EPISODE 10: David Smith, Chief Technology Officer
[00:00:20] KK: Hey everybody, welcome to Risky Business. My name is Kathy Kaehler.
[00:00:25] BL: And I'm Bliss Landon.
[00:00:26] KK: And we have a great show for you guys today.
[00:00:30] BL: Yes, we do. We really do.
[00:00:31] KK: Can you believe it's been a week already again? I feel like it's been like five weeks. So much is going on.
[00:00:36] BL: I know. Time flies. I really does.
[00:00:39] KK: I know. I know. I know. You're a little under the weather. How are you feeling?
[00:00:42] BL: I was. I'm feeling great. My voice is a little more –
[00:00:45] KK: Hey. You’re kind of coming into the sexy zone for me.
[00:00:47] BL: I know. I'm a little more sexy than I choose to be. But I'll roll with it.
[00:00:52] KK: Okay. Okay.
[00:00:55] BL: I'm usually not the sexy, but I'll go with it, you know?
[00:00:58] KK: We'll let everyone else be the judge of that. But anyway, other than that, good. Things are good.
[00:01:04] BL: Yeah. Things are great. Yeah, we're just been busy, busy, busy, busy.
[00:01:07] KK: I was trying to even remember, we went to an estate sale last weekend.
[00:01:10] BL: We did. We went to a few. I think we went to like four.
[00:01:14] KK: We did. We hit a bunch. And good stuff.
[00:01:18] BL: Really good stuff.
[00:01:19] KK: I got a great rug.
[00:01:20] BL: A really great rug.
[00:01:21] KK: Gosh! We had to wait for it.
[00:01:23] BL: We do.
[00:01:24] KK: It's so interesting, because we've talked about this, but we haven't really talked about the actual process of how some of these work, and that was a new experience.
[00:01:34] BL: Yeah. Like, “Okay, everybody out,” and we're going to discount another 25%. We're like, “Okay.” I said, “Can I just get the discount now, because I got to go. Like I have another sale to go do.” We’re like, “Nope.” So we had to go outside. Wait. Go back in. Get the 25% discount and then be on our way.
[00:01:52] KK: That’s great. But what I also purchased. You got the rug. I got the Mercedes Benz of ironing boards. I've already used it. I was on it this morning.
[00:02:05] BL: So something I learned about Kathy on the way to our to our sale was she said you probably don't know this about me. But I love to iron. I'm like, “Wow! That is weird.” And what's even stranger about it is that I can't iron anything. If it has a big crease down the middle, I'll iron it. I'll spray it. I’ll iron it. I'll pull it up off the board, and there's the crease right down the middle again. So I gave up on ironing a long time ago.
[00:02:31] KK: It could be the board. This is what I'm figuring out. This is just amazing. And guess what? $5.
[00:02:37] BL: Yeah. And it has a rack.
[00:02:39] KK: Oh, it has on both sides. It's wide. You can do a whole – And I did on my linens. Oh, fabulous. Okay, we could talk for hours. Anyway, we have got to get to our guest. We're very, very excited to have this gentleman joining us today. I know you guys have had a relationship and friendship business for a while. I'm excited to learn so much about our guest. But let's not wait any longer. I'd love to introduce David Smith. He is the Chief Technology Officer at the Tustin School District. David, welcome.
[00:03:19] BL: Hi, David.
[00:03:19] DS: Hi. Thanks for having me on the show. I'm loving it already. I'm loving you guys as you report back and forth. I just bought a new seatbelt. I’m pulling it on and I'm ready for action.
[00:03:29] BL: All right. It’s great.
[00:03:33] KK: That's so great. Well, welcome. And there's so much that we're going to cover obviously with your position in what you're doing. We have been talking about that as we started Risky Business. And your title, Chief Technology Officer, keeps coming up, and I didn't even know that position existed. And clearly this is something now districts everywhere have you and probably have many to deal with this new life that we have of kids using technology. So share a little bit. How you got started and what your connection is with Tustin? And you've got a very busy office. It looks incredible.
[00:04:24] DS: Let me just say this. Your first show, you talked about, Bliss, you have 30 years in the industry. And Kathy, you’re 30 years in industry. And I got excited, because that's my number, which means I'm talking to grown folks, which is really nice.
[00:04:39] BL: We all got started when we were 10, right?
[00:04:42] KK: That's right, yeah.
