What's up everybody welcome to another episode of coffees for closures today We are sitting down with Gary Surtam the founder and CEO of the illuminate app an application that is revolutionizing Education for children. Please welcome Gary Surtam. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to another episode of coffees Thank you I'm excited to be here and excited to share our story What we're doing and where we're going. I love it Gary now If you want to give the audience a 10,000 foot overview of what is the illuminate app and how is it revolutionizing Education for children today Illuminating app it starts off with the parents and the children working together Understanding that our parents are the first and most important teachers in the lives of their children and then connecting them together You know, we've gone through the pandemic in fact I've written a book called illuminate that talks about how do we go from four years ago when our kids were 24 seven in our house that we normally send them off to school But now they were working with us. How do we help our students to be successful and how do we how do we Gear them up and prepare them for success in a global economy So we combine them together the parents have an activity that they can choose to have it once a week They can choose to have it two or three times a week But we give them activities to build responsibility honesty and and one of them Activities that we have is to build social justice Having our children understand how do we respect each other and when we don't get respected How do we deal with that and and how do we make life more positive for us and then face to is in 18 months and we are looking at Using the AI technology to give students Exactly we call it illuminate because we want those illuminating moments to happen in every child Because it takes the way the learning style of each child it takes their strengths and their weaknesses And it takes their grade level where they're at in in their schooling and focuses on steam education Love it now take me back to when you started this application. What is the problem that you were trying to solve for Actually 10 years ago 10 years ago I had this idea Why not build an app that we can help students to really succeed? I was teaching a online class with students in Thailand and I gave them an engineering problem They had to solve the problem their minds were you can see the gears just working They couldn't understand it all of a sudden it illuminated in the life and the face of a child and Within seconds he gave me the answer 10 years ago we didn't have AI technology it was just something in the far future Now we're at the point where let's use that technology to give each student those illuminating moments There are moments when everything clicks and everything comes together So that's the concept that I had 10 years ago it took us 10 years to get to where we're at now and we're at the right place at the right time So it was 10 years ago and it all started from when you were teaching engineering students I actually I've taught every grade from first grade all the way up to university and I teach steam education at a university at that time I was in a university in Called university Le Verne in Le Verne, California and I was teaching Teachers that were getting their their degree in the their credential teaching credential And we would go we would talk about steam education and I would instruct them But we would go for two weeks at the end of the semester and we would teach in China And we do steam camps throughout Up and down China and gives our teachers the opportunity to learn And to refine their teaching style what they found out is that Students are the same all over the country all over the world And it just gave them an opportunity to do that so I was focusing on steam education With new teachers that were coming into the classrooms Okay, gotcha now you've worked all over the world in education. What originally drew you To the education space and how did it become a calling to do this like full-time for a living? I got to tell you I have an entrepreneur's spirit um I was 19 years old My uncle had a restaurant that was popular in Venturi, California and he just was doing phenomenal work Just Breaking in the money and all of that I would watch him and he would he would at lunchtime after the after the the lunchtime Rush he take his money he put it in his pocket go to the bank And then after dinner he'd take his money and then he'd take it home So I saw that and I had that entrepreneur's spirit and I said I can do it So he taught me the recipes I opened up my restaurant when I was 19 years old with the help of my parents yes, and I didn't have any customers. I'm like wait What what's going on here? So with the first month. I'm like Wait my uncle didn't tell me about this If you fast forward basically I found after three years I loved the business. I love what I was doing But my heart was in education and so I went back to school and got my bachelor's degree went on to teach in Ally unified school district for a number of years moved on to different districts in in the county and then opened up my first business called bright start um International education and I actually sold it to the Chicago Tribune Wow and became An executive for the Chicago Tribune and they used to tell me I'm like that speedboat They they would say the Tribune is that that Tanker that just goes straight down the ocean and I'm that speedboat that just kind of reacts to the market and reacts to What what customers want and what they need and so I did that which gave me a good um they gave me the 40% kind of um uh, I I guess if you if you're making less than 40% profit then you don't do it Even if it's 30 39.9 percent Has to be 40 percent so that gave me a lot of a lot of um uh schooling in growing the company Years later I found that I needed to grow the company as a entrepreneur and not an educator And so I went back to school um uh, got a certificate from um Harvard Business School and was able to kind of change and that's when I I started the new company called bright start ed tech using what I have learned through the Harvard uh Program and really um making things click and come together What was the biggest takeaway you got from the Harvard Harvard program Okay, as an educator it's like okay, so um They asked me how much do you want for this? Well, you know what I just want your your teachers to be successful So it doesn't matter Harvard taught me you can't have a sustainable company if you're just giving it away So you have to bottom line you need to make sure that you make a profit and everything you're doing and so that was the bottom line I brought on board um a Advisory board that is consisting of superintendents of schools sales people uh financial people technology people brought in those advisors that are helping me to grow the company now what are the moments of Of or struggles in your own life that helped you shape help you shape your passion for helping kids and parents Connect through education. I actually I go back to when I was in fifth grade When I was in fifth grade. I was a struggling reader um, I couldn't spell Um, I I'd struggle through the reading and I don't know if you've ever you probably are too young But we used to have peachy folders and the peachy folders were things that that students would carry around with their back They didn't even have backpacks right then but I I took I was in a fourth grade spowler when I should have been in a fifth grade spowler I covered it up with a peachy folder, so no one knew that I was below grade level Those struggles that I felt I don't want students to feel the same thing I don't want them to feel like they are less than anyone else and so that's where my my heart comes into the The business and into education helping students to succeed helping students to feel good about themselves and to have confidence So does your platform help with those specific subjects like reading spelling or is it more like macro? What because you talk about social justice? You talk about You know various things that we deal with as a society The first phase is working