Hosted by Jeff Walter, Founder and CEO of LatitudeLearning
Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing what people need to know to succeed at work. It is also raising a more fundamental question for learning and development leaders: What happens when technical knowledge is no longer enough to create a meaningful performance advantage?
As AI becomes capable of handling more routine work, generating content, analyzing information, writing code, and supporting increasingly complex decisions, the qualities that distinguish human performance may shift. Resilience, adaptability, motivation, grit, purpose, judgment, and the ability to continue learning through change could become increasingly important.
Those are the capabilities at the center of MindVue and the work of its founder and president, Dr. Brian Davidson.
In this episode of the Training Impact Podcast, Jeff Walter talks with Davidson about the science behind mindset, whether qualities such as grit and resilience can actually be developed, and how artificial intelligence could make deeply personalized development available at a scale that traditional coaching has struggled to achieve.
Their conversation ultimately reaches beyond MindVue itself. It offers a glimpse into a future where learning becomes increasingly personalized while human development becomes more important, not less.
MindVue began with curiosity.
Davidson studied psychology at the University of Iowa before adding secondary education and becoming a teacher at Minnetonka High School. While teaching, he became fascinated by a deceptively simple question: Why did some students consistently succeed?
Academic ability alone did not seem to explain it.
Davidson noticed that many of his strongest students demonstrated qualities such as self-motivation and self-discipline. That observation led him to wonder where those qualities came from and, more importantly, whether they could be developed.
He eventually pursued graduate work at the University of Kansas in counseling psychology, positive psychology, and leadership. There, his interests expanded into resilience, grit, growth mindset, self-efficacy, and other psychological factors associated with performance.
The central question remained the same.
Can people learn these things?
That question ultimately became the foundation for MindVue.
Davidson and his colleagues began combining multiple psychological factors into a comprehensive assessment model. Early research showed that the model was highly predictive of academic performance, leading to additional validation work and curriculum designed to help people strengthen the underlying capabilities being measured.
The work eventually expanded beyond education.
A pivotal moment came when Davidson was invited to New Delhi, India, to train leaders, faculty, and staff on developing these mindset factors. Seeing the scale of the population and the potential need for this type of development changed how he thought about the mission.
The challenge was no longer simply understanding mindset.
It was figuring out how to develop it in millions of people.
One of the most important ideas Davidson shares during the conversation is that qualities such as grit and resilience are not as fixed as researchers once assumed.
People may have natural tendencies influenced by personality and genetics, but that does not mean someone possesses a predetermined level of resilience or grit for life.
Mindset changes.
Life changes it.
Purpose changes it. Relationships change it. Success and failure change it. Burnout can change it. A personal crisis can change it.
Davidson describes assessing people who appeared, from the outside, to represent the very qualities MindVue was measuring. These included successful executives, professional athletes, military leaders, and other high performers.
Sometimes their assessment results were unexpectedly low.
Initially, that seemed contradictory. How could someone accomplish extraordinary things while scoring poorly on qualities associated with motivation, resilience, or grit?
The answer emerged when Davidson began talking with them.
There was usually a story behind the score.
Some had lost their sense of purpose. Others were burned out, unhappy, experiencing relationship problems, confronting medical challenges, or dealing with other significant changes in their lives.
The lesson was important. Past performance does not necessarily reveal someone’s current psychological readiness.
MindVue’s work suggests these factors operate dynamically within the context of someone’s life. That also creates an important opportunity for training and development because something that can change can potentially be developed.
Knowing that resilience matters does not automatically make someone resilient.
That distinction becomes central to Walter and Davidson’s discussion.
Traditional training frequently concentrates on knowledge acquisition. Learners receive information, complete a course, pass an assessment, and demonstrate that they understand a concept.
Developing a human capability is different.
Davidson compares mindset skills to muscles. Going to the gym once does not create physical fitness. Strength develops through repeated effort over time.
Resilience, grit, motivation, and adaptability work similarly.
They require practice, reflection, reinforcement, and opportunities to apply new ways of thinking.
Resilience also does not develop in isolation. Davidson emphasizes the importance of relationships and having people available to help navigate difficult situations. He also describes a process called adaptive forecasting, where people scan the environment for potential changes and consciously consider how they will interpret those changes.
The framing matters.
If change is immediately viewed as a threat or stressor, people may become resistant. When the same change can be understood as an opportunity, people are often more receptive and better prepared to adapt.
This becomes particularly relevant as organizations confront rapid technological change.
AI is not simply introducing another workplace tool. It is beginning to alter jobs, workflows, expectations, skill requirements, and potentially entire industries.
Organizations therefore face two connected challenges.
They must help people learn how to use new technologies while also developing the psychological capabilities necessary to navigate what those technologies change.
Grit is often discussed as persistence, but persistence without direction has limited value.
Davidson connects resilience and grit to something deeper: values.
Values help create the foundation for identity, goals, motivation, and purpose. When someone’s goals align with what they genuinely value, persistence becomes more meaningful.
That alignment helps explain why developing mindset cannot simply be imposed on someone.
An organization cannot force employees to become gritty.
A manager cannot order someone to become resilient.
As Davidson explains, these qualities need to be pulled from within rather than pushed onto people from outside. Development requires helping individuals understand what matters to them, where they are trying to go, and why the effort required to get there is worthwhile.
That insight has significant implications for learning and development.
If organizations want to develop performance skills, they cannot treat them exactly like technical competencies. A learner can be shown how to complete a process. Developing resilience, purpose, or adaptability requires a more personal experience.
Historically, that often meant coaching.
The problem is that coaching is difficult to scale.
MindVue has experimented with several approaches to developing mindset skills, including eLearning, instructor-led training, coaching, and curriculum-based development.
Davidson says previous interventions have demonstrated meaningful improvement, with some programs showing increases of 40 to 50 percent in certain measured factors over approximately six months. He also describes earlier educational interventions producing measurable improvement over shorter periods.
That provides evidence that these capabilities can be developed.
It does not completely solve the problem Davidson first confronted after his experience in India.
How do you do it for millions of people?
Human coaching is powerful precisely because it is personal. A good coach learns about an individual, understands that person’s circumstances, listens to their challenges, observes progress, and adjusts the coaching accordingly.
Those strengths also make traditional coaching expensive and difficult to scale.
AI introduces a fundamentally different possibility.
Instead of trying to reproduce the same learning experience for increasingly large audiences, AI can potentially create a different learning experience for every person.
MindVue is now exploring exactly that possibility.
MindVue’s approach begins by giving artificial intelligence something traditional training programs often lack: meaningful context about the individual learner.
The process starts with an AI coach conducting an intake conversation. Instead of immediately presenting content, the system learns about the person’s goals, challenges, interests, and experiences. The learner then completes MindVue’s psychometric assessment, creating another layer of information about factors such as motivation, resilience, grit, and other elements of mindset.
That combination gives the system a richer picture of the individual.
The AI then uses that information to generate a personalized podcast approximately 10 to 15 minutes long. Rather than listening to generic content about resilience or motivation, the learner hears a conversation connected to their own goals, circumstances, challenges, and interests.