[00:04:43] DS: So it is a little different for that for me, but I'll just speak for myself. But I've been in IT all of my life. For me, it started in ‘77 with a field trip to IBM, and I fell in love with technology. I spent the first 20 years of my career in the private sector. Just enjoying life, working for a number of large companies, building their infrastructure departments, everything, from finance, to backend, user support, database design, application, support and design, and everything. I worked for some video game companies coming up, which made me the king on the block as far as my kids are concerned.
[00:05:22] BL: Oh that, I bet.
[00:05:24] DS: I still work on a 120-projector and play a game all day. Culture change, I decided to move into education during a time where education was just starting to branch digital, but we were at the time IT directors. We ran infrastructure departments within an educational environment. We were the apple in a box of oranges, or it’s probably the wrong way, a banana in a box of oranges, and somebody was looking for an apple.
[00:05:58] BL: Oh, there you go.
[00:06:00] DS: And as time moved on, the title and the responsibility changed. No longer am I the person to lead a team who's just responsible for how do we connect A to B in the most efficient manner. But more so, how do we incorporate ourselves into an educational process. And so we became Chief Technology Officers.
So today, our position is really about an integration of infrastructure and classroom information pedagogy. Not so much what to use, but how to use it, and how it's used between – Or for our major stakeholders. You consider a school district this size, 24,000 students, 2000 employees, that makes over 90% of your stakeholders under the age of 18. It’s a different perspective. And my team and I really inherited an amazing team. But what we've been able to do within this district, even in the last four years is just amazing and phenomenal. And bless your team. It has been a huge part of that. So we really appreciate being in n partnership with you.
[00:07:10] BL: So we've been partners with Tustin and providing the insurance for their district. And initially, I think we dealt with Garrett. Correct? And then David came on to the scene about a year later, I think it was. And we were an option. And David really took our partnership to the next level. And it's just been phenomenal. And they were really our kind of poster child for this product, because it was a very new product for us in our space. And we were both kind of learning. I would say we learned a lot from Tustin to do things the right way. And they just have a stellar program, and they definitely do things the right way. So what I'd like to get into David is what can we – Or how can we educate parents and other tech staff out there on what the best practices are for participation in this program? Because the parents are relied upon to purchase the insurance, correct?
[00:08:17] DS: Mm-hmm. Yes.
[00:08:18] BL: And so, you can lead a horse to a water, but you can't make them drink, right? So you guys have done a phenomenal job in really getting the word out there. And figuring out what the best practices are to educate your parents and then to get them to actually purchase the insurance, which provides protection on the devices. So can you go through some of those best practices with us?
[00:08:44] DS: Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you for that opportunity. The first thing that we realized here in Tustin is that we are all engaged and invested in the success of our students. So I have two children in this district as well. And for anyone to tell me I'm as vested as you, I'll say, “Well, no you're not. I'm invested” But interested or engaged in the outcomes that we're trying to achieve? Yes. We can all have a higher level of involvement with that. So any parent I speak to, I need them to understand that my interest is your interest. Making sure your child is successful through this entire process. What you often see in this digital era is – And I would back date myself. If you guys want to jump on this bandwagon, feel free.
[00:09:29] KK: Okay. Oh, I will.
[00:09:30] DS: We have done a text textbook or two. There may have been – No one was charging me for a pen and paper and things like that. But at the end of my high school career, I just saw some receipts lately. I think I had to pay like $42 for a list of my 12 items that the library would never return.
[00:09:49] BL: It's always the library, right? They always bill you at the end.
[00:09:53] DS: Nowadays, that list is a little different, right? So I have two children in this district. They both have $1,000 devices, right? And this is something they carry back and forth with them. It's in their backpack. They get home, they swing the backpack across the floor and sliding and so forth.
[00:10:08] BL: Oh yeah, and you’re like, “Ahh!”
