve, which is things happen really slowly at first, and then they unfold much faster than you ever thought they could.

Vance Crowe [00:10:56] Yeah. I'm totally swept up by the idea of a parade distribution that in any given group of people, 20% of the people are doing 80% of the work or whatever your stra you know, you're getting 80% of your business through 20% of your clients. It's one of those things that once you see that out in the world, you can't help but see Pato distributions everywhere and bell curves, you see those. But only when we're saying, all right, let's pick a median and then make sure that everybody fits on both sides of that, of that curve. Whereas a Pareto distribution, it doesn't matter whether you're playing hockey or you're selling stocks or whatever, there's always gonna be a few people that get shots on goal way more than everybody else. And then the, and technology only amplifies that enormously.

Ahron Oddman [00:11:43] That's right. Yeah. That, that's exactly right. Is it, you know, I, I think about this principle a lot because when it kind of hit me in the head, you see it everywhere, right? That, that bell curve, that distribution is really forced. It's rather artificial. It describes a very few naturally occurring phenomenon. And I think about a lot too, especially someone with young kids. 'cause I, I think about the ideas that we hold or the ideas that we miss, and those are one of the big powerful ideas that I, you know, I wanna ensure my kids understand, which is, you know, there's a lot of rules in this life that we didn't, that we didn't make or create or can influence, but just take a hold of this phenomenon and observe it unfold. And ultimately, you know, use it, use it for good and don't, don't try to fight it, you know, because it's this, it's this tidal wave that just kind of moves the world.

Vance Crowe [00:12:39] There is something going on when I was coming up through school where there was a real push away from things like understanding statistics and like, so I don't know where you come off on this, but as I've looked into things like iq, they do actually fall into a bell distribution, right? Like, you could argue about how valid is the IQ test or what does it actually measure? But if you go give that test over time, you will see half of the people fall below whatever, 100 IQ and half of the people go above, and it kind of goes out in a distribution. I had been convinced that that was actually not real. And it wasn't until I was in my thirties when people started explaining to me, pato distributions, normal distributions, that you start being like, wait a second, there are things out there that we can detect. And they happen over and over and over and over again. Once you've just, somebody's shown you the math, it's plain as they, why, why do you think people weren't teaching this for a while?

Ahron Oddman [00:13:38] You know, I, I think because it's, I think because it's not a naturally, so it is naturally occurring. There's some evidence that that points to the fact that, you know, just our brains from an evolution standpoint can't comprehend. You know, it's hard for us to comprehend infinity, right? So it's very hard to comprehend a phenomena is really as violent or seemingly unfair as Pareto's principle. And in some ways you could argue, man, that's real. That's unfair. That's unfair to think that, you know, 20% of the population holds 80% of the wealth. And, and we can have those debates and, and, and we should, right? But unfairness doesn't equate to it being untrue. And so, you're right, the bell curve is useful in things like iq. It's also useful in things like height and weight. Like there aren't people that are 20 feet tall, right? There's an average height for a male and there's average height for female, and everyone falls within, you know, one or two standard deviations for those things. But, but what we can't do is then take that observation and that framework and apply it to the rest of the rest of real life, what it'll cause it'll, it'll change your behavior and your outlook and really, cause I think a lot of pain and anxiety when you observe a world that, oh man, that just doesn't, you know, I, I understand the bell curve, but this, this phenomenon doesn't fit into it.

Ahron Oddman [00:15:13] Why is this happening? I, I think that's kind of part of the reason, you know, why, why it isn't taught and really hammered, hammered home. Because in some ways Pareto's principle is violent, it is unfair, you know, it just, it doesn't feel right or, or natural. But, but, but I think it is.