No two podcasts need to be identical.
That distinction led Walter to one of the most interesting observations of the episode. Humans naturally respond to stories and narratives, and a podcast provides a way to place development within that format. Instead of having information presented directly at the learner, the individual can listen to a conversation about ideas that are personally relevant.
But the podcast is only one part of the learning cycle.
After listening, the learner returns to the AI coach for a follow-up conversation about what was learned, what resonated, and what could be applied to work or life.
That creates something closer to a Socratic learning experience. The learner is not simply consuming information. The AI can ask questions, encourage reflection, explore uncertainty, and help the person connect ideas from the podcast to actual situations.
Those conversations then become part of the learner’s evolving profile.
Future podcasts can incorporate what the AI learned from previous interactions, allowing the experience to become increasingly personalized over time. The result is a continuous development loop built around assessment, personalized content, reflection, application, and additional development.
The long-term possibilities go even further.
If learners periodically retake the MindVue assessment, the system could begin connecting changes in mindset scores with the developmental experiences that occurred between assessments.
That creates an intriguing opportunity for learning analytics.
Instead of simply knowing that someone completed training, organizations could potentially begin understanding which experiences appear to contribute to changes in resilience, grit, motivation, adaptability, or other performance skills.
Davidson describes a future in which AI could examine those patterns across large populations.
Perhaps one type of analogy works particularly well for certain learners. Another person may respond more strongly to a particular kind of reflection or example. Some learners may need greater emphasis on purpose, while others benefit from strategies for navigating uncertainty.
As more information accumulates, an AI-powered learning system could potentially identify which approaches are producing meaningful development for different types of people.
That represents an important shift from personalized learning toward truly adaptive development.
Traditional personalization often means recommending different content to different learners. The model Davidson describes could eventually go further by changing how learning is presented based on what appears to be helping that particular person grow.
For learning and development leaders, that possibility should be especially interesting.
The question would no longer be simply, “Did people complete the training?”
It could increasingly become, “What developmental experience actually helped this person improve?”
The MindVue example also points toward a broader transformation happening across learning and development.
High-quality personalized coaching has traditionally been difficult to provide across a large workforce. An executive might have access to an individual coach, while thousands of other employees receive standardized courses.
That difference is largely economic.
Individual coaching requires human time, and human time is expensive.
Artificial intelligence begins changing that equation.
If an AI coach can understand a learner’s goals, incorporate assessment data, remember previous conversations, generate personalized learning experiences, and continue adapting those experiences over time, some of the characteristics traditionally associated with individual coaching can potentially become available to much larger populations.
Davidson is careful not to suggest that this eliminates the need for people.
In fact, he expects the opposite dynamic to emerge alongside AI adoption.
As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in work and daily life, people may place even greater value on authentic human interaction. Learning and development could therefore move in two directions simultaneously.
AI could provide unprecedented personalization and scalability while human experiences become increasingly valuable for connection, collaboration, community, and shared development.
The future may not be AI learning versus human learning.
It may be understanding where each provides the greatest value.
The conversation between Walter and Davidson eventually expands from MindVue into a much larger discussion about artificial intelligence, work, productivity, and the future of learning.
One idea stands out: as more routine work becomes automated, learning itself could become one of the few sustainable competitive advantages available to organizations and individuals.
If a process can be standardized and automated, competitors can eventually gain access to similar capabilities.
The advantage increasingly moves toward the ability to learn what comes next.
For organizations, that means developing people who can acquire new knowledge, build new capabilities, adapt to changing circumstances, and continue performing while the environment around them changes.
That makes the performance skills MindVue is studying especially relevant.
Technical skills will continue to matter. People will still need expertise.
But expertise may have a shorter shelf life.
The ability to adapt could therefore become as important as the knowledge someone possesses today.
Davidson is optimistic about the long-term possibilities created by artificial intelligence, but he does not assume the transition will be easy.
He describes the coming period as potentially turbulent.
Jobs will change. Work will change. Expectations will change. Some tasks will disappear while entirely new ones emerge. AI capabilities that seem remarkable today may appear ordinary within only a few years.
People will need to repeatedly adjust.
That brings the conversation back to resilience, grit, motivation, adaptability, hope, and purpose.
MindVue’s mission is increasingly centered on what Davidson describes as building human readiness. The goal is to help people develop the mindset skills they will need to navigate a period of extraordinary technological and social change.
That may ultimately be one of the most important lessons from this Training Impact Podcast conversation.
The AI revolution is not only a technology challenge.
It is a human development challenge.
Organizations can invest in new systems, automation, AI agents, and increasingly sophisticated learning technology, but people still have to navigate the transition.
They need the resilience to recover when circumstances change. They need the adaptability to reconsider established ways of working. They need motivation to continue learning. They need purpose to provide direction when the path becomes uncertain.
Those capabilities are not secondary to performance.
They are part of what makes sustained performance possible.
Toward the end of the conversation, Walter connects MindVue’s work to a much older philosophy of education.
Historically, education was not exclusively concerned with transferring technical knowledge. Character development played an important role. Education was also about developing the person.
Modern training has increasingly emphasized technical proficiency, measurable competencies, and job-specific knowledge.
Those things matter.
But an AI-powered world may make the human side of development increasingly important again.
If technology can make information instantly accessible and provide increasingly capable assistance with technical work, then qualities such as judgment, purpose, adaptability, perseverance, curiosity, and resilience become more consequential.
The irony is that artificial intelligence could help make that human development more scalable.
MindVue is exploring what that combination could look like by bringing together psychometric assessment, human performance research, personalized learning, coaching, and artificial intelligence.
The technology is still evolving, and Davidson acknowledges that MindVue is continuing to learn how effectively its newest AI approach can develop these factors over time. The opportunity, however, is significant.
The conversation with Dr. Brian Davidson ultimately presents a different way of thinking about the future of learning.
Artificial intelligence will undoubtedly change how organizations create and deliver training. It could dramatically increase personalization, provide scalable coaching, accelerate skill development, and give organizations new insight into what actually helps people improve.
But the bigger opportunity may be using those capabilities to strengthen the people navigating the transformation.
MindVue’s work starts with a powerful premise: resilience, grit, motivation, purpose, and adaptability are not simply qualities people either possess or lack. They can change, and they can be developed.
As organizations enter a period of accelerating technological change, developing those capabilities could become an increasingly important part of training strategy.
The future of learning may therefore be about more than helping people know more.
It may be about helping people become better prepared for whatever comes next.
Learn more about MindVue: https://mindvue.com/
For more from the Training Impact Podcast, follow us on Social Media:
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Jeff Walter (00:05)
Hi, I’m Jeff Walter and welcome back to the Training Impact Podcast, where we explore scaling performance through training infrastructure. Today I’m joined by Dr. Brian Davidson, the founder and president of MindVue
Where he focuses on measuring and developing the mindset skills that drive human performance. Now, Brian’s work focuses on qualities like resilience, grit, motivation, and growth mindset that can be developed through assessment, coaching, and training that help individuals and organizations perform at a higher level. Some people call it soft skills, we call them performance skills. I think it’s very important. And so, Brian, welcome to the The podcast.