[00:10:12] DS: Yeah. But we know that's a reality. We also know that the kids aren't paying for them, right? And at the onset, neither are the parents. I want to say that they're not paying for them at all. It's something we give. We provide it for instruction. So therefore, there's no charge to the families. But we do want to create an investment opportunity mindset. If you have a pride of ownership on anything, you tend to take care of a little bit, right? So the first thing we try to do in maximizing our investment is securing a device that's worthy of caring and worthy of investing, right? So all of the devices that we have in Tustin Unified are what I would call high-end devices, their iPads and high-end iPads, they’re computers and high-end computers. And we're not just looking for the cheapest option, but the option is actually going to allow our students in Tustin Unified to go to the next level. In Tustin Unified, the biggest thing we can possibly do is get out of the way and allow our students to grow. And we allow them to do that through the technology. So it's not this. It's looking through it, right? So I'm looking directly at you on a screen because there are images around me that are capturing what I'm doing allows me to see you and you to see me. And we want that to be the reality for our students. So they carry those types of devices. And then what we remind the parents on is, “Hey, you don't have an investment in this. You don't have to invest in this. But this is something that we are entrusted to you and your family to take care of and so forth. And we offer an insurance policy, right?” So that in the event, the unfortunate happens, you are covered. And this is not something that becomes a burden to your family, right?
Now, you and I both know that's a hard pill, right? Because if I'm going to charge you even $20 for something and all you have is $5, I've set you up to fail, right? So we offer creative options. We offer creative opportunities to make sure people understand the need for insurance. And if the unfortunate does happen, I have to remind people, as we said in the beginning, we are not here. We're here for the same reason, the success of your child, which means you can't – I don't need you to look at me as a collection agent. I'm not here to chase you down. I'm not here to hold you back with a fine. I'm not here to stop anything that's different from the plan. What I do need to say is, yet, here's another opportunity for the speech you already heard me say and how we can do it and how we can make it happen together. So it's really a partnership mentality of them understanding. As one of your previous guests said, the difference between a warranty, which we invest in to make sure we're protecting the devices, and that unfortunate mishap of the best of us, right? No matter how responsible you are, no matter how well you take care of your things, there will be a day you get a fender bender. There will be a day where you just missed your pocket. There will be a day where something you're carrying something that you may put your purse down, and it may fall over into contents fall out and something breaks. And so we advise people, if the unfortunate happens, we want to work with you, as others like [inaudible 00:13:22] coverage has worked with us to make sure our devices are covered.
[00:13:26] KK: David, you said two things that I love and I hope really can get across to people. You said pride of ownership, and then insurance. And we're looking at kids who are in elementary school, in junior high, but the word insurance really doesn't even fall into someone's ears as a teenager. Even when they get their driver's license, they're so concerned about the driver's license. And quite frankly, some of these kids don't even want driver's license now. It's even later. So the word insurance, it is unknown. And then what it does is even unknown. But when you tie those two things together, pride of ownership, and teach kids how important it is even if they're not paying for it, what that means to own something and take care of it and have responsibility to get that education is extraordinary.
[00:14:31] DS: Thank you for that. And to that end, we have to recognize that part of that pride of ownership involves personalization, right? If we're going to involve personalization, let's talk about casing. You have another guest on to talk about casing. We spent a lot of time security not only the right device, but the right case. And things along those lines added to that factor, because if I can let allow you to have a device that will still have a return on investment for us. They don't have a resale value at some point. Allowing you to customize it to a degree where we call it the sexy factor. Like you guys mentioned that word before — see that device as something they want to carry, then they're going to take care of it.
And I tell you, as I sit here in my courtyard. Right outside my window is a courtyard, and I see students, and they have their devices, and they're out. And they're fanning them around and showing to their friends and so forth. I go to the marketplace, and they're around. It just wounds my heart, because no one wants to carry their textbook, right? But they don't think of the device as their textbook. And now, especially since because, again, of our relationship, we don't have to collect the devices. If I'm giving you the price and fifth grade and saying, “Hey, I’m going to need you to take care of this until you're in eighth grade,” 90% are just doing that. And once that has happened, we're able to get that device out, get it repaired, get that person made whole, and they continue in that place without being punitive, without them feeling like, “Oh, wow! Now I have to carry the less standard device.” We want everyone to have that same happy standard.
[00:16:07] BL: So that's my next question. How do you decide what device to pick for your students? I mean, I know that's a loaded question. But just go through some of the things that you look for or the criteria for a device for your students?
[00:16:25] DS: So I'll answer really quickly, and then I'll explain it. I don't.
[00:16:31] BL: That was quick.
