The Surprising Link Between Reading & Becoming a Billionaire

[0:00]  reading as a family having someone take the time to open a book with you and and share that experience right um because when you read it comes with heart there's no way to read without it at some point your voice changes you get excited you start to show some emotion thread I feel like that's beautiful and as I kind of sit here in my mind thinking about the role and the identity that AI plays in our lives people think that it is so forward in the future right that it's so Innovative and mind-breaking right and we're talking about books which are so grounded in a past of tradition that you're creating a beautiful blend of how these Technologies come together to be able to incite and encourage people to read so when I when if I were to sign up for World reader and I'm a dad or a mom or

[0:47]  whatever and I sign up I pick from my thousands of titles that I have access to you guys are using AI to be able to suggest books that will be very much like your nth grade feacher that says here's 12 books start here to be able to incite Passion as we go through this journey together is that correct that is the that is the vision and that's where we're headed yes absolutely all right guys welcome to a brand new episode of the heart and hustle podcast now if you've been tuning into this podcast you understand the

[1:34]  insection that we talk about of heart and hustle now we're talking to an amazing leader today Rebecca who is the CEO of world reader now in today's conversation we're going to talk about her experiences growing up in a different country being a global citizen the importance of reading we're going to talk about the crisis that's in front of so many of our young individuals today our family culture and how reading has become a little bit disconnected to the pasttime that we've got to and we're going to talk about how her organization is changing that to be able to put people in a better position to have more opportunities in life Rebecca welcome to the show thanks Kenan thanks for having me this is going to be a great conversation today I really want to highlight the not only the impact of World reader but I also want to talk

[2:21]  about what made you the amazing leader who you are today now we've never had somebody on the podcast like you who is having such a global impact and I want to kind of start off by talking about the person who sits across this digital table from me so if I had to ask you a question who are you without anything that is work rated how would you describe yourself well I think I'm well aligned because it's a lot of heart and hustle right and um and I'm glad I'm your first kind of global leader that's part of your podcast series great to be here who am I one I am a person incredibly passionate about what I do every day and that is to get children reading but the question is how did I get here and like what inspires that definitely a global citizen I had the privilege of growing up in West Africa

[3:10]  in my younger years and not many people can say that um but it gives you a real understanding of diversity and exposure to new ways of thinking curiosity and so forth and my career kind of both my upbringing through Europe um as well as my studies led me into different parts of the world including East Asia Europe subsaharan Africa North Africa and It just strikes me that we as a global world have a lot of creativity and curiosity that could be harnessed to address some of the world's crisises and what we're striving to do as World readers is address the reading crisis that's facing our children today and will be continually facing them if we don't do something very very significant

[3:57]  over the next number of years where are we calling in from today we are calling in from Atlanta Georgia I've been here for about five years and uh we also have a lot of breeding concerns in this country too so Global includes the United States I want to give us an opportunity to kind of talk about the impact on your life when you were growing up as a global citizen in all the different places that you've named what are some of the biggest advantages that you think you experienced in being able to experience different cultures different perspectives and how do you think that kind of shaped your worldview because one of the things that I think we come across today is Americans specifically think that the world revolves around us and the one thing that I recognize would do us a lot more good than bad is getting exposures to

[4:45]  different cultures and perspectives so let's kind of talk about how your experiences shaped your worldview in general I think it's interesting being a leader um because when you read a lot of uh leadership books and so forth or when you're forming teams they always say form a team of individuals that have different perspectives than your own right and sometimes leaders don't want to do that they want to bring those that are closest to them so there's alignment and so forth I think my upbringing just the exposure to sagales culture to Rwandan culture to Japanese to German to Canadian US Etc brings all those perspectives together and so it just naturally makes your world view larger and you start to realize there's a lot of commonalities people have the same desire for their own success for their own children's

[5:34]  success and there's a lot of um art and beauty and understanding each other's cultures too um where you might think oh that mask looks like this or you should be interpreting and you realize it's something totally different and a beautiful story you'd never thought of so I think my upbringing both in terms of culture but also my family was very committed to social impact and that obviously kind of lines with your heart a part of your podcast in terms of really why do we do things what gets us up in the morning even if you have a job that you feel like is not socially impact driven doesn't mean that you're not volunteering or engaging and giving back to society in some way I have the privilege of doing both both in my day job um as well as part of my own personal passion let's talk a little bit