Vance Crowe [00:15:34] Yeah. You know, as you're describing this, I'm actually feeling a sense of relief from a, a form of resentment that I've had for a long time. Because once I started to realize like, wait a second, there are some natural laws. It did cause me to look at the world differently. And before I was in my thirties, it was probably good for me not to be evaluating, are you above the median iq? Like, are you below it? Like, it's better for me. I I can see why when you start internalizing too much of those power laws that you start saying, well, the world has to be this way, and you stop looking for, for the nuance. That's really, that's insightful. I, so you mentioned that you were in the military, man, your path keeps getting weirder and weirder. What point did you go into the military? Why, why did you decide to do that?

Ahron Oddman [00:16:21] Yeah, it was, you know, it started a, as a childhood dream. I mean, it's, you know, it's kind of a corny story, but, you know, my uncles were in the military and I looked up to them and they were in the Air force, and so we were always around Air force bases and planes and air shows. And I said, you know, I wanna fly for the military. So it was really like an early sense of adventure for me. And so after high school, you know, I, I applied to the branches of the military that had airplanes, had a lot of 'em, like the Air Force and actually the Navy and Marine Corps, which is kind of counterintuitive, but they have as many planes as the Air Force does. And ended up going to the Naval Academy, which, which was a blessing and was a Marine Marine Corps pilot after that. And was lucky enough to be selected to do that. And really just had nine years of adventure. I didn't think about bell curves or power laws, you know, to your point, like kind of you reflect on your twenties and, you know, just, just had a sense, had a sense of adventure, had a sense of camaraderie, got to see a lot of the world's deserts, you know, which you wouldn't, you wouldn't naturally go to, which is good. I got out of my, my, just into my twenties and I could go see cooler places as I age in life. So yeah, they, I think from an industry standpoint, like it doesn't seem to hang together, but it doesn't, it doesn't feel unnatural or jarring to me, you know?

Ahron Oddman [00:17:58] 'cause they've just kind of been these steady tenets of, of technology, you know, people say we're living in the fourth industrial revolution, right? Where the digital age is gonna change everything. And we saw that in the military, you know, I got to fly a plane, you know, that was basically a transformer, you know, it's a V 22 Osprey, which is half helicopter, half twin aircraft. And, and I, I heard the same thing. And, you know, being, you know, 23, I'm like, yeah, I wanna do that. I wanna do that thing, right? But the same thing you talked about in your world in, in ag lending, and I saw in banking where, ah, we don't, we always did it this way. I mean, that aircraft was actually a pariah. It was rejected by the legacy war fighters in, in all branches, the military, this thing will never work. You know, we don't really need it. We've got all these other tools and aircraft we've been using, not looking, you know, ahead into the future and embracing that. So that was actually my first encounter with, okay, the inertia of status quo. Here's a transformational technology. And that was the first time I saw everyone that was a naysayer flip in a year or two as we took that aircraft into the battle space. And we really shrunk the battle space, because you could land as a helicopter and very versatile, but then you're flying three times as fast as a helicopter. So there were generals who are, are on record and published saying, this thing will never work.

Ahron Oddman [00:19:34] We don't need it. It's too difficult. Two or three years later saying, you know, my success was due to having this aircraft in the battle space.

Vance Crowe [00:19:43] What is, what is that like to be flying? I mean, like in the military, you think, Hey, everybody gets along, everybody likes those planes, and those planes just go shoot somebody else. But to think about like the plane, the, the actual equipment being rejected, having that at somebody's fingertips and they say, nah, I don't, I don't wanna use that. Is that what was going on when you first started?