[00:16:31] DS: Right? That is not my decision. It’s not my device. It’s theirs, right? No. There are some guidelines. This is the minimum that we have. And what I did, because again, I believe in Tustin. I believe in what we do here. When I came here, I took ownership of the Tustin principles. I brought my children from where we were to where we are, and I said we're going to do this. And when it came time to look for new devices, I contacted every vendor out there that I knew, and some I didn't know and says, “Hey, did you know that Tustin Unified has a bond? And that bond is coming up, and I'm about to spend millions of dollars on you. Give me what you have.” And literally when I did that, 14, 15 different manufacturers all gave us their best, right? And we went through what's called an internal filter, right? And we looked at what we call the bilities, the accessibility, the usability, the repairability, the durability, and we looked at all of those things, and we looked at does it fit are design for WiFi, for processor speed, and hard drive size and how much RAM? And we took it down from 40 devices to 13 to go through that original filter. Those 13 devices narrowed to five. And then I contacted each vendor and just reminding them, “Hey, potentially, I could be spending this right now. I need 40.” And we did a very deep and detailed pilot with a series of devices and our students on a rotation group. And we let them —
[00:17:59] BL: How long did that pilot take?
[00:18:01] DS: I would say 12 weeks.
[00:18:05] BL: 12 weeks. Okay. That’s a really good idea.
[00:18:04] DS: 12 weeks rotation. Then 2 to 3 weeks. And it was a lot. There are a lot of data points. A lot of – And of course teachers were involved as well. And one rose to the top swimmingly. I mean, it wasn't even close, right? And so one that was second place was the shocker for it all. We were like, “Wow! We didn't even know you guys would be that high up, but they were”. And so when that device came through, when we first showed it to them, we had our naysayers out there that are, “You're showing us this, but you'll never give us that device.” And that device is in their hands today.
[00:18:41] BL: Wow! Really?
[00:18:43] DS: Again, my mentality has never been an education mindset of, “Well, this is all we have. So let's see what we can buy,” right? I don't look at it that way. When I go to a restaurant, I read the menu left to right. Let's see what I want. We'll figure out how to pay for it. And so I gave students an action list of what they want. And they picked hands down, because we have to have a standard. We have a BYOD program as well. But you have to have a standard. So pick your device. Once they did, then we secured the funding, and we made it happen. And so we’re one of the first school districts in Southern California, if not elsewhere, to engage with those devices at that level. So much so they invented a warranty for us. Everything you think about you can buy it now. We can’t buy. We couldn’t buy that warranty then.
And then that ties in to, again, our relationship. And before I go too far, Garrett was my right hand man, and he's still in the district. He's in different capacity. But he was so instrumental. But Jesse and Michelle – I wish COVID hadn't hit, because we were all starting to make plans to hang out and all of that.
[00:19:57] BL: I know. I know. I know.
[00:19:58] DS: We will again.
[00:20:00] BL: We will again. We will again.
[00:20:02] DS: Yeah, you have an amazing team. And we all came from the same mindset of how do we make this program successful. Not for Tustin and not for school device coverage, but for our students.
[00:20:14] BL: Have there been any hurdles or obstacles that you've had to overcome since implementing a one-to-one program?
[00:20:23] DS: Oh, absolutely. You know, definitely from the – As I spoke about the parents, some parents are like, “I don't want this device. I want pen and paper.” There's a struggle to that next point. A lot of times we hold our own tech reservations over our children when, present company not included, most children will run circles around us, right? Because this is the era they grew up in, and so forth and so on. Every once in a while I'll play a modem sound at home just to rack my kids brains because they have no idea.
[00:20:52] BL: That’s great. I love it. That’s so awesome.
[00:20:55] DS: The other part of it is, and this is where you come in to enter the picture as a partner, is that if you're going to start a project, you should at least have the means to finish it, right? And a lot of school districts – I'm not throwing shade or anything like that, but a lot of school districts started down a path of one to one and then realize down the line that, “Oh, we ran into some problems. We have to cut it. We have to change it. We have to do this, that and the other.” Now, I didn't invent this program. But Tustin spent a lot of time vetting. They measured and re-measured, and measured again, and then bought a new tape measure and said, “Let's measure it this way, and that way, and that way.” So by the time we whipped out the saw and started cutting, we cut an ideal program, right? It not only involved the device, but it involved the teachers. It involved the administration. It involved the community. It involved in board. And we were all on board with one goal of expanding educational opportunities for our children. And we were able to do that. Our Tustin Connect Initiative has been running super strong. It's 2012. We're almost in our 9th, 10th year on that. And there's no slowing down. It's just an amazing program. And the device is just a piece of it. But what we've also been able to do is through our Tustin Connect Initiative, we were one-to-one 5th grade, and up three to one in K through four. But with one-to-one with our lovely community, PTA, PTO with federal dollars and so forth, we were able to expand that program. So now we're TK to 12 one-to-one, right? So every student has their own device that they take back and forth with them and so forth. Now we go back to the pride of ownership, right? This is my device. I get to use it, I get to abuse it, right? It’s a different mentality when you feel like it's yours. And so it works. And I’m still happy that we have that program.