[6:23]  about the people who raised you being a part of a family that focuses on social impact is something that not a lot of people have the privilege to do so what were the early days like do you can you take us back to like an early memory of like your parents doing some work and you were engulfed in just being with different cultures and kind of what was that like so our neighborhood was um you know I was around the senales neighborhood my friends were sagales um I went to a sagales um preschool in kindergarten which was uh wonderful um I have to admit I didn't realize that I wasn't senales at that time when you're small you're just kids play you know you're you're part of the community which is wonderful I think I always saw my parents reaching out always you know people coming in needing help supporting

[7:11]  them in some way whether that was anything from come sit around the table with us or we're having a children's club and my mom having been a third grade teacher always had and still does she's 84 still has a lot of creativity into what she can bring um and give to others and so I think just um living in that type of dynamic and also having parents that expect that of you like what else are we doing how are we contributing um is very motivational it's a beautiful story you know I uh always think that we underestimate right our early childhood development and exposure to different ideas and different cultures I was privileged enough to be born in a mixed family my dad is black my mom is white and so I saw how the different cultures approach

[7:58]  different types of topics and when I was seven years old we moved to Detroit Michigan and part of my early exposure to being different was I was one of the only mixed children right in my school district which was really interesting to me and part of my story was I think I shared this previously we moved to Michigan in 1997 my mom's going to put us into a school district she finds out that we are going to be the first children of color in this school district in 1997 yeah that's fascinating and so she ended up putting us into a small Lutheran school and one of the things that I think we can Riff on a little bit was my education process at an early age was not good and unfortunately I did not have the ability to get great exposure to reading comprehension and it created ripples Downstream about how I wasn't really able to have confidence in my

[8:46]  education process it shaped my view of Education which made me go down some different paths and myself and one of the things that you had mentioned to us in our previous conversation was the global literacy crisis that we're in and in some countries nine out of 10 children cannot read by the age of 10 let's kind of talk about that Global problem and where that comes from you know I just have to repeat it I mean the the average statistic is two out of three can't read but in some of the subsaharan African countries it's nine out of 10 I mean you just think of anything that's 10 and nine of them right you think of a boat it would tilt if the world you know it would sink if we really are depending on just 10% of the population to kind of solve all the

[9:33]  world's challenges and what are we missing right um just speaking with someone in public health today and they were saying gosh there's not much you can do without reading and where does it begin it really begins right um at Birth I think part just to go back your your story is so interesting Keenan you know because you've overcome some challenges but I think there's so many kids because we weren't exposed early a to a lot of content in Rich stories it's starts to shape can I be a good reader you you compensate in different ways and so I think it's pretty solvable but it does take some commitment early on in a child's life one of the things I think I'd shared with you before which brought me into this was just the whole notion of children being in child labor and not exposed education or trafficking of

[10:22]  individuals and children and that really you know I did that for a small segment of my career but it really struck me as foundational to education was so foundational and often the reason why they were trafficked or they were in labor conditions that were unacceptable and so it you know it started me thinking what's foundational is reading and why we have these huge statistics even though we've invested millions and billions of dollars into um school systems right we build schools we innovate Labs with technology and so forth but my goodness if we haven't started earlier and we haven't invested in the young kid um at the home and building those literacy skills we've missed a huge opportunity of building that cognitive the creativity that it um

[11:10]  the brain Fosters until the age of four I don't think many people know that most of our brains are formed by the age of four or five and then after that we're playing ketchup so if you haven't actually had that exposure and all those neurons working um you know you really are going to have to take a bigger step forward when you begin to actually learn to read but it's solvable it's called reading reading as a family having someone take the time to open a book with you and and share that experience right um because when you read it comes with heart there's no way to read without it at some point your voice changes you get excited you start to show some emotion thread so I'm sure you've had some of those experiences as

[11:57]  well absolutely I um I just think about you know some of the one of my favorite sayings is from another business leader and he talked about the way in which we passed down knowledge through history was either in oral tradition or in written tradition and we've seen a huge transformation and why people write books today it's often grounded in a need for publicity a need for fame you see a lot of people saying I'm a three-time author I'm on the you know New York seller bestsellers list all that type of stuff but that wasn't the case back in day we are trying to pass down stories and information that other people could reference and I've seen so many amazing Business Leaders say all the secrets to what you're looking for are inside of these books you just have to spend the time to read them so why if that is so true why do you think we have