Brian Davidson (00:41)
Yeah, I appreciate it, Jeff. Thanks for having me.
Jeff Walter (00:42)
And I’m I’m I’m I’m looking forward to this because it’s a I th those skills I I think we’ve as a society really kind of shifted away from them. You know, they’re like character building skills and we’ve gotten more towards like technical type skills. And even in the humanities it’s more kinda that. So so I’m really interested in talking about that. But first, interesting journey. You know, I’m always always interested in the journey and how you got where you’re at.
I think it it sheds light on what you’re trying to accomplish. So so why on Godscreen Earth did you start Mindview? Like and what co what what was your journey to get there?
Brian Davidson (01:16)
Yeah,
yeah, it wasn’t a straight shot, I’ll I’ll tell you that much. So me I I tell people it started with curiosity. So I’m a curious guy by by nature, but I I picked up a degree in psychology in my undergrad years at the University of Iowa. I was really intrigued on kind of what made people tick and just that general nature. And I realized you can’t do a whole lot with a degree in just psychology, so then I backed it up with secondary education and I thought I could go become a teacher for a little while, figure out what what I want to do with my life and and move forward from there. And so I went up to the
Twin Cities and I started to teach students up at Minnetonka High School is where I was at. And I was so fascinated on what made my kids successful. And I was looking at those great students of mine and I was trying to figure out like what’s what’s the commonality behind all those students. And as I was kind of looking at them, I thought, you know, they’re all very self motivated, number one, and they’ve got a great level of self discipline as well. And so I told myself that I wanted to figure out how those qualities develop in in an individual.
And so I came down to the University of Kansas, did all my graduate work in the combination of counseling psychology, which has put a heavy emphasis on positive psychology in that program. I got well versed into all these factors like resilience and grit and growth mindset and self-efficacy and all these other elements. And as I was going through that program, I started to wonder, you know, can you teach this stuff? You know, can you cultivate these skills to help people grow and thrive throughout their life?
And so that kind of became my big goal. I ended up switching from my counseling psych program to add leadership because I was growing really interested in leadership development and ultimately studied the impact of these mindset factors in relationship to transformational leadership behavior. And then as I was going through that process, we started to design an assessment and combined a whole bunch of these factors into one comprehensive model, and we found it was predicting academic performance really, really well.
And so we thought, okay, like we’re hitting on something here. And you know, this is kind of at the stage where this these ideas like grit and and growth mindset were really starting to emerge. And we thought, okay, if we’re combining all these factors into one model, you know, could this be highly predictive? And so from there we went through the full validation process of our assessment. I’d written up a curriculum set designed to help foster these factors, largely in students and school settings at that stage in the game.
And I had a life changing experience, Jeff, over in New Delhi, India, that really shaped my my journey. So after I I did a presentation at the University of Pennsylvania, Angela Duckworth was the big
Jeff Walter (03:46)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Davidson (03:47)
is the big guru of of grit. And Angela asked me to come out and speak to her her grit lab kind of share about some of the work that I was doing here in the Midwest. And after going out there and presenting, I started to write up a publication called
It’s called Creativity Posts. And so I started to write up articles all about developing these mindset factors in people. And all of a sudden I got an email from a group over in New Delhi, India said, Hey, we came across this work that you’re doing. We would love if you could come train our leadership and faculty and staff on how to help develop these factors. So number one, I had no idea whether or not the organization was legit, and you know, kind of crossed my f fingers and hoped hoped for the best.
Went over there and really had a a truly life changing experience. And I don’t know if you’ve been over to India before, but it’s a very different place than here in the United States and it was absolutely incredible and it really opened up my eyes to the sheer number of people that we have here in our wonderful world and the number of people that that need some support and development to foster these mindset factors. And so it lit a fire in me to figure out how can we
do more of this and scale n and help build up these skills and truly millions of people across the world. So that’s become the goal of of what I’m doing today is trying to help foster high levels of motivation and grit and perseverance and resilience in as many people across the world as we possibly can.
Jeff Walter (05:13)
Well so th that’s a really interesting story that and and and implied in what you just said and just wanna make sure you said you you want to study to see if those are things that can be taught, right? The grid grow and and I take it that the answer you came up with was yes, they can be. They’re not they’re not you’re not born with it. There are there are skills that you can develop. Just
Brian Davidson (05:34)
Yeah, yeah.
Big thing that we’ve learned over the years is is these factors are less trait like than than what we thought. So even even ten years
Jeff Walter (05:41)
Okay.
Brian Davidson (05:41)
ago, okay, we were under the thinking that a person just kinda has a certain level of grit and resilience and and they’ll always display this. And what we found over the years is like, no, like th these things can go up in a person, they can go down in an individual. They’re shaped by truly everything that’s going on in your life. And
It’s a beautiful dance that goes on between what’s happening in your mind and what’s happening in in your external environment. And all that’s influencing things in a very dynamic fashion. And so we we’ve learned a lot over the years. But yeah, grit and resilience, these are not just certain traits that a person has. Yes, some of them are genetically based and okay, and they have, you know, a certain degree that are based off of our genes, but it doesn’t mean that’s set in stone and that a person will always just have a certain level of grit.
in their life. And so yes, we we can develop these factors, but it’s not like you just shove grit down somebody’s throat and they’re all of a sudden gonna be highly gritty. You know, you’ve got to pull the grit from within somebody, I and help to
Jeff Walter (06:40)
Okay.
Brian Davidson (06:41)
i ig ignite passion and fuel a sense of perseverance in them as opposed to like forcing them. So it’s it’s much more of a pull than than a push for an individual.
Jeff Walter (06:51)
Well and so then it’s well, a couple of things that go through my mind is yeah, when you start describing that type of stuff, it kind of sounds related to what would you know, and the big five would be like conscientiousness, right? Which
Brian Davidson (07:02)
Yep. Yep.
Jeff Walter (07:04)
is it you know, it tend tends the the belief there being that you’re kinda born that way. And it’s really hard to move any of those big five things you can but it takes a lot of energy. But it it it sounds like
It’s related but n but you can move the needle more, but on the pull thing it’s it’s it’s well it’s like any skill, you gotta develop the skill. It’s not just acquiring knowledge, it’s skill is all about practice and coaching, right?
Brian Davidson (07:29)
Yeah.
Yeah. In fact, conscientiousness is one of the the facets that that we are measuring. And even with conscientiousness, we find it it does go up and down in individual over over time. It’s it’s less less trait-like than than we thought. So like when you look at aggregate
Jeff Walter (07:43)
Okay.
Brian Davidson (07:44)
levels of these skills, yes, they tend to be pretty stable, but then you start to look at at an individual level, okay, and and you start
Jeff Walter (07:50)
Uh-huh.
Brian Davidson (07:51)
to understand the story of that person’s life and see these scores as that story is unfolding.