Ahron Oddman [00:20:05] Yeah, that's, that's exactly what was going on. I mean, it, you know, that aircraft is transformational and it had a long runup, it had a long research and development history, and some of it, you know, is tragic and, and difficult. You know, when you're trying to do transformational things, that tends to happen. And so, you know, we had some tragic accidents as we spent 10 years developing this aircraft while the rest of the military was being prepared for whatever came our nation's way. So they're kind of looking back like, what are these, what are these guys doing? They're not up here in the front lines helping us. They're back there playing with this toy. But, you know, just like every industry, like they'll, they'll be these innovators that just kinda get this conviction and say, no, now remember, our goals are all aligned. I care about the same things you do protecting this country. But this is how I express, you know, my love for the country and for our, our, our Marine Corps is by pouring ourself into this technology. Because five, 10 years from now, we're all gonna say, oh, we could have, you know, we can't live without it. And history is, is generally on the innovator side. History always shows those things that were very weird or niche or ahead of its time until you look back and you say, oh yeah, the cost is worth it, you know, it's ubiquitous. I can't live without it from the fridge to the car. I mean, these are like, these are really novel, fairly boring items that are non-controversial for the most part that, you know, 110 years ago, Henry Ford and the Model T, you know, were, were a joke in the business press,

Vance Crowe [00:21:50] But there's a big difference between the Model T and the refrigerator where it's like, all right, you know, we can measure whether it gets cold or not, or whether it keeps the, the cars moving at 35 miles an hour, but you're getting into a hella jet that has never been proven, and you're like, all right, I'm gonna get in here. When you sit down to start playing with this toy before it's an accepted tool, are you realizing, hey, every time I, I sit down in here, I'm, I'm, I may, I may not walk out of this plane. I don't, I don't know a polite way to ask that.

Ahron Oddman [00:22:25] Yeah, yeah. You cer you certainly do, right? So, you know, the sense of adventure kind of takes you through it. You, you know, it's, we never looked back at it and said, oh, oh, we're courageous. Or risk takers. Actually, I think entrepreneur entrepreneurs and innovators tend to tend to be very conscious. They're the most conscious of the risks involved. And yeah, that was, that was certainly way, way, way far back in our minds. But again, you're, you're kind of driven by this, you know, by this love, by this passion to improve. And, you know, we, we all know that the value and the importance of a higher cause. And so you, you know, that sits in front of any kind of calculus of, oh, I, you know, of a personal harm or personal loss off,

Vance Crowe [00:23:19] You know, I, I was a guy, I wasn't doing anywhere near what you were doing, but I was on my own adventures running around in the Peace Corps, and I was decking on a ship and, and did some weird things. And to me, getting older has made it so I'm perfectly comfortable during coronavirus. It's been nice to be at home for two months and to spend a bunch of time with my pregnant wife. And I mean, there's downsides to it, but really some big upsides. But I think about the life of a pilot, right? Like a, an a military going into combat, flying your hella jet, like this seems like a really hard ride to get off of. Why did you ever get off that ride?

Ahron Oddman [00:23:59] Yeah, yeah. Well, first of all, congratulations to, to you and your family.

Vance Crowe [00:24:03] That's,

Ahron Oddman [00:24:04] That's gonna be awesome. All parents welcome more, more parents to the,

Vance Crowe [00:24:10] I've noticed that every time I tell somebody, they get a big smile on their face and they're like, you don't know what you're in for, but you're in for a ride.

Ahron Oddman [00:24:17] Yeah. Part of the smile is, is is a bit out villainous. Like, just wait. But, but the babies are, babies are awesome. You know, babies are undefeated. Everyone loves babies in terms of getting off that wild ride. It, it actually does it, it a lot has to do with family. And I kind of just felt a natural chapter, you know, come to an end where, you know, I first fell in love with aviation when I was nine. I got outta the military, you know, at 29. I got to do, you know, what I wanted to, to, to do and live my dream for nine years. And, you know, I, I met my wife and, you know, we, we together kind of shared a vision for what our, our family, you know, life would be like. And my hats off. And I've got a ton of respect for, you know, you know, my, my brothers and sisters in arms who are still in with families and making that work. Quite honestly, that's, I think, harder than going to combat or harder than, you know, hopping in tanks or planes is, you know, keeping that, that that part of your life is balancing those two. So for me, it just, it just felt like a natural, a natural close to that chapter. You know, there's, there's always kind of the tactical things like, you know, in the military, your initial commitment as a pilot is about nine or 10 years.