[12:44]  such a macro problem with the adoption of reading in our societies today from the world reader perspective but also maybe some current macro cultural issues as well oh it's a great question why do we have some of these issues I think one is we're on information we're in the information age right and in order to um digest information we digested in very small bits and pieces right we're all about the sound bite about how it affects us emotionally telling our story a lot of empowerment and obviously social media is huge it has a tremendous benefit you know um overall but it can also have uh some detriment to it as well or if it's not used from a Time perspective wisely I think for us when I as a world reader because our mission is

[13:32]  really to get children reading but to do so by working with parents and caregivers across the world um to really change or replace a certain amount of time every day that they're on social media or using their phone to using that as a tool of Engagement with their children having that discussion and using reading and activities as a vehicle to do that but I think if we forget the power of social media we'll have done ourselves the um uh will have um created a gap in how we can help address the crisis because social media can be a huge positive influencer right if we get influencers telling the story of like parents caregivers you're 26 you have a two-year-old spent 10 minutes today doing this activity or this reading

[14:19]  engagement with your child they're listening right we're all looking up to different influencers and so I think the more we can leverage social media and digital marketing in a strategic way we have a chance to use it for good um and not just self-promotion but really promotion of a family unit or more family cohesion around reading I don't know read you know you read a lot obviously in what you do from lit you know leadership books to probably just some non-fiction or you look at influencers as you're building your podcast and I think reading gosh it doesn't matter what we read with our children as long as we're providing them that exposure their their worlds are building right and that's exciting to see and I feel like it's a it's a tried intrude platform to get the imagination going

[15:09]  right here's a question did you did your parents read with you when you were a kid okay so there's the reality is they didn't do enough reading with me so I have two older siblings um one that was 10 years older a sister that's now deceased and I think I was the surprise child and I kind of they're like oh we're too busy we didn't read a lot so I was a struggl reader but I finally had a teacher said you are going to find someone and it really instructed my mom to sit down and start reading with me but I was pretty late in the game and then in ninth grade now ninth grade I had an English teacher that said something your reading is just too far below the average like here are 12 books you're going to read over the summer and I looked at my stack of books I was like no 12 books 12 books I was like I I

[15:57]  don't think I could do that but she was a smart teacher she ordered them for me she's like you're going to read them in this order and after the first book I fell in love with reading and um kind of the rest is history as they say I and I realized how much it changed and probably you had a little bit of that experience to in your schooling just getting the right books in the right hands you know to the right children so that's why you need a lot you need exposure to a lot and I'm really proud of world readers um high quality children's book collection against around five languages we have over 3,000 titles in Arabic Spanish English kahili um and Hindi and why is that you know we've curated and we've really sought the best because we want

[16:44]  kids to be engaged we want them to find books that um they can see themselves in but they can also visit the world right they can see what else is happening globally in perspective of content that's a powerful statement visit the world right I've heard so many of my friends as I've gotten older I really have two kind of camps right the people who don't often read which I now that I'm older I think like how are we not reading some of these amazing pieces of literature that came from some of the smartest people in the world as they pass down knowledge to us but the other side is a group of friends who are Avid readers people who were literally bomb through the entire series of Harry Potter or you know world of the Rings and everything like that and they're always talking about how they love it because it's almost an escape from reality and it takes them to a different place and I think about that as being so

[17:32]  healthy instead of the form of escapism that we kind of see in social media today when the average 18-year-old is spending nine hours per day on their device and if you extrapolate that through the rest of their life it's 24 years of time on screen time but what opportunities did we miss to challenge our perspectives hear a different point of view but also learn from people who have been through similar situations this is why I love hosting the podcast I wanted to start off with your story when we share Our Own Story it's easy for us to find each other in it and just listening to your early exposure of saying I wish my parents would have read with me more I feel the same way I didn't have that because my parents were very busy but now let's kind of talk about the dichotomy of these little devices right you guys are using technology they are they're amazing they're super computers they're never

[18:20]  anybody who's listening and watching to this I will bet 20 bucks says that your phone is not without Arms Reach away from you exactly or like physically on your body literally on your lap or something but the thing I think about today is If an average 18-year-old is spending that much time on their device one of the things that we mentioned in our previous conversation is the challenge of isolation and loneliness when Mom and Dad are also on their device consistently we miss so many opportunities for that human connection and I worry about the times if we extrapolate that out through history the opportunities to share moments of connection and exploration and creativity with our children to have them ask questions and that's why I love your guys's Mission because you're using the parents as a vehicle to reverse engineer the passion for reading why are you guys better than I to use that line