That’s when it gets really interesting. And what we find is there’s there’s always a story, okay, that that’s going on that explains stuff. So like year years ago, you know, w in the early stages when we were so under that thinking that a person largely had these elements to them, that you know, we would assess these high performers, professional athletes and generals in the military, to CEOs of of large companies, and
You would see these individuals who you look at them and say, Well, gosh, they’re the epitome of all this stuff, right? They’re very motivated, they’re highly
Jeff Walter (08:26)
Right, right.
Brian Davidson (08:27)
resilient, and they’ve done great work, they’re very, very successful. And yet, in some cases, they would score low on the assessment. And at first we’re like, What is going on here? Like, this doesn’t match up. This person’s clearly got it, right?
Jeff Walter (08:39)
Right.
Brian Davidson (08:40)
And then we started to talk with these individuals, and we’d come to find out, once again, there’s always a story behind that score.
And we’d come to understand that they were accomplishing all these great things, but in the process they were pretty miserable, that they lost their purpose, they weren’t passionate about what they were doing, their burnt out, they were going through divorce or something was going on in their life, medical scare, whatever it could be, life was happening to them. And so
Jeff Walter (09:03)
Exactly.
Brian Davidson (09:04)
that really started to shape our understanding of what we were truly measuring with that assessment. So it’s been fascinating. We’ve we’ve definitely learned a lot over the years.
Jeff Walter (09:12)
And and and and so you you said you can’t push it, it’s gotta be pulled. So how what I mean, yeah. like how how does how does one develop those skills? Like what what does it take to increase your resilience and increase your grid like what’s the actual process that’s effective in doing that?
Brian Davidson (09:31)
Yeah, i it’s multifaceted. Number one, you know, with with resilience, I I tell people resilience isn’t something that develops in isolation. Okay. So we we tend to be very resilient when when we have people in our lives that can help us navigate the the hard times. And so we always want to have people in our lives that we can lean on during those difficult periods that that we’re going through. and secondly, I think it’s gonna be so important. We’ve talked a lot about Jeff, you know, just the
influence of AI and how AI is gonna be transforming a lot of of what’s gonna be happening here in our future. And I think resilience is gonna be such an important piece to helping people thrive over over this next several years. And you know, what I what I tell people is that like we we’ve gotta when we deal with change and deal with having to adjust out there and pivot, it’s important to to not be reactive. Okay, so what
Jeff Walter (10:22)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Davidson (10:23)
what we find is is great leaders do and
people that adjust well to change, they’re they’re constantly doing this thing we call adaptive forecasting. Basically they’re they’re scanning the environment around them and trying to anticipate, okay, like what could be the changes that are going on, number one. And then they do like a a little mental gymnastics where they tell themselves, like, okay, am I gonna be, you know, view this change as a source of stress or is this gonna be a source of opportunity for me? And the people that frame it as an opportunity, they tend to be much more open and welcoming.
of a change as opposed to those that see it as a a stressor or an obstacle, they put up, you know, a barrier and a shield around them and be highly resistant to that change. And so right there from the get go of of how you view that change ultimately influences how resilient we can be in that particular moment of change that we’re going through. So that’d be be one piece. But yeah, you you just can’t force force it on somebody though, right? It’s it’s gotta come
come from within them, they’ve got to buy into it clearly themselves. And we have to think of these factors a lot like mental muscles in our body. Okay.
Jeff Walter (11:31)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Davidson (11:31)
And you know, it’s not like you just go to the gym once and you’re all of sudden in peak physical condition, but instead it happens over over time. Well you know, same thing with with all these mindset skills as well. So we wanna try to exercise these factors over time, maintain them, sustain them, and
keep evolving our capabilities to have high levels of motivation, perseverance and resilience.
Jeff Walter (11:54)
Well and and and to do that like
J it just seems like do you have to does it end up changing your your your your value or belief system? Like like like I’m I’m listening to what you’re saying and what and then I’m thinking of other things where you get like significant change in in behavioral changes.
And and usually it it it it ends up it it corresponds to some type of modification of your belief system, right? ‘Cause you know, and then and then that gets you the motivation to go through the change ’cause the change is hard, right? Like acquiring knowledge is easy, developing skills is hard, developing personal skills, behavioral skills is is the hardest. ‘Cause you know, like see what I’m saying?
Brian Davidson (12:35)
Yeah, let’s so so our values are are really a bedrock of all this. Okay. So it’s like
Number one, developing a strong sense of self awareness and and identity of of who you are, what you’re all about, and knowing what are the values, because those values serve as the building blocks for all of our goals, right? And those are the goals that help us to demonstrate high passion and perseverance. That’s the grit piece. Okay. And it’s also those values that allow us to have have resilience as well. So it’s like if if we can create that alignment between our values with our goals and as we’re navigating all the ups and downs and challenges along
along the path. If we stay true to those values, that’s that integrity piece that we’re also trying to assess for that helps to create that that strong alignment and congruency with all of these different important pieces to the puzzle that allows the person to keep pushing forward.
Jeff Walter (13:24)
And and and with what you’re with what Mindview does, i is is that a very that evolutionary process, is that a very hands-on process? Like you t you talked about an assessment, you know, is it is it a self development process? Like like, you know, is it require human coaching, like or or y you know what I’m saying? Like what’s the process look like? How do I how do you get there from here?
Brian Davidson (13:47)
Well,
w we’ve done multiple different things. We’ve continued to learn more and more. You know, I continue to think that people are an important part of of this puzzle. And so you know, we’ve done anything from developing e learning content in the past to help build up these skills. We’ve also got an incredible faculty of
Great experts across the country that help develop these skills through coaching and training. So that’s one mechanism. And then most recently we built up this AI platform to help foster these skills at at scale. And so our our process involves number one, having the person
take the assessment so that way we can get a gauge of kind of where things
Jeff Walter (14:23)
Right.
Brian Davidson (14:24)
are at individually and then also collectively and then taking the steps either through coaching, training, or the use of the AI platform that develops these personalized podcasts for an individual that are all about them and their goals and their challenges. You know, that’s our our different mechanisms to figure out how to best develop these factors. And so you know
The jury’s still out at this point in time as far as on the AI side, you know, how well this can develop these these factors. Well, we know with a lot of the the human pieces and previous training that we were doing that, yes, we we do see a growth. I mean, we can see upwards of forty, even fifty percent improvement in in some of these factors over you know, typically about a six month period of time is what we’ve done in the past. but you can see shorter periods of time.
Definitely from like a ten week period in the early days of me being a teacher and developing content curriculum for s students in schools. You know, we looked at a shorter
Jeff Walter (15:20)
Right.
Brian Davidson (15:20)
intervention for these skills and saw improvement in in a shorter window as well. So we do know quite confidently that you can shape and and change these factors, but we continue to figure out how to best do that and how do we do that at scale.
Jeff Walter (15:33)
And well and I think it’s the at scale thing because like I think when people think of the the these power skills or these personal skills it that it I I think at least my my historical thing has always been kind of well that requires a lot of human interaction, like human like coaching, right? Like like I I and and that’s hard to scale because people are expensive.