[00:22:54] BL: That's a great strategy for the kids to really teach them that. Where do you see things going with one-to-one? Where do you see education going? Do you think we'll ever go back to 100% normal again? Or do you see – I know, we did an article. We haven't released that podcast yet. But we talked about an article where they see education really changing because of all this. Technology has kind of been forced down our throats a little bit with the pandemic. We all had to pivot to 100% technology, right? So now we're transitioning back. How do you see things changing? What is next year look like do you think to you?
[00:23:43] DS: 100% technology is a strange term. For us – This is why I get to brag on Tustin a little bit. March 12th, 2020, I believe it was a Thursday, we decided that – Like other school districts or the government decided for us that we're going to shut down the schools, or we started having the option. That was the day our spring break started. So we had to really rally and get things to go, right? And school started back for us. We missed the first day of instruction that Monday, after spring break, and our students were back on that Tuesday. So we missed one day of instruction. Your average school district missed anywhere from three weeks to three months, right? Just trying to figure out and getting going. That's because we already saw technology as a vital tool and increasing our learning, right?
So when you when everyone goes away at the same time and says, “How do we figure this?” You have one shot to get immediately what you need, because everyone's going after something. After that you're getting in line. All we needed was more devices. We already had the infrastructure. We already had the work from home mentality. We already had the processes in place. And we implement them. Were they 100% successful? Not 100%. But our students were able to continue engaging and learning. And during that time, we also built up additional processes to when we came back in a full hybrid environment come August. And since then we've, again, established extreme success in learning to the point where this week, this past Monday, we extended it. So whereas our hybrid students were two days a week, now they're four days a week.
[00:25:25] BL: Oh, that's great. Wow!
[00:25:26] DS: It’s for students all around. So people look at me and say, “Hey, when are your kids going back?” And I kind of look at them and say, “Actually, they never left,” right? And so they kept learning. So what does it look like for us? It looks like a continuation of the process. But what I will tell you is that I run an IT department. And so we have rules, right? And as much as people don't like it, there are rules, A goes to B for a reason, and only way you got to get to C is by going through B. And I can't flex on that because, again, we're all protecting our students. Through this COVID-19 process, through the pandemic, through the flexibility in the pieces that we've had to put in place have learned how to arc over B where necessary to get to C, and arc under B and C to get to D if necessary and move things around. And we've actually found that it works better in a number of instances. So when you say getting back to a normal, we absolutely will get back to normal, but that normal will not look like it looked on March 11th.
[00:26:23] BL: Right. It's the new normal for everyone. Yeah.
[00:26:26] DS: It was a planned normal? And I honestly believe it'll be better. Why? Because it'll be more flexible. It'll be more understanding. It'll definitely be accommodating. And it'll be student-centric, right? It will be it will be a very similar environment that where in education they call it an IEP, an individualized education plan. It's almost an IEP for everyone, right? And anyone out there in special education, especially in the legal realm, don't come after me or my department. I'm not saying that. What I am saying is that students are learning at their best mode of learning, which it just works better for everyone. And I think through our Tustin Connect Initiative through the engaging instructional technologies, the staff, and so forth, and everything that we've implemented, we've just made it an optimal learning environment for our student population. And they'll succeed. They'll have greater chances of success for it.
[00:27:27] BL: Wonderful. I mean, that's kind of what we were talking about was how the curriculum may be changing to where it's more individualized for every student, and because they'll have that ability because of technology to individualize the curriculum, which is really exciting I think for students. I wish I had that growing up where I could focus more on things that I was really, truly interested in and maybe could make a living on when I graduated high school instead of taking classes that I really will never use again. So maybe –
[00:28:01] KK: A lot of customization.