[19:07]  Keenan ref first engineer I love it thank you we go yeah so why is that so important let's Riff on that oh my goodness I mean think who's our first um teachers right there's this line you know parents are your child's first teacher but I mean every child that's made it to month one has had someone care for them right they' changed their diaper they've washed them they' fed them right and it just continues on but often we forget that in that process if we were actually reading and storytelling to these um own kids that we care for it's gamechanging for them that's how they build language right it's because parents talk to you otherwise you know you could be speaking Spanish and English you see these kids that have parents and you know

[19:54]  multilingual they're able to do three or four languages at once right right the brain is so receptive and so it's such a great opportunity and at the same time parents often don't know how rewarding it is if they invested this time so te technology that's why World readers committed to using mobile everybody's mobile phone we don't pass out Hardware deliberately because it's like hey it's not scalable number one but two everybody does have a phone and if they don't they'll soon have one depending on where they are in the world and it's their vehicle it's their tool to the world but it's Al their best tool to engage with their own families you know as a family in Reading to their to their children I feel like we say it a lot but it's such a hard Behavior because it's much easier to say I'm too

[20:41]  tired I don't have time I'm busy whatever it is but if parents start to experience just that little bit of extra connection it's pretty gamechanging from a behavioral standpoint because there's a bond that starts to exist between that child and parent that continues to grow and the other thing is we're all stressed parents right we're all working running jobs and so forth but boy it relaxes us we forget that suddenly for 10 minutes 15 minutes we're like oh we didn't really think about anything else because we too are engrossed in the story um we have found in some of the communities that we work that parents you know don't even know that they should play with their children not that they don't want to do it they just don't know you know it's been kind of pushed

[21:28]  aside with the demands of the day but you could bring just cooking over a Coal Fire right you can play a little game of counting you can do all sorts of fun things around just the everyday cooking in any culture that we're at so I think it's just reminding that we're all here um kind of as one Global Society trying to raise the next generation of leaders and the more that we can share the tips and resources on a platform that's easily accessible to everyone the the easier we it will be right and hopefully we can bring others other um friends and family extended family from other cultures along the way earlier in our conversation you mentioned that you were talking to a leader from public health I

[22:16]  want to kind of get a better understanding of what do you do as the CEO of world reader like what are some of the conversations you're having what are some of the problems that you're trying to tackle and what are some of the biggest challenges I think that that you're trying to formulate a plan to overcome in the communities and the organizations who you're engaging with like what is your game plan look like to kind of tackle this Challenge from your seat thank you because it's exactly what I just said to this public health leader and you know I think one of the biggest challenges for the education sector is that it's some people won't like me saying this but it's probably the least Innovative of sectors we feel very traditional about our school and public school and what it should do and so forth and so kind of breaking out of that mold is really hard um Public

[23:05]  Health has always been a little bit uh more agile because they're responding to disease and immediate responses are um critical and reading is longterm right it's a long-term engagement um strategy that you're in part of my uh mission for World reader is really to say can we situate reading outside of the education system can it really touch other sectors can it be just Central to the conversation of climate change as it is to maternal and child health or child well-being and we work with Pediatrics um really trying to see it as it's vital for society even if the education sector doesn't come along as long as we're addressing it within these other sectors at home we're going to begin to change um the trajectory of the crisis

[23:54]  as it moves forward so for me it's a real passion to say how do we sit reading right in the center of society because we know it brings better democracy it brings better health it brings better job opportunities all of that is long proven but because it's a longterm game it's not a short-term game and it requires individual Behavior change gosh we all know that's hard right trying to lose 10 pounds is not easy you know you got to stop what you're doing and so forth same with changing you know how you become a parent and if you haven't had good parents modeled that's also like you're like I don't know like I'm just doing what my parents did to me we know that repeats itself generation over generation so I think there's a lot of us a lot of thinking around the

[24:41]  Behavioral Science um that needs to be applied to it and there's some great leaders out there that are doing that um really thinking around Behavior one of them that I have um grown to appreciate is out of the University of Chicago Ariel khil she's done a and her team have done a lot around um parental behavioral change um in the Chicago area and I find her studies really really interesting why do you find them so interesting let's kind of take it let's double click on because yeah no I mean trying to I mean they've done everything from videoing parents to how they read with their children to understand the reading gains how much time is required per day for families to read to see the change like those is she's really getting very specific about