Ahron Oddman [00:25:49] And if you stay beyond that, you, you transition into a bit more of management, middle management on a road to executive management and you know, so there's a little less flying there, and it's a commitment that the military asks you to make. And I actually think it's, it's the way it should be that, you know, just right there around that nine or 10 mark, you know, if you're gonna make a career of it, you kind of double down for another nine or 10 years. And so, you know, there's a lot of things where the military actually does give you space and say, Hey, it's been a while ride. You've served your time. You know, I I, I had my commanding general, I got to fly with him in the last few months that I was in, and I was nervous to tell him that I was applying to grad school from getting out, you know, 'cause we call the Marine Corps the gun club, like, you know, it's, you know, you're, you're one of us or you're not. And you know, he, someone told him and he said, Hey man, I heard you, you're applying to grad schools. And I was like, ah, yes sir. Yep, that's what I hear. And he said, man, we need good marines in the Marine Corps and we need good Marines outta the Marine Corps. So anything I could do to help you write you a letter of recommendation. And that, that kind of was, that put me at ease and was, you know, kind of the start of some good closure where I said, yeah, we, you know, we do need good veterans out of the service as well.

Vance Crowe [00:27:10] So you're at this weird junction where you are pushing the edges of innovation. You, you've gone into banking and pushed the edges, you're going into education. But as you look back and you see the innovation going on in the military, you see like the rise of drones and the separation between the person pulling the trigger being hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away. Yeah. What do you think as a, as a person that's been in combat, what, how should we, as regular citizens think about drone combat?

Ahron Oddman [00:27:39] Yeah, combat. Yeah. It's, it's coming. I mean, it's already here and, you know, the military is, is is really leaning into it. It's, it's almost futuristic and, and Star Wars, like, you know, our fighting forces are military. We've got some core values that extend all the way back to, you know, the ancient Romans and, you know, the warriors of, of history and those values, those will, those will be the things that are consistent. So I think, you know, for folks like me too that aren't in, in the military anymore and are kind of watching and supporting our military forces, I think we should, you know, make sure that the military sticks to those values that are kind of ubiquitous, that are timeless even, I would say. And the modality, the, you know, the weapons, the way warfare looks has always been evolving. And so it's gonna, it's gonna continue to do so, but, but our values to be the things that we, that we clinging to and will help us orient around this new world. And it'll, it'll present new challenges, new opportunities, but, but that, that's kind of how I look at it. Are we sticking to those core values?

Vance Crowe [00:28:57] Yeah, I mean, it's like a very weird thing because on the one hand, who would advocate like, Hey, I wanna put more people up in the air so that when they're shooting at somebody else, they can be shot at like, Hey, if we've gotten advantage, let's take it. But on the other hand, it's this very surreal, like, almost like playing a video game and, and the amount of force you can exert on somebody far, far away with virtually no consequences coming back at you, at least in the short term, it's a bizarre thing for, for regular civilians to take in.

Ahron Oddman [00:29:29] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I kind of think of it like, you know, the term moral hazard was thrown around, you know, in 2008, 2009 with the financial crisis, right? It's that it's that skin in the game conversation, right? If you can make loans or do financial products and have no repercussions, that'll tend to, that'll tend to shape your behavior and you'll behave differently and sometimes in adverse ways. And so I think that's what you're hitting on, which is, you know, if you have to be on the battlefield and be up close to an adversary, you know, you, you're gonna have you, you know, you have the elements of fear and courage, but you also have respect for that other human life as much as your own and you know the people that you're fighting with and that'll drive your behavior. So that's really what I was alluding to at the values. So because we have drones and, you know, maybe our citizens, our fighting force is still here in the us, how does that drive public policy and public sentiment? Does that mean that, you know, the executive branch and the Congress are gonna be more willing to go into and use force in times when they probably wouldn't because those are their constituents that you have to physically ship to a battle space. You know, those are the kind of things that would worry me if they start to develop. And that's why I say we gotta, we still have to cling to those, you know, those core values of when to use force, how to use force, how to rebuild, you know, how to really win the piece.