And but you you mentioned the AI platform and you mentioned personalized podcasts. So can we go a little into that and how you’re trying to to take what has been a success from from what I understand, the the approach that you’ve been doing traditionally has been successful. You’re able to bo boost those numbers, build up that that grit and and r and resiliency and those those personal factors.
through say let’s just say more traditional learning meth modalities, you know, whether it’s instructor led, whether it’s coaching, whether it’s e-learning. and you you mentioned briefly the AI stuff. That the thing that I’m excited about that, just in general, is is the is the scalability, right? And so h help me understand what you guys are doing there and what you’ve seen as some early results.
Brian Davidson (16:49)
Yeah, so so again my my goal’s always been thinking back to that experience in India that I had, you know, how can we build up these skills and truly a whole bunch of people, millions of people across the entire world? And we as you kinda mentioned it, you know, coaching and training, it’s hard hard to scale that on on the human
Jeff Walter (17:06)
Right.
Brian Davidson (17:07)
side. But with AI it creates this incredible opportunity. So so Jeff, what we’ve done is basically designed a a new platform that we
We have created an an AI coach, okay, that does first does an intake process with the individual that basically has a conversation just like this and ask all
Jeff Walter (17:24)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Davidson (17:24)
about their goals and their their challenges, their hobbies and interests. And then we feed the person into our psychometric assessment that might be a profile and get all that data on that individual, get that snapshot of where their minds at at this particular point in time. And then with all that data, okay, that’s when the AI can just go to work and do
The amazing things that that it can do. And so it develops a podcast for that individual that’s all about them, their goals, their challenges, weaves in their interest into that discussion and completely personally. So no two podcasts are the same. And they listen to that short podcast. We tend to generate these to be about 10 to 15 minutes in length. And then after that, then they engage in a follow-up session with the AI coach.
That basically talks about okay, what did we learn from that podcast? What can we apply into our work or into our life? And then every conversation that that person has with the AI coach, all that’s stored in the memory of that learner. And so then the fur future podcast, this ongoing podcast,
Jeff Walter (18:26)
Okay.
Brian Davidson (18:27)
can use that new information. So they’re like dynamically written on the fly for that individual based off of the ever growing knowledge of that learner that we have. And so it’s
It gives you a glimpse of kind of where where learning is likely to go and how how we can personalize learning in a pretty unique way.
Jeff Walter (18:47)
so that’s really cool. where my brain is going on that is all of a sudden I just was like, so it’s well humans are are nar you know, we’re we’re narrative machines, right? We consume narrative, like we love narrative. That’s that’s we’re we’re not rational, we’re na we’re narrative driven, right? we’re you we’re not we’re not bullying logic, right?
So I love about the podcast is it’s a narrative. You listen to two people talk, right? Yeah,
Brian Davidson (19:11)
And it’s a narrative about you too.
Jeff Walter (19:12)
yeah. But but you but you hear but it’s not somebody speaking at you. It’s two people talking about you. Or say or talking about things that are really relevant to you, right? And so it’s a it’s a narrative. And then we we’ve talked before, but it just triggered in my my when you just went through that thing. It’s like then you talk to the coach, which is more like
you
know, a a Socratic method, right? Like you you you listen to this narrative of these two voices talking, and they’re talking about you and things that are of interest to you, and then you have kind of a Socratic dialogue with your coach
About well, what did you think about that? And you know, and and and you go, Well, I think this was really interesting. Wow, I had a breakthrough and thought on this, but I really don’t understand this other thing, or I don’t really get what they were talking about. And and you go through that socrat and then that becomes input. I didn’t what I didn’t realize when we talked about before is like the cyclical nature of that, that that debrief, that Socratic interview, which
Is learning in its own right, right? Because the Socratic methods is a different way of learning. So that’s what the coach is doing, right? So you’re getting insights there, but then you’re taking all that and using that as the source knowledge to get to the next podcast. I think that’s brilliant. That’s brilliant. Yeah.
Brian Davidson (20:31)
Just think about what we do as educators, right? We we we learn about the
student, okay. All right, I I coach. I coach both my kids in in soccer. And yeah, what do you do? You you learn about that athlete or you learn about that student and and you adjust, right? You you adjust what you do and how you do it based off of that unique individual that you’re working with. Well, that’s that’s what we’re trying to do here with AI. And the beauty is the AI can
Jeff Walter (20:56)
That’s so cool.
Brian Davidson (20:57)
account for so much information.
Okay, that our little brains, so we can’t all put it together all at once. But AI can. And and what we can do too is in the long term, as we start to have more and more people using all of this, then we can start to train the AAI on so we have people reassess, take the assessment again, then we can track growth and changes of these skills over time. And pretty soon then the AI can start figuring out well, what actually leads to a higher sense of grit in a person. Like what are the things that we are doing?
in that development that are improving that particular factor. What are we doing to help foster resilience? What’s actually working for an individual? Right now as human beings, right? We just think, well, I don’t know. I think it was this, right? But like it’s very hard to tease out. And there’s so many variables. Well, AI is gonna be able to help solve that, which that’s why I’m so excited about all this.
Jeff Walter (21:48)
Huh. Yeah, because all that interaction then becomes a giant database because you’ve got the ongoing assessment, right? So you can
Brian Davidson (21:55)
Yep. Yep.
Jeff Walter (21:57)
sit there and go, Well, person you know, Joe went from here to h you know, from a low level on certain dimensions in the rubric to high based on this inter these the these these podcasts and these interactions. Whereas, you know, John
started
off kind of medium in the rubric, but only went up a little bit and then you can actually do the c the almost like the multivariant analysis but in in a textual
i i you know, but not but not in a discrete way, but almost in a in a narrative way with the AI to sit there and go, when we emphasize this, when I use more analogies, when I do this, it tends to have a bigger effect than when I do you know, when I create you know when I approach it this way, it has a greater effect than when I approach it that way for these types of people that are having like that’s fascinating. That’s really cool. That becomes
Brian Davidson (22:48)
Yep. And then it’s
Jeff Walter (22:51)
truly personalized learning.
Brian Davidson (22:53)
That’s the goal.
Jeff Walter (22:54)
Huh. That’s really cool. K now c could you see that being applied to things like let’s just let’s let’s let’s zoom out the lens a little bit. Yeah, because we’re talking about these very specific skills. Would you see that applied to other types of learning? Like I would I’d imagine yes, but I don’t want to presuppose
Brian Davidson (23:13)
y
Jeff Walter (23:13)
that.
Brian Davidson (23:14)
yeah, absolutely. In fact, I was showing our our new AI platform to somebody in the in the insurance industry, and it kind of had the light bulb go on. I said, could we do something similar to help people figure out what sort of insurance coverage is right for them? Right?
Jeff Walter (23:28)
Yeah.
Brian Davidson (23:29)
Do an intake with an AI agent, knows all the insurance industry, and then you know, have some personalized learning for that individual to help them grasp and understand.
all these different pieces of of coverage and and what this means for them and help them in in that industry. you you can apply this to so many different areas.