[25:28]  what moves the needle like what happens in the household that's going to move the needle and so we look you know at some of that research and say okay now we're in a different context you know let's say we're in Kenya or we're in South Africa or we're in Ghana like how do we do that within that cultural context and start to figure out the routines because at the end of the day life is building routines right healthier routines um as we go forward so you know looking maybe that gives a little bit more like how do we strengthen those routines within the family um but in a in a context that is appropriate culturally relevant um and that you kind of have to look at um country by country even sometimes Community by Community there's also an underlying sense of accountability in that message which can be kind of

[26:17]  challenging you know one of the biggest subconscious points of friction that I've always kind of recognized and this is an opportunity for me to kind of like riff this out of my head when I was born in 1990 right I grew up and as I got older I started hearing people from an older generation start pointing fingers of judgment and saying you guys don't know how to talk to anybody anymore you can't communicate no interpersonal communication skills you're an eighth place trophy generation right but naturally the question that popped into my head was who were the people who raised us because it wasn't me the fifth grader going in and saying mom I want an eighth place trophy you know for this tournament that I'm going to go in it was the parents right and I think one of the biggest points of accountability that we really need to kind of lean into

[27:04]  is when we bring children into this world when when we have influence over a younger generation it's to help them be better it's to help them not make the same mistakes that we made and I feel like that lens of accountability and looking at the parents to say how can you engage with your children to give them better opportunities and a bigger Foundation that they can grow upon is a conversation that we need to have more instead of casting that e easy pointed finger while ignoring the three fingers that are pointing back at us if that makes sense totally I mean I think that's why you've heard me say over and over again we're focused on the parents right and caregivers You' probably heard me say less about the children themselves because really from zero to eight it's all about the parents support and engagement and how do we come alongside them how do we actually give

[27:53]  them the the pat on the back or the recognition that's needed when they're doing it well you know and they've tried something new because we all need that whether it's a neighbor saying gosh that was a great tip you just offered us and now I'm going to implement it we learn from each other because parenting is not easy and every child's different and you don't know what you're going to inherit right um as part of that process so I I can't agree with you more um I thought it was interesting yesterday they had the public health did a whole study on the parent stress um I don't know if you saw that you know like can address um I can't uh I can't think of the citation right now but just that we need to understand that parental stress is a real reality and it's causing an effect on Child Development and I thought it's

[28:42]  true because we're you know parents are they think that we need to go do all these things for our children right when in essence to your point we just need to sit and talk with them and sometimes the tools that we need most to engage with them are right there on our phone right here by sitting around the table creating some family time to eat together um you know some of those basic things that I think your your grandparents would have you know been pointing the finger at are they're not hard you know they don't cost any money they just cost commitment and creativity to try and so if we can continue to put some of that through social media some of that more on the news um I think it's important and in your other half of your

[29:32]  passion I think is mental health right and this is this is a lot about mental health you know building little kids up and strengthening them but having parents that are also mentally um positive in their Outlook about where we're going part of our collection you may be interested in is called um we we have like a social emotional learning collection it's called my special word then know and where kids get to pick a word and live into it and I think it's really really a powerful notion it came out of a organization in Ohio a gentleman named Dwight Smith and he said I feel so strongly that we should live a word you know like own it and live into it and so we've created a whole um collection of books of courage and joy

[30:20]  and peace and kindness um inspired by kids that's say this just going to be my word I'm going to live by it and own it there is uh another influencer and I this is going to be a segue into kind of our conversation about leadership and how you're influencing this next Generation right there's a guy his name is Gary vaynerchuk goes by Gary ve on social media okay so this book that he released in 20122 and my my marketing director Dante says like I should get a QR code for how many times I plugg this book but it's called 12 and a half which is leveraging the emotional the emotional ingredients necessary for business success this is all about the development of soft skills now this is directed at adults but one of the other things that Gary has done which has been amazing I want to show you this on on my shelf here is what Gary

[31:12]  has created so this is this is genuine giraffe okay so Gary vaynerchuk has taken his next phase of business is to try and recreate his own world of Disney but what he does is he personifies and creates characters around character traits that you're going to need to be successful gratitude gorilla is another one that's over there genuine giraffe is something that's here and he talks about how we need to do a better job of exposing our youth to these types of ideas and so I incredibly appreciate how you guys are collaborating to live that one word if you had to live one word for the rest of 2024 Rebecca what would your word be my word is wonder I picked Wonder because I think it's really about in envisioning how I can bring a team to