[00:28:02] BL: Yeah, and just foster what that particular student is interested in. I mean, how great would that be.
[00:28:08] KK: And what they're good at.
[00:28:09] BL: And what they're good at, and what they're interested in, and what they really succeed in. So I'm with you. That's exactly what I think is going to happen. And I'm excited for students in the future with technology and how this is all going to play out or just continue to play, I guess. So, anyway –
[00:28:27] KK: David, you talked a lot about what you were saying, the Tustin Connection, the Tustin Connect Initiative. The word that comes to me with that is that it defines commitment. Your industry and district committed themselves. And that's a true example of what that allowed to happen. You were ready, because you committed full-on. And I think that's something that in a lot of things we hesitate a little bit. We question. We wonder. And I think we get more out of things when we fully just dive in. Like you said, even like the menu. I'm going to just get what I want and figure it out later. That's a lot to do with jobs, is I might not know how to do this now. But I'm going to just do it anyway and figure it out on the way, right?
[00:29:21] DS: Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm [inaudible 00:29:22] and I'm not advertising for him, although he’s definitely worthy of advertisement, but in Tustin Unified, we start with a why, right? And we can talk about the house all day long. We know the how. We can talk about the what. We're educators, we can do that. But if you can get people to buy into the why when they own their piece of it, right? So everyone from staff at the school, the lunchtime staff, to the principals, to the teachers, to my tech staff, to M&O, everyone is tapped into the why we do what we do.
If there was a meter to measure joy, I would say you bring it in on the day when students come back, and it just lifts throughout the district, because we get to see the why. We get to see exactly why we do what we do. And it makes everyone that much more engaged in the success panel. You're not creating robots that are just doing step after step. But people have an understanding of this is why I do what I do.
And so starting with the why, and that name is George Karl. He got us on the right path with that. But, starting with the why means everything for us. And one of the first meetings I had here when my network manager came up, he says, “Well, David likes us to start with the why. So here's the why of what we're doing.” It just warmed my heart, and it truly is disseminated not only through my whole department, but through the district as a whole. I didn't bring this. I'm not saying that, but I embraced it. And with that being a major factor why we do what we do here, it makes it easy.
[00:30:58] BL: Oh, that's amazing. Well, we have definitely called upon Tustin for references for other districts who are looking to implement a one-to-one program, or they're floundering, they're having some issues, some trouble. And so they're just a great resource for anybody out there who has questions or needs help. And I know, David, you guys have been amazing helping other districts with any issues or what have you, but how would they find you? How would somebody get in touch with you? If they have questions about what you're doing or they have a particular issue that they want to see if you can solve for them? Because I know you guys are so great about reaching out to other districts to help them as well.
[00:31:43] DS: So a website is just tustin.k12.ca.us. That will tell you everything you need to know about what we do.
[00:31:52] BL: Can you say that again slowly?
[00:31:53] DS: Oh, Tustin – www.tustin.k12.ca.us. So that’s the Tustin Unified School website. All of our departments, and our staff, and our administrative team. I have to mention our superintendent. He's just an amazing man to work with and for, and his vision reverberates throughout the district and the admin team that supports him. We're all just kind of linked according to a unified vision. If you imagine laying out on a summer breeze. The pictures that's behind you, Kathy, if you look up and you see the flock of ducks flying and they're all flying one single direction. No one sat down and had a meeting beforehand, right? There was no sharing of Google Maps or anything like that. They just had an inherent sense of where to go following their leader. And so we're led in that sense. And again, not in a mindless robotic manner, but because we all believe in that same type of deal. So at Tustin Unified, we really support our superintendent and we're glad to work for him.
[00:33:01] BL: That’s wonderful. Wonderful.
[00:33:02] DS: You can always reach out to me, my name is David Smith, and I'm the Chief Technology Officer. And me and my team love to show off what we do here.
[00:33:10] BL: That’s great. They do such an amazing job.
[00:33:14] KK: You talked about why. I want to know when is your podcast, because you also have a podcast.
[00:33:20] DS: I do. I do have a podcast. It has nothing to do with Tustin Unified. But in Tustin Unified, I'm an administrator. I'm also a parent. I'm also a community member. I live across the street. And so in everything I do, I'm always interested in what's happening in my community and what's going on from a social engagement level. And this has been just an amazing year in this country. And I say amazing, because we've seen some incredible things happen. We've also seen some awful things happen. And my best friend and I created a platform where we can talk about that and we can bring in community members and people who are affected and people who want to make a change and teachers and business owners and politicians, and it becomes just a platform for social relief and social change and social justice. So completely separate from Tustin Unified, but the community side of me says, “If I can make life better in my house, then I can make life better for the street I live on, community I live in, the city we’re in and the state.”