Jeff Walter (23:48)
so now do you see that so now s you know, if we talk about how AI is gonna impact the learning and development industry, you I mean, where do you see that where do you see that kind of going as this becomes more ma you know, as as as things like this become more mainstream or become more popular?
Brian Davidson (24:05)
It’s a good question. So I I think we’re gonna have two different elements gone simultaneously. Number one, AI is gonna personalize learning in a way that we’ve never been able to do. Okay. And that’s gonna be very neat and unique. At the same time, I think as all this unfolds, Jeff, that that we will see a greater interest to want to have that human connection again. Even
Jeff Walter (24:30)
Right.
Brian Davidson (24:31)
though the humans can’t
do near as good of work as what the AI can do. I think there will be something about knowing that I’m sitting there having a conversation with somebody else that people will always very much enjoy. So I think, yes, in L and D we will continue to use more and more AI to help facilitate learning. Simultaneously, I think we’ll also have a continued interest to have that human presence.
in place, like get get together with a group of people. I think, you know, like things like art and sports getting together with others in any sort of shared human environment, that will explode in in interest and demand here in the next ten years. Even even more than what it is today. Because people
Jeff Walter (25:19)
Yeah.
Brian Davidson (25:20)
will just desire that human we’re pretty soon we’re gonna have all these robots walking around, right? We’re you know, maybe
three to five years away from a lot of this unfolding in front of us. And I think people will enjoy the human thing as all that’s going on.
Jeff Walter (25:34)
Yeah, yeah, well it’s you know, it’s it’s interesting you said that. I had a c one of my daughters, she’s in the sport industry. And one of the things that she you know, she’s very bullish on the industry for very similar reasons you just laid out. It’s like from an entertainment standpoint, you know, it’s always unknown who’s going to win the match. You know, and there’s drama. Like you have all the
the elements of drama in a sporting event and it’s live and and you know and so sh and and it it’s that human connection. Watch and then watching other humans
do amazing things, right? Within a constrained environment. Because that’s what a sport is. A sport is an artificially constrained environment, right? It’s like, but and then and then and then people do amazing things. It’s interesting on a learning side,
‘Cause then there was a I I remember talking j gentleman at or listening to a gentleman at a recent conference and he and from a company competitive standpoint, he was saying we’re moving into the environment where learning is the only sustainable competitive advantage. Right? Because anything that became routinized will be pushed off to the machines.
you know, whether it’s AI, robots, whatever. And so then so which means that any other organization can do it. Right. and and so therefore you just gotta keep learning and learning. it’s fascinating.
on the other hand, do you think
you can get burned out as from a from the human standpoint of like I c I can see on the one hand we can learn a lot more, a lot quicker, more thoroughly and build all these skills. On the other hand, does it become its own new rat race?
Brian Davidson (27:16)
Yeah, I again that’s why I think people will always want that human connection. ‘Cause yeah, we’ll we’ll kinda get s tired to a certain degree of just constantly interacting with a I mean, this stuff’s gonna be with us everywhere, you know, and pr pretty
Jeff Walter (27:27)
Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Davidson (27:29)
soon it’s gonna be just infused into every aspect of our life. And at times I think it’s gonna be nice just to simply unplug and sit there and and talk with your your friends, you know, around a round a fire or whatever it could be, right?
and just have a human conversation together. I think that will always be desired by
Jeff Walter (27:48)
Yeah.
Brian Davidson (27:49)
my people.
Jeff Walter (27:50)
Yeah, you know, it I just talk about the effects of AI on society, which is kind of a little brittle related to what we’re talking about, but it w recently I I was there talked to a woman in her twenties, mid twenties.
And she’s a data scientist. And you know, sh so she builds these big data models and crunches them so you know so that manufacturers can improve their their processes. And you know, it’s brilliant stuff, right? And but she was lamenting because she was an early adopter of of AI and Claude and and and and
Anyway, long story short, now she’s in her like, you know, mid-late twenties and she’s actually not doing any coding anymore, which is something she got a lot of joy out of. Instead, she’s managing like half a dozen or so AI agents. And and sh and because she’s automated all the routine stuff, the only thing that’s left is the hard creative stuff.
Which, you know, if you’re truly doing creative stuff, you can only do that for about a half a day. I mean a day you can only do it for like three or four hours a day. And then and it’s just a and then she’s like to that human satisfaction, it’s like, well, I’m not interacting with other people. I’m managing the six AI agents and I have to do all the thinking for them because they’re good they’re really good interns.
Brian Davidson (29:08)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Walter (29:09)
But they’re but
And then by lunchtime I’m I’m I’m shot. You know, it’s just it’s it’s like it’s you know, which is interesting.
Brian Davidson (29:18)
Well and
I I think we have to remember like when we hear things like this, this is where things are at right now. Hi.
Jeff Walter (29:24)
Yeah.
Brian Davidson (29:25)
And in two, three years it could look very different than what it is right right now. So y y you know, when we say, you know, I can’t really do creative thinking or make judgments and do high level reasoning.
I would say yes, absolutely, right now. And I I do question whether or not that’ll be the case in in the next three years or so.
Jeff Walter (29:47)
Well
i the the the thing that I resonated with that was, you know, whenever whenever I’ve read anything about you know, truly creative folks, you know, writers and artists and that, y you hear s a very similar thing is they’ll they’ll get into something but they can only do it for so many hours a day at that peak level of creativity, you know? And it and I agree with you. I I I think it and I don’t know the answer.
Like that’s what you can do today. I don’t know what tomorrow’s gonna bring, but but and and I don’t know as a society how we’re going to take advantage of those gains, right? Like the conversation I had with her was like, well, during the first industrial revolution, we know pre industrial revolution, we all work sixteen hours a day, six days a week.
And you know, you had Sunday off, and then it was, you know, sunrise, work, sunset, bed, right? and we took some of the productivity gains from that and we turned it into a five-hour, five eight-hour day, five-day week, 40-hour work week, right? So instead of working you know, 70, 80 hours a week, we’re working 40.
Yeah, and we also got nicer houses and we got electricity and we got I mean we got and our standard of leveling went up. And so it might be you know, like it might be that type of thing where it’s like, okay, we’re down we end up with a twenty to thirty hour work week. b you know, and and and then to your point like and then we’re doing a lot of unuman interaction things, right?
Brian Davidson (31:10)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Walter (31:10)
And but but on the learning f side it’s interesting
Because I do believe that going, you know, bringing it back to learning. I think it’s really interesting because you can get the scale. And that that that I I’m really excited just on not only on the on the grit skills, but just skills in general, is you can really scale with AI.
Brian Davidson (31:31)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Walter (31:32)
because of it’s exactly what you’re talking about, right? It’s like you can
Brian Davidson (31:36)
translated into so many different languages. Yep.