[32:00]  help drive this um impact even more um deeply into the communities that we're working with and you know we talk a lot about curiosity um and I'm currently in the process of envisioning and thinking about what type of new values we need for our organization you know sometimes you need to refresh them as you journey through different phases of an organization and I mean this is just fresh thinking and I've been thinking I really want to live into one that exists today it's called bold we've owned that um value for a long time and I think addressing this challenge that we have around the reading crisis it's bold because no one solved it yet it's going to remain with us for the years to come and yet it's so foundational so what can we do in our actions that are bold and I

[32:48]  think world reader with our books smart application is really trying to do that the other one is data right data is everything from AI you can't live in the 21st century without being data driven but data for what purpose right so how quickly can we be agile we're always Scrappy as nonprofits so how do we be um agile and smart about our decisions but the other two were that I've been thinking about is obviously curiosity because that kind of goes with Wonder um but Dynamic I'm a multicultural organization we're virtual I lead a virtual team we only have one office in Nairobi the rest of us are around the world world and so figuring out how do you build a team virtually some of us we've never even met um so that takes a lot of interest in each other right but

[33:37]  I think more so than anything the um 202 2024 value we're trying to live into is transparency because that ability as a team to be free to admit failure to admit success to identify where the challenges are it's not a very common value today in like being real um and so we're really trying to be as real as we can week on week with the progress we're making when we don't make progress why um but not casting judgment on it because we're we're all striving for the same um Mission as we go forward and the only objective really if we kind of boil this down to First principles right is to not stop and so and how can we accelerate right how can we accelerate I

[34:26]  mean I've been trying to think about these things as I build my personal business and as I try and build my team and there's a lot of pressure in the world of being a nonprofit there's a lot of pressure when you have a big mission to go incredibly fast but when you think about the things that have stood the time or the last the time of test of time they've been the ideals that people can stand behind consistently for a really long time and I feel like your mission of getting people to lean back into the Bold idea of having transparent conversations opportunities of connection with our children is a bold idea that we need to get back to because we talked we touched a little bit on this in the fact of social media and everything else is playing somewhat of a distraction in our lives and I feel like

[35:14]  if we're going to be able to be able to build a sense of community again we have to come together and we have to find a medium to be able to come back together and I wish I would have had and my parents did an amazing job raising me I wish I would have had more Traditions that were about coming together as a family because those are the things that are passed down and I feel like that's what you are on the cusp of really kind of infusing into our society I can agree more so that you've articulated well we are trying to create tradition right using reading as the vehicle to do that and opening up the different types of conversations that come through exposure to various themes right and every family can adopt New Traditions um or pass them down from their from their parents right I think

[36:02]  reading also reminds people of traditions that they forgotten about um or you know like oh we used to do that why don't we do it again you know you just forget not that you there's a deliberate nature of forgetting it just happen and so reading often and exposure to books kind of reminds you of some of those elements I think you're you just made a point though about the the social media angle and a and telling the Bold story I think that's we we just need more Champions right that are willing to share just like you are shifting some of their media time to telling some of these realities that are out there about being transparent in the world and how people can get involved and I think like your gen Z's and Millennials are super

[36:50]  excited to be I mean they're evaluating organizations and companies by their values now right so how can we be really clear about what are some core values that they can participate in and really contribute to making the world a better place I mean I'm I'm going to take a a more of a a philosophical ethos perspective on this I whenever I have conversations like this something deep down in my heart like feels a little bit emotional right I feel like a little bit of emotion just boil up behind me because I feel like we're in a time in society where we are all starting to come out of the the the the haze or the fog where we've been spending so much time pursuing things and pursuing ideas and comparison and everything else that

[37:38]  has left us feeling so depleted right and I've seen the pendulum swing with so many of my other friends who are like me personally I'm not even on Instagram I'm not on Tik Tok I'm not on these things I'm leaning back into reading because I feel so much more fulfilled when I can give myself the space to be able to think and be present and I feel like there's a large part of society that's starting to wake up from the fog that we've come from with the inundation of alerts and buzzes and notifications and little dopamine spikes that have been engineered from a business perspective to keep us coming back to things it almost feels like a little undertone of like the Matrix right when we're like waking up and taking the red pill you know what I mean I just feel like deep down we are yearning for that sense of connection and that sense of connection