Ahron Oddman [00:31:01] Those, those, those sorts of things. But, but we're gonna have to answer all of those, right? New technology forces us to answer all of those moral, moral questions. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:31:10] I mean, I think that that precisely what we're going through right now with Coronavirus is, is gonna force us to address, like, how do we want kids to, to be spending their time during the day? In the past it was, it was just automatic. It was, well, you go to school at eight o'clock and you have snack time at 10 and lunch and then recess. That's all out the window. And now we get to decide which way do we wanna do it. As you look at your kids and their future, what do you hope gets added into the educational experience that maybe wasn't, wasn't easy to, to do before Coronavirus?

Ahron Oddman [00:31:47] Yeah. Yeah. That's that, there's a lot there. I think about my wife and I are, we homeschool, so we, we think, you know, deeply about like the learning environment during

Vance Crowe [00:31:58] Learning during, did you homeschooled before this all began?

Ahron Oddman [00:32:01] I did. I did. Yeah. So like every, when everyone was joining us and homeschooling, we were like, welcome aboard. You know, it's, it's a, it's a blast. And in, in homeschool, when we talk about homeschool versus schooling outside the home and in public schools, and I actually believe in both. I think there's a, a role and a place for both. Oftentimes these ideas are pitted against each other in this zero sum conversation, which I, I don't, I don't believe in. So there's a role for both. And actually, I, I think our kids will end up doing both. I think they'll be homeschooled for part of their schooling and they'll be, they'll be in a school outside the home for, for part of their education. But, but I, I bring up, you know, our, our kind of viewpoints about homeschooling. 'cause it, it, it kind of, it arms and it, you know, supplies the answer to the, the question, you know, you ask, which is, you know, kind of, what do I wish would get added? Well, if there's a lot of elements of, of homeschooling that I hope do get added, you know, to, to the out of, you know, the out of homeschooling public and private schools where we, where we kind of step back and be a bit more observant and come, I think come to few realizations is one that young kids are learning machines, right? We know the neuroscience shows it. Social observation shows that they were born to observe their environments to learn. They naturally conduct tests, although we may never call them, you know, tests, but they can conduct experiments and get to answers very rapidly.

Ahron Oddman [00:33:36] And they do so in individual ways. So if we step back and learn and look at the kid, look at children as learning machines, we'll, we'll see. I think we'll restructure our schedule, right? And so homeschooling, I think a lot of parents do it because it provides flexibility. It's, it's because it's not at scale, it's not as rigid as the public school day has to be. You, you say it yourself, you go at eight, the buses roll in, you go, you know, to your first

Vance Crowe [00:34:02] Yeah. You wanna do something at scale, you gotta standardize. And if you don't standardize, the only way around that is technology in some way.

Ahron Oddman [00:34:09] Well, well, I, I think you just hit the nail on the head is we gotta do it at scale. We must, 'cause we've gotta, you know, have a learned society. We have to educate all our kids, but we also have to, and, and education is coming around to this, we have to recognize individual different learning styles and habits and paces of different kids and kind of respect their own natural ability to learn and somehow find a way to do that at scale. And I, and I, I think you're exactly right. I think technology is a part of it. It'll be uncomfortable. It'll force us to reeducate teachers. It'll, it'll change the way we, we run our teaching colleges for sure. But, but, but I've no doubt that, that we can get there.

Vance Crowe [00:34:57] Yeah, there's a, I mean, you were right about coronavirus just making things happen faster. Because what it does is it says, Hey, the complaints that you were using or the, or the reasons that you were using, now we've got other problems that are bigger than those resistances. And so you imagine like the, well, we can't do lessons online because not everybody has access to wifi. Well, when all of a sudden no one can go to school. Now the people that don't have access to wifi or don't have a, a way to get on the internet, we start trying to solve that problem. And it's really just the, the 20% maybe that don't have it, and then they can come on to the larger system. But I, I am the, the teaching system in the United States seems deeply entrenched in the way that they were doing it because it's been around for so long, right? It's, it's probably the institution that's been around, the only one longer is probably the military. So making changes within the education industry is, I think very, very difficult.