Jeff Walter (31:37)
Yeah. A and you’re getting the coaching. You’re getting
really good Socratic coaching and and that that’s what you need, right? You know, you t you know, you need practice and coaching. Practice and coaching, right? And and then I love the the the podcast thing ’cause then it’s like and you’re getting these great narratives. You’re getting these great stories that are very relevant to you. Yeah, it’s it’s beautiful. But it’s just it’s really wild.
Brian Davidson (32:04)
So so
so how how how how do you see all this enfolding yourself? Where where
do you see this going with with learning and development and education?
Jeff Walter (32:07)
You d
well I I well a couple things. One on the l on the learning and development side, I think we’re gonna compress the time it takes to learn and develop stuff, right? Like like on the one hand, if I if I think about the the this woman, yeah, she’s in her twenties. It’s like, okay, that’s you on the production side, right? That’s her producing, creating economic value.
And then the flip side, it’s like, well, you just freed up a tremendous amount of time to learn new stuff. Which, you know, if I go back to when I was at that stage of my career, or even, you know, right now, it’s like you spend so you spend so much energy doing, you didn’t have time for learning. I mean, that was always the big th the you know, within the corporate environment’s like you y there’s so much to be done.
that there’s not enough time to learn, right? Or to sharpen your saw to go to, you know, hats off to Stephen Covey, right? And and so I I think it’s gonna be I I really do but when I heard the gentleman say learning is the only sustainable competitive advantage, I I think that’s it’s gonna turn into something like we have all these tools that allow us to acquire knowledge and develop skills much quicker than our predecessors.
just much quicker because we’re basically going to have access to the world’s greatest coach on any topic. Right? and like you said, and it’s gonna be able to just see all these nuanced things that no coach can see, no human coach can see. And so we’re it’s gonna compress that. And and then I think but we’re gonna ha but from where we where we add value
just talking about you know in the ec economic and and corporate space, not not humans as social animals. It’s like, okay, I I think then we’re gonna be spending a lot of our time doing the highly creative, really unique stuff that only humans can do because at the end of the day we’re trying to serve humans.
Yeah, and and I think that’s gonna to really take a lot of mental energy and people are gonna get really drained. And then I think there’s gonna be another but but then also I think and a lot of that’s gonna get routinized. So then now you gotta learn the next thing ’cause the environment’s changing and it’s gonna be this cycle of constantly learning and then constantly thinking at very high levels. you know, except for the things that are more routinized that for whatever reason cannot be automated.
Which will happen. There’ll be there’ll be things that are can’t you can’t automate.
Brian Davidson (34:40)
Yeah, Jeff Jeff, your comment about, you know, doing versus, you know, taking the next steps of of of learning. Like today we we have to do all these things, right? We’ve got to work all these hours, we’ve got to spend all this time working, working, working to help survive and provide for our our families. And my guess is in the not too distant future, we’re not gonna have to work like we did today. I I think I maybe I shared with you in the past, you know, I was having a conversation with my daughter.
And I said, you know, someday I’m guessing you’re you’re gonna tell your your kids like my mom and dad how to like work forty, fifty, sixty, seventy hours a week, you know, and that that’s just kind of what they did back then. And
Jeff Walter (35:17)
Right.
Brian Davidson (35:17)
those grandkids, you know, will be like, my gosh, like I can’t believe that’s that’s what they had to do. And so I think this will like free up time for us to spend our time elsewhere. So what what do you do? So to me it’s like you look at how the Uber wealthy spend their time today.
I
Jeff Walter (35:35)
Yeah.
Brian Davidson (35:36)
they don’t have to work. If they want to, they they sure can. Okay, but they don’t have to. So what do they spend their time doing? Well they they do community events, right? They they sit there and read a lot. They learn a lot of information. I think those are gonna
Jeff Walter (35:49)
Yeah.
Brian Davidson (35:49)
be the things, right? They attend plays and sports events and you know get together with friends, have coffee together with other people. Like to me, that’s the future that I see unfolding where we will still want to learn.
Jeff Walter (36:02)
Yeah, well I I I I agree with you, and I think that’s gonna be the story for most folks. We’ll go from a 40, 50, 60 hour week to a 30, 40, 50 to a 20, 30, 40. But then on the flip side, just like today, there are folks that are still working 80 hours a week. And some of them, a lot of them are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. You know, they’re not they’re not the people at the bottom of the economic ladder. They’re a lot of them are the people at the top.
Because they can double their productivity by working twice as much, right? And and so I I think I think what what what your said will happen, and but I also think then there’ll be the people that still put in the the now extra the re the what crazy hours, which you know, a hundred years ago working six seventy hours a week wasn’t crazy, right? Now it’s crazy. but
I I th I think people do that, but I d I agree with you. I think most people as a society, if we’re talking about the median person, will start to pocket some of that time for other things other than economic productivity. Right? And and also and the same thing was, you know, as our standard of living goes up,
Yeah, we’ll we’ll sacrifice that slightly nicer house, that slightly nicer car. J just like our our ancestors did, right? If we were still working sixteen hours a day, six days a week, we’d all have a lot more stuff. You we’d living in nicer houses with nicer cars and nicer clothes and nicer vacations. We wouldn’t have any time to use it all. But
You know, but what we did as a society is we decided to pocket some of those gains as leisure, as as as as time for me and my family. And I think we’ll do the same. I I agree with you. I think we’ll do the same thing. or or something not I shouldn’t say the same. There’ll be a similar type of calculus that will go on. And it will be interesting to see. Like I’m sorry. Like on a on another note
Just talking about pocketing the how how the gains are used by society. S really fascinating thing because I I’m like like history. so if you look at the Industrial Revolution and and you know food preparation with supermarkets and you know, even without processed food.
Just the amount of time and energy it takes to prepare meals for families has dropped tremendously. You know, with dishwashers and stoves and ovens and and all that kind of stuff. And so basically, if you go back 100-150 years, it was a full-time job just to do that for a family. And and the way we and now it’s not, right? and and that allowed that other partner
To engage in other things like join the workforce and that. Now you can have both parents out working or doing other things. And that’s how we decided as a society to avail ourselves of that gain. But interestingly enough, this is really I I find this really interesting. When it comes to we also invented clothes washers and dryers. And it used to take a certain amount of time to do the laundry. Well, the interesting studies is
The amount of time we spend doing the laundry today is pretty much exactly the amount of time that was spent doing laundry 100, 150 years ago. We
Brian Davidson (39:10)
All right, really.
Jeff Walter (39:10)
have not changed the amount of time we as humans spend doing laundry. What we have done is clean a lot more clothes. We don’t wear
Brian Davidson (39:20)
More.
Jeff Walter (39:20)
sh we do more laundry because we don’t wear a shirt three or four times. You know, if if you go back in the day,
Shirts had removable collars and removable cuffs because you would wear the shirt a bunch of times and change the collar and the cuff because those would g get dirty, right?
Nobody does that right anymore. Instead, you wear a shirt for a day, you throw it in a wash, you put a clean one on tomorrow. We’ve all got like dozens of shirts and pants. And yeah, we don’t have our our two shirts, the one we wear today and the one that’s getting washed. we we have a a a giant wardrobe, right? But the amount of time that we spend doing the laundry is pretty much the same as what it was a hundred years ago.