[38:25]  often starts with self first before it starts with people that's yeah 100% agree I think you know something that you just said there was you know going on to any of the um content platforms Netflix whatever um it's overwhelming sometimes to choose and they do a really good job of recommending right what's next for you and that's something that world reader you know trying to incorporate AI into our platform and really as part of that reading routine that I was mentioning earlier so many parents don't even know where to begin so it's like how can we help them on that process but also while we have loads of content how do we make it simple for them to take that first step the fifth step of reading a book on up um as they you know Journey over the years and years I'm

[39:14]  reading on booksmart I feel like that's beautiful and as I kind of sit here in my mind thinking about the role and the identity that AI plays in our lives people think that it is so forward in the future future right that it's so Innovative and mind-breaking right and we're talking about books which are so grounded in a past of tradition that you're creating a beautiful blend of how these Technologies come together to be able to incite and encourage people to read so when I when if I were to sign up for World reader and I'm a dad or a mom or whatever and I sign up I pick from my thousands of titles that I have access to you guys are using AI to be able to suggest books that will be very much like your ninth grade teacher that says here's 12 books start here to be able to

[40:02]  incite Passion as we go through this journey together is that correct that is the that is the vision and that's where we're headed yes absolutely and I think one of the first books that anybody can read is my huge tiny Library which is really a sweet book about the power of reading on your phone and that it's anywhere any time available to you as a parent um but it also reminds me I I did want to share this book it's when you think about um getting people excited about it we have a book that we recently released called Zuri's gift and it's about a maybe four or fiveyear old girl who's getting a birthday gift and she saves the her favorite one to last which is from her aunt and her aunt lives in Nairobi Kenya and her aunt actually the gift is to take her on an adventure and

[40:49]  the adventure is to save um an uh elephants from being poached for their tests and at the end as she's crawling into bed she just said oh my goodness I've had the most amazing gift ever the adventure of having gone through this story and living this story and I think that's really what we want to inspired right little dreamers but also parents that are giving that gift that dreaming opportunity and aspiration for their children to see the world in a more beautiful light a story of inspiration I feel like we've been able to articulate a little bit of that today because I feel incredibly inspired to once again in my times of relief all the hustle and bustle of the day right to be able to open up a book and spend time with myself and go into this world of Adventure that I feel like is so powerful when you are on such a big

[41:38]  mission you have to cast a vision as a leader so large that other people can find themselves inside of it how are you thinking about casting a vision big enough to get people who are listening to this podcast who are watching this podcast who are inspired by their experiences and reading and their yearning for more to be a part of becoming a team of world reader how are you kind of thinking about that stuff I think it's the first step is think who's in your network that's young that you could read to or you could Inspire and give a book to um at the end of the day we all have someone who's young in our lives and instead of getting maybe some other toy or gift card pick a book out for them um and if you know you have no money then please

[42:25]  download booksmart and offer a book share a book um with them I think taking the motion to stop and say if we're a leader or if we're actually working or we have any form of literacy competency then somebody helped get us there and who helped get us to that stage often we don't remember you know it happens through time we don't remember how that process happened but it did start early and so we all have I think kind of a moral obligation to give back in that regard to the the Next Generation we invite anybody to join us um and be part of our journey I think number one is just read you know if you're an advocate for reading tell our story tell about world reader story encourage people to download books smart it's a very easy word you can find it on any

[43:12]  app the play store or the Apple Store available around the world um and pick a language you know that you want to be able to read in but I'd say check out Zuri's gift on it it's such a powerful story and and I don't you know whether you're 65 listening to this podcast or you're you know 18 trying to figure out what you're doing next it will inspire you I want to use the final minutes here of our podcast to have an honest and open conversation so I want you to go back into the Rolodex of all the amazing books that you've read throughout your life and I want you to pick out two books two books that you've read that you feel like you can easily go back and say this is something that changed my perspective this is something that

[43:59]  inspired me this is something that I want other people to experience the same way I did talk about the first book really quick and I'm gonna grab mine off my shelf and then I'll talk I'll show ah okay like it's mine right here yeah mine is right here the first book is probably not one that anybody's going to necessarily pick up reading but it's the one that changed my reading and that was a separate piece by John noes and um probably no longer on any curriculum it's old but it for some reason connected with me in such a deep way that of my 12 books it um encouraged me to read um going forward so that I always go back to um it was for whatever reason one of the most transformative stories for me and it's about a boys and boarding school and you know kind of going through their growing up