Ahron Oddman [00:35:53] Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that helps you, the theme to my, to my career is going into deeply entrenched industries and, and challenging some of these norms or the way things maybe I should, maybe I should, next industry I go into, I should, I should do like an entrenchment measure and maybe go into a newer industry. But, but, but that really is the common theme. You know, you're exactly right. Education is deeply entrenched in a way that, you know, I, I kind of always thought, but I'm only realizing until you're up close and you're just like, guys, we've gotta come together and stress test all of these ideas that we hold to be so sacred because the mission, we're all aligned in the mission. No one there, there's no political party or faction that says, ah, no one needs education. We don't need to learn basic leave.

Vance Crowe [00:36:47] Yeah, leave those guys behind, don't worry about them. Let's just pass on them. Yeah,

Ahron Oddman [00:36:50] Yeah, no, you know that, so that's, you find the points of agreement and then you build from there knowing that, you know, every idea or tenant that we have held should be stress task. And some of 'em, you know, may, may in fact may in fact go away, but, but what you said about solving for, you know, the internet. So on the flip side, let's go back to the osprey. We, a lot of us always thought, what, think of a world in which we didn't develop this technology and perhaps our enemy did, or even maybe no one did develop this, you know, this hybrid aircraft. But then we would be sitting around a campfire dreaming like, man, what if we had this, you know, kind of helicopter thing that could land here, but then fly faster, right? We would actually, the the thing we did with, with that helicopter is we actually save more people than, you know, than we, than we sought to try to kill or harm. Because what what happens in with battlefield industry in injuries is you've got this thing called the magic hour. It's the golden hour. It's the same thing as if you get in a car accident. It's why we place hospitals where we place them, and we have life flight and ambulances. Because if you get in the traumatic in accident and you have a traumatic injury, you know, here's Pareto's principle again, it doesn't unfold slowly. We, we've got a very limited amount of time to get you first aid care. And so that's what we use the osprey for, is to say, we can now get you to a trauma center much further away, much faster. And so as I, as I pull it forward to education, you know, look, look, now that we're doing remote learning or we're forced to do remote learning, not that we chose to look at the problems, we've unfaced, you know, we've unfaced the problems that there's a lot of kids that don't have access to broadband internet.

Ahron Oddman [00:38:37] You know, so that, that's the, that's the equivalent of basically saying you can't come to school, all the rest of you can. We're not even sending the school bus to your neighborhood. And so we're gonna go and fix that, that broadband problem. And we will, we've got the infrastructure and the resource to do it. But it just makes you sit back and think, well, well, why do we even, why do we even let that, that that circumstance unfold in the first place? It was probably someone that said, ah, we don't need broadband ever anywhere. You know, they've gotten along fine without it. These are, these are the, the negative second and third order effects of when you don't take care of, of those, those kind of issues that are coming down the road.

Vance Crowe [00:39:18] Yeah. I, education is such a difficult one because you think about one of the big complaints that people have, if you have a student that is excelling, but they're maybe not at the top end, they're, they're, they're just, they're doing better than most. They're maybe at the beginning of that 20%, and they look around and say, well, we're making all of these accommodations to bring along the slower people, but what's happening to my kid that's slightly above average, he actually, or she gets nothing. And so you've got all of these weights pushing against the volume of people on one side of the distribution where they don't have access. And then you've got people that are getting great advantage and they're getting propelled forward. And then you've got this big swath in the middle that like, maybe they aren't getting anything extra. Maybe they are being held back. I don't know. But when you're in the education space, it appears to me that you have all of the forces of that distribution pulling on one another.