150 years ago. So it’d be so it’s gonna be interesting. My point on that whole thing is it’s gonna be interesting to see how we spend the gains, right, of of AI. Because I agree, I would agree with you. I think it’s gonna make us tremendously more productive as individuals, and therefore tremendously more wealthy as a society, like the like the first industrial. I really think it’s we’re really at the dawn of the second industrial revolution.
Yeah, I think everything we’ve been doing with information technology has been a precursor to the second industrial revolution. And and I think it’ll be fascinating to see how those gains are shared. Yeah, or or you know, it’s val you know. Not to get to ten
thousand foot v level, but you know, that’s me. I find that stuff interesting.
Brian Davidson (40:42)
Yeah, it’s gonna it’s gonna be like, you
know, indust another industrial revolution and and renaissance all smashed
Jeff Walter (40:50)
Yeah.
Brian Davidson (40:50)
into the next decade. So
Jeff Walter (40:52)
Yeah.
Well I I heard I I was talking to one person and and I I I would love to give the credit to the the speaker. Maybe it was you. I don’t know. But they said that what we can expect is a hundred years of inevit innovation in ten years.
Brian Davidson (41:06)
Yeah. Yeah. So that’s Demesis Hobbes, he’s chairman
Jeff Walter (41:08)
Yeah.
Brian Davidson (41:09)
of Google’s Deep Deep Mind. So he said, you know, think about sort of progress that we’ve seen since nineteen twenty six to two thousand twenty six. Expect to see about the same amount of progress in the next ten years. Okay.
Jeff Walter (41:22)
Which is
which is amazing because I mean there’s the speed of of all that that’s mind blowing. But the flip side also is when you look at like I also I I I track human progress dot com and and some of those things. And when you look at it from a global perspective, it’s like, you know
I I think we went from like I I’m gonna misquote the facts, but you know, if you go back to the turn of the last century, you know, a hundred plus years ago, you know, eighty, ninety percent of the population living in poverty and now it’s like, you know, less than ten percent. I mean, there’s still poverty, extreme poverty, right? There’s still poverty, it’s still bad, you know, but it we went from like mo that’s the that was the condition of most of humanity to now it’s a subset of humanity, right? And and and and just
things and and you know, dying from weather related events, d just all this stuff. You just watched it, y you know, there was a great book. It was like ten shoot was it like ten ten things every every person should know or something like that. And it just went through the last hundred and fifty years and what’s happened to humanity. And and you we just don’t realize how blessed we are and how far
We’ve come like the caloric in the average caloric intake across the globe has gone up, you know, thirty percent in the last hundred and some you know, s some like it was stuff like that. It’s like people aren’t hungry, people aren’t poor, people have shelter, people have clean air, clean water, you know, indoor like it’s amazing and it’ll be amazing to see what the next turn of the screw is. You know, it and and that’s in the last hundred years. And then if that gets compressed into ten years, it just blows my mind. It blows my mind.
Brian Davidson (42:59)
I I just continue
to feel that that we are the luckiest humans to ever be alive, you know, to to experience
Jeff Walter (43:03)
Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Davidson (43:04)
this and and go through it all. Do it doesn’t mean it’s gonna be easy. I do think there’s gonna be a messy middle here little period where there’s just gonna be so much change and transformation. It’s gonna be overwhelming to a lot of people. And that our a lot of our economic economic system and the work that we do is gonna shift and change. so my hope for for the future, Jeff, is is that we can help.
Develop the hope and the resilience, the purpose and people, the adaptability, all these different elements to to help during this period of transition.
Jeff Walter (43:35)
Well and and then and you know, just coming back to that, that’s one of the things I really like about what you guys are doing is the the the the things that you’re fo you know, we’re we kinda went really big tent there, but coming back down to it, you’re we’ve got you know, educa classical education if you go back a hundred, two hundred years, was about character development.
Right. It wasn’t about being excellent in calculus or knowing how to calculate the acceleration of a of a mass through a frictionless space. it most of it was about character development. And over the last hundred or so years, we’ve really shifted more towards technical know what I call technical knowledge, right? Like, how do I do that? You know, how you know, let me look at algebra, even in in humanities, let me break it down, let me break down sentence structure and and and novel.
structure and and you know let me as opposed to the creative and and and and developing you as a character and being the best human you can be and what I really love about what you guys are doing is it’s trying to address that challenge but do it at scale which is really cool that’s really cool. So
Brian Davidson (44:42)
Hopefully it’s just the start.
Jeff Walter (44:44)
yeah I I and I think you’re right on the leading edge man.
And I know we got on a a bunch of tangents, but it’s that’s the fun stuff. That’s the uniquely human stuff, right?
Brian Davidson (44:53)
Love it.
Jeff Walter (44:53)
You know? So hey you know look you know before we wrap up, you know, where’s Mindview going what’s the future for Mindview? What do guys where where are you headed? You’ve you rolled out this platform, you know
Brian Davidson (45:05)
Yeah, so a
as I kinda mentioned, I I see it as helping during this period of transition. So what we’re trying to do is is build human readiness at this stage, right? How do we get people to build up these mindset skills to foster the motivation, the purpose, the resilience, the grit, the adaptability to help people navigate this this next period. again, I’m very optimistic it’s gonna be wonderful in the long term. And the shorter term, I think i it could be a little bit turbulent.
And so I will want to really help navigate people through this this period and hope we can make a positive impact on a lot of people out there.
Jeff Walter (45:41)
I think that that is a a beautiful mission. promised land, right? You always gotta go through the dip. And I and I think you’re right. I think we are headed for the dip as we go through all this change.
But there is this beautiful promised land out there and I think you’re doing great work to try and help us mitigate the dip.
Brian Davidson (45:58)
And if we if we have the resilience, if we have the hope, if we have the grit and the sense of purpose, to me that’s what’s gonna get us there.
Jeff Walter (46:05)
Well, I I I wish you tremendous amount of luck. I think you’re doing great work and I appreciate you spending some time with me to explore all this. And I had a lot of fun. So yeah.
Brian Davidson (46:15)
Been an honor, Jeff. Yeah, thank you.
Jeff Walter (46:16)
Yeah, th thank you, Brian. And and before we go if if folks want to get a hold of you or mine view, what’s the easiest way to get a hold of you? Or or get
Brian Davidson (46:26)
Or our
website w dot mindview I N D V U E dot com. I’m not a big social media guy, but I am on LinkedIn and so people can find me on LinkedIn. Other than that I I don’t do a lot on the social media front, so I can reach out.
Jeff Walter (46:39)
All right, so
mindview.com and we’ll make sure that that link is in the show notes for anybody listening. And and and Brian is available at on LinkedIn. and so that that’d be a great way to get a hold you. Brian, thank you again so much for taking time any day to talk to me. I really, I really do appreciate it.
Brian Davidson (46:56)
Thanks, Jeff.
Jeff Walter (46:57)
And to everybody out there, thanks for listening, and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.