[00:34:25] KK: That’s amazing. Well, we would love to be a guest on your show, because you're fun to talk to you.
[00:34:31] DS: [inaudible 00:34:31].
[00:34:35] BL: I hear he's tough though. He asked some tough questions.
[00:34:38] KK: Oh, we're ready. We're tough girls.
[00:34:41] DS: I can see that. But my timeline is real, raw and relevant, right? I say, whoever comes on the show, “Hey, if there's anything that was said that makes you uncomfortable, let me know, because I'm not interested on you being on my show. I'm interested in you wanting to come back,” right? Because you realize that this is an opportunity for you to express yourself and to say your true feelings without being attacked, without feeling ashamed, without feeling like you're being set up for failure, or anything like that. And like you guys, I really just want to expand the knowledge of the possibilities that can happen when you can just sit down and have a conversation. So that's how we got started with School Device Coverage, and any number of preferred partners, right? They're no longer vendors, because I can buy insurance from anywhere. I can buy a device from anywhere. I can go collect all the administrators and say, “Give me your credit cards, we're going to line up our students, we're going to go to the big box store that’s nearby and we're going to shuffle them all in until we all reach our limits.” It's not that hard to secure technology, but to get someone to buy into your vision, now, they want to be a part of what you're doing. And that's where I think we find success in a lot of ways, because I can give you a list of 15 partners that will stop to what they're doing and take my call because they want to be a part of what's happening next. Not because we're spending money, but because they get to be a part of something.
[00:36:10] BL: Exactly. Exactly.
[00:36:11] KK: Incredible.
[00:36:11] BL: Well, we appreciate your partnership so much, David. It's been wonderful to talk to you. And I'm sure we'll be talking to you soon.
[00:36:18] DS: Absolutely. Thanks for having me on. You guys are doing a great job.
[00:36:22] BL: Oh, thank you.
[00:36:22] DS: I just subscribed. So I will be engaging –
[00:36:26] BL: Awesome. Our first listener maybe. Fantastic. Thanks, David.
[00:36:30] KK: Thanks, David.
[00:36:31] DS: Start an early adapter.
[00:36:34] BL: We appreciate it so much. All right, you take care, and we’ll talk to you soon.
[00:36:36] KK: Yeah, have a good day.
[00:36:38] DS: Sounds good. Bye-bye.
[00:36:39] KK: Alright.
[00:36:40] BL: Bye-bye.
[00:36:41] KK: So fun.
[00:36:43] BL: I know, isn't it great?
[00:36:44] KK: That’s amazing.
[00:36:45] BL: They're just the kindest people, the best people to work with. It’s just been incredible. So if we've been very fortunate to get in touch with them and them – We kind of both learned off each other. And it was amazing to come across them and just formed this partnership and this relationship. And we just played golf with them the other day, with Garrett. So anyway, it's fun. I think I've said this before that the best part of business is meeting incredible people like him.
[00:37:19] KK: And who you get to work with.
[00:37:20] BL: Exactly.
[00:37:22] KK: If you would like more information. I know he spelled out the website, but it's Tustin.k12.ca.us. So that's if you have more questions about how they're doing it with their school district. And he didn't get to say his podcast, but I am, brothersfromthe818.com.
[00:37:43] BL: Very good, Kathy.
[00:37:43] KK: So great, right? And always, if you have questions about our show or other ideas about what we can cover, reach us at riskybusiness@coveragequeens.com. And we have our website, newly up newly live. So a come listen to our previous shows, but it's coveragequeens.com. And we really appreciate you stopping in and hanging out with us today and visiting with our guest, David Smith, and had a good time.
[00:38:14] BL: It was great. Yeah.
[00:38:14] KK: Right?
[00:38:15] BL: Yeah. I had a great time. I'm ready for some hot tea now for myself.
[00:38:18] KK: Let's go.
[00:38:19] BL: Alright. Bye-bye.
[00:38:20] KK: Thanks so much. See you again next time. Bye-bye.
[END]