Ahron Oddman [00:40:14] Yeah. Ab absolutely. Well, you know, first of it's, it's al it's already gonna be an emotionally charged debate because there's kids involved, right? And everyone wants the best for their kids, right? As, as we should. And, and as a society, I think we've gotta get to the point where we want the best for all kids, right? Like, I don't, I don't, not only am I responsible for the education of, of my kids, but I'm responsible for the education of, you know, your kid once it's born and my neighbor's kid. And that sounds kind of heavy and weighty, but it, but it actually just makes, it actually just makes economic and societal sense to have that belief system. But you're right, there's all these forces pulling, and for a lot of time, because education had to be done at scale, you kind of had to pick someplace on that kind of curve to focus on, you know, no, do we focus on the advanced students that are running really fast? Well, most people are saying, well, we can, we can't do that. 'cause then there's 80% of people, okay, do we focus on the middle? Because that's where the most, you know, you kind of get into this utilitarian philosophy. Let's do the most good for the most people. And that's kind of where education has been, is kind of that middle, that median, you know, plus or minus the standard deviation. And then of course you have, you know, the kids that seemingly are underperforming. So most of education is pointing at the middle, that, that middle part of the curve. And then, then you get the advent of like, AP courses or gifted programs. 'cause we gotta do something with these kids.

Ahron Oddman [00:41:46] They're, they're getting bored actually. They'll just cause more problems if we don't do something with 'em. And then of course, you do have, you do have, you know, programs for the kids, probably not enough programs. I may argue for the kids that aren't, that aren't, you know, they're underperforming seemingly. So that is kind of the fundamental problem, I think with the way it's structured. Now, education is, again, I'm very hopeful. 'cause if it's slowly inching towards this phrase you'll keep hearing, which is individualized education or personalized, they're kind of interchangeable phrases. And a lot of states, their depart, their boards of education are getting on board with that to say, well, well let's, let's kind of, let's look at, let's look at, try to look at this a different way that let's look at the kids that are underperforming. What we're finding is that if you can design a curriculum meant for them, their learning style, their ability, their current abilities, you actually will get a better outcome. And five, 10 years down the road, their performance will actually look very similar to the high achievers. They just needed a program that was, that was tailored to them. Again, 'cause we know more about neuroscience and we know, we know that kids are just naturally learning machines. So that's where it's going. My hope is that that COVID kind of speeds that up. I think it will. We're seeing individual individualization everywhere else we're seeing it with, with, with Netflix, with Amazon, you know, all of our services, particularly in, in consumerism and entertainment are already getting there.

Ahron Oddman [00:43:21] Mostly 'cause of ai. And so we just have to pull that into the classroom and into education.

Vance Crowe [00:43:28] Yeah. And you juxtapose that against something like a term that I hear all the time, what evidence-based medicine. And somebody pointed out to me that evidence-based medicine means that you're using statistics to decide what this one individual should have instead of moving towards the personalized medicine, which is not using statistics, it's trying to use some combination of knowledge that we have and how other people respond. But what is going on specifically with you? And to think about this in terms of education where, you know, with medicine, you can just wait till the people get sick. But with education, it is, this person is young, we gotta do it now. We can't wait to make a decision. So I, we don't have that much time, but I'm totally sold on whatever it is that you're working on. So tell us about your business. What is going on with your education program? Who, who is it right for? Who should learn more about it?