[44:47]  experience and life and um maybe it's where I was too so it's super interesting the second one is yeah go ahead let me go my first one okay first one is um Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill so this is a special book to me because this was the literal first book that I was given I was 23 years old and this is just when I was thinking about becoming an entrepreneur and my father has been very successful in business and he was one of the people who has literally leaned into the fact if you can see it in your mind you can become that version of yourself and this was the first book that I was ever given and it's his book literally it just kind of really started to think about or have me think about the thoughts that I have have the ability to impact the world that I'm in

[45:35]  and so if you can think you can also Grow Rich through your thoughts and ideas and I've always been somebody who's been Innovative I've always had the ability to see around the corner now have I taken a lot of flak and have I been early on some things because of it absolutely but I think this is something that a lot of people should read because it has so many foundations for being a leader for casting a vision and for believing so much that your ideas become reality so what's your second one I I love that I'm going to check that out but I'm struck that that was your first book at age 23 right 23 so that talks about my entire experience right of reading I was given other books when I was like a kid for sure but like this was the first one where I was like I think this is going to have a huge impact on me and I took it seriously the process of reading it and so I need to come back to this as well yeah that's

[46:24]  great um the second the other book is just this year um I had a very good friend who gave me the book multiplier I don't know if you've heard of multiplier and you know she said you you need to read this in your Ro new role as CEO and to think about how do you move that team and bring the best skills that they have to the Forefront so it is highly marked up it has page turns um and it's been really helpful uh just to think through a virtual team how do I do that CU I don't see them all the time thinking through how do you allow them to feel like they are giving even more than they think that they could give and be rewarded in that process oh I love that that's so powerful that's been a big maturation process of me being a leader

[47:12]  of my company is I feel like early in our days as Leaders we think we have to do it all but when we can give trust and we can Empower others maybe it might feel a little scary right because we're like oh I'm out of control and if you're a leader you often want to be in control but the best leaders recognize that if they empower the people around them you will be judged by the progress of the group not yourself individually and I was talking to somebody else on the podcast the other day and we were using the analogy of being a Shepherd right the shepherd lovely protects this flock enables them to do things brings them to food and is always there to take care of them now my second book and you saw a little bit earlier is atomic Habits by James CL have you read this book I haven't but my son has he's 11 oh my God I'm my he's way ahead of me okay so I

[47:59]  recently bought this I think in the last two years because I listened to it first on Audible and then I read it and it was just so profound because one of the biggest things that he talks about is the idea of lagging indicators so if you're building habits for yourself small little changes today over a long enough time Horizon can come pound and the example that he uses is 1% better each day equals 37 times better at the end of the year and often our brain is very bad incredibly our brain is really bad about thinking what we can accomplish it overestimates what we can accomplish in one year but underestimates what we can do in 10 years and I want to wrap that back to the point that I made earlier the objective of being on the mission is to not stop because we can't even quantify

[48:46]  how many lives World reader is going to be able to impact over the next two three decades in the lives and ideas that you will inspire and so Rebecca I just want to say this has been an amazing conversation I can't thank you enough for coming on the show and I really really really appreciate our time that we've spent together and just learning more about your passion and the mission that you were on I want to give you the last couple minutes here to close by saying how can people find out more about you guys maybe you can articulate the vision of what you're going to be doing over the next couple years and how can we help great well thanks for having me great to have this conversation with YouTu Kenan um check us out worldreader dorg ww worldreader all one word.org and I would say first and foremost download booksmart that's our platform with all our content on it and

[49:34]  encourage anybody in your network to read even adults um and to use that as a vehicle to read with you any type of children promote it if you're sitting in a doctor's office and you see a little kid sitting there um encourage encourage that reading we obviously are nonprofit we're always grateful for support um financial support to continue our mission as an edtech organ organization we're really striving to have the best technology available to anyone right um in any community that has really low resources and doesn't have the ability to um pursue as many tangible books and so forth so that's part of our our engagement so our mission very simple Keenan right we want to get children reading but we want to do it by empowering parents and celebrating them

[50:22]  so if you're listening to this podcast and I encourage you as an influencer or even just an advocate within your own faith community your own business what are we doing to give back um to ensure that this next generation and the parents that are raising these kids have the support that they need for us to address the rating crisis remember Mom and Dad you might not be famous on Tik Tok or Instagram but you are the influencer in your house and that's the type of influence that we're looking for yeah well that's been an amazing podcast guys we'll catch you in the next one that's a wrap