Ahron Oddman [00:44:19] Yeah. Yeah. I, I appreciate that opportunity. So, you know, currently today, you know, we, we've kind of met teachers and students in schools where they are, right? Which is a classroom focused environment. You know, we have these four walls and we're always thinking about creating the right learning environment and learning experiences. And so we focused on the visual media and visual media content in the form of posters. And that's extremely powerful, right? 'cause we're processing images, things get ingrained and repetitive. Seeing these concepts over and over again really do help our students and, and their, their educational outcomes. What what we're, what we're doing now is saying, okay, we, we've really got this niche and the specialty with visual content. We're very close to teachers. We know the curriculum. How can we take other content and other visual media that we see that our, our students and our kids really like outside of the school, right? They're on Instagram, they're on Snapchat and TikTok and other things on, you know, slowly becoming too old to even and get on. But how do we take those, those, those media, those natural things that they're drawn to and really invigorate them and inspire them? And how do we then bring that in to the classroom? So we're now looking at digital, kind of this mix of the analog and digital. It's also a space that I'm really intrigued by. 'cause when I sit with my technology friends, they're digital, digital, digital only.

Ahron Oddman [00:45:55] Well guys, we're, we're atoms. We live in a carbon based, you know, world. There's, let's do atoms, electrons, and so we're gonna continue to do posters, but what does it look like if a student can hold their smartphone over the poster? And that poster is then animated, like augmented reality and concepts literally start to move and come to life. Well, a that just sounds cool as I sit with my technology friends, but, but b we know that, you know, a picture's worth a thousand words, a video's worth a thousand pictures. And so we believe we can, we can give more powerful concepts, similar learn experiences with technology like that. I mean, and the list goes on and on. And so these are the things that we're developing. And quite honestly, because of the current COVID situation, our schools are, are much more receptive to it. So there's a hundred thousand public schools, K through 12 in the US is another 30,000 private schools. They're all in our market. And, you know, we're just working our hardest to develop good products and then get the word out to them.

Vance Crowe [00:47:01] Well, my good buddy Travis Liebig from St. Louis Bank, wrote me a couple days ago and he was like, you have to inter interview Ahron Oddman. Like, you, you will love it. And I was like, I don't education. What are you talking about? This has been a wild ride. And if I didn't have to go right now, I would, I would stay on with you for a long time. So I hope you'll come back. I'd love to keep talking about the military, about what it's like to be a, a fighter pilot. What, what is, what is it education, how is Coronavirus panning out? This was a wild conversation. I only wish I'd saved more time for it. If people wanted to get a hold of you, if they wanted to learn more about your company or find you on social media, how would they do it?

Ahron Oddman [00:47:39] Yeah, for sure. So a I totally second that. This has been awesome. Travis kind of, you know, had certainly had high praise for you. And, you know, I thought we'd have a spirited conversation, which, which I've enjoyed. I'd certainly come back, you know, if you're trying to find me personally, I'm at Ahron Oddman on Twitter and on Medium, you know, writing, trying to get these ideas out. Our company is called PSS, our full name is Presentation System South. So if you Google that, you'd, you'd find our website or you can go, just go to pss.co and you'll find us and, and reach out to us. You know, we, we love to hear ideas and you know, we look to serve educators.

Vance Crowe [00:48:18] Well, man, this is a great conversation and we'll have you back on probably in a couple weeks. This was a lot of fun.

Ahron Oddman [00:48:24] Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I had a ton of fun. Yeah, let's, let's stay in touch and I'll, I'll be back for sure.

Vance Crowe [00:48:32] Well, thanks for sticking around all the way to the end of the podcast. This has been a wild adventure and the last couple of weeks I've had a chance to focus just on Coronavirus. Now I'm going to slow it down just a little bit and I'm gonna have less frequent interviews, but I want to go a deeper dive into them. So the audience that has come as a result of the coronavirus podcast has been amazing. The, the downloads have soared, the YouTube videos have launched into the Stratosphere. So I'm very excited about this. If you wanna help the podcast out in the next couple of weeks, I'm gonna be rolling out some new programs. So be on the lookout for it. But in the meantime, in the next two weeks, if you really love this program, do me a favor. Send an episode to one of your friends, ask them to subscribe. Let them know that this is where you're getting all kinds of great content and new ideas help the podcast grow. And in the next couple of weeks, I'll, I'll start revealing some new projects we're working on with this whole thing. So exciting times. Thank you so much. And we'll be back again soon with another interview.