with parents our parents and children working together gaining a bond with each other but also Parents being those first important teachers in the lives of their children and and it it has a variety of Activities if we look at let's say honesty Honesty we have Activities that they can do that bring in reading that bring in writing that all bring in all those other subjects But it's all broken down into age appropriacy So if you there's step one step two step three For each one of the activities, but let's say I have a three to five year old if the three to five year old is I click on it and I can see This is what I do with my three year old if I have a 12 year old I can click down I can say this is what I do so it's it's really age appropriate But at the same time we include the reading the writing and all those other subjects Gotcha, I love that now You know you're not just an educator you're you're you're an actual entrepreneur and I love that what was the first big leap that made you Think about building something of your own was it this business did you have multiple businesses other than the restaurant The restaurant was the first leap And the struggles that I I needed to realize you know If you don't have the money you still have to pay the bills and so how do we do that? When I became an educator and started working in the school system I still had that heart to be wanting to go out and to make a business and make it successful so the Kind of the the benchmarks in between were Let's see what can I do next and what can I do next so it started off with me after school rushing after school after one of my classes and then doing um A workshop at a local school and just sharing some of the Some of the strategies that I have learned as as an educator and little by little doing that which it ended up I left Teaching per se and from teaching I in fact I was teaching a fifth grade class that summer I had a I had an administrator leadership Conference in the local mountains in which we had I believe we had probably around 50 teachers and 50 administrators that was my first leap at the same time I got hired by Which was then the Chicago Tribune one of their um educational arms and I got hired to work part time for them So that helped me to build the business so little by little in that fashion And now you've been at this project how long have you been at illuminate how many years illuminate has been two years And you just had the full launch up until then The beta test who is your pilot who are the people using it? Well the funny thing is um As a startup company there's no money. There's no funding available So I needed to find out how do I build a mobile app that it's going to be Phenomenal that's going to be incredible when I'm not Tech-sought savvy So I brought in some interns from USC from Berkeley from Arizona state and they built the app through through my direction and and kind of going piece by C's and so it took us about eight months to build it But if they're doing phenomenal work as the the Interns continue to come on board with us If we felt that it was a good fit and and it was going to be the future for us We brought them on board as an equity partner. So some of our Our technicians or our technology Developers they are now equity partners in the business and I feel like if you don't have if you don't have skin in the game Sometimes when when life gets tough and it's it's not working out We tend to not focus on what we're doing but if you have skin in the game and you have a supporting community There's nothing nothing that we can't do and that's what we're doing right now That's a great idea to get those kids to actually have skin in the game And that was for thinking like what was the motive behind that The motive was I would First I was thinking okay, how do we have no money? What are we going to do? So I started kind of reaching out and finding some of these tech people and asking them Would you be interested in working for equity? It was kind of funny. I was I was on a interview with this gentleman My director of technology had already talked to him about it's an equity position. You're not going to get paid He got online and he goes I'm not going to turn on my my monitor because this meeting is not worth it I'm going excuse me He goes I need I need money. I'm not going to work for free And I thought okay, well, you know, thank you very much I will let you know because he already knew but he he felt like okay, let me just Get on and see what they're going to give me But then when I got I started thinking how can I do it and I was talking with a student From one of my university I was teaching that he goes well, why don't you just find computer science Students and see if they're interested in coming on board and that that's how it works And that's how it clicked we we brought at one time we had a total of 10 interns that were working on the project right now we we're down to five because we've done a lot of the meat of the of the program And now it's really functioning very well Now the program is called bright start The um the company is called bright start at tech The product is illuminate and it's spelled with two O's The reason why it's spelled with two O's is this The two O's form infinity Because once you have those illuminating moments as you're learning Learning goes on forever And so the two O's represent infinity that We're building a community where learning is going to be top-notched and it's going to be something that Students love to do Now you know you describe bright start as a parent-powered Learning solution right? Now what does that mean in practice? And why do you think a parent power a parent-powered solution is so powerful Like I've said before that parents are our first and most important teachers in the lives of their kids We give parents an affirmation As parents sometimes we judge ourselves. What do you mean an affirmation? An after a positive like um, so it's a daily affirmation you guys have within the app right and it's it could be daily But it could be a push notification So on on Monday more Monday evening. I know I'm going to be with my child at six p.m They're going to get a push notification giving them a positive for the great things they're doing with their students with their children But also how they're changing the community how they're changing the world by what they're doing So an affirmation that they can choose let's say I also get it on Saturday 10 o'clock in the morning So from there they get like a pat on the back And then after that they can click on the daily activity and each day they may have a different activity that they're going to be working on We don't want it to be a checklist where oh, I've done it for 10 minutes. I'm done with it We want it to be meaningful So some of our activities may take two or three days for them to accomplish and we don't say you know spend two or three hours Spend 15 minutes on working on this activity and then tomorrow pick it up again and work on that So it's important to do that right now. It's a free app In about two weeks it's going to be pushed out as a um an app um subscription app What we're adding to it is number one journaling at the end of each activity as a parent you journal How reflecting on how it went and then what were the successes a community part of it where we join Forces together, you know, they used to be the same. It takes a village to raise a child still We bring yeah, still exactly we bring them together as as a community form So okay, so let's say today I I had an activity with my child to build honesty So we we go on our community form and say we know This is what I did with my child did anyone have any other ideas so you can share You know, this is how it went for me and a great support system There's going to be resources resources where they can go um I've have a number of books that are there We have podcasts that are on there one of our our Key person is dr. Martinez. She um writes um and does certain sessions on Social emotional learning and so she'll have a podcast up there. She'll have a video um some of her um parts of her books are on there and so we have a variety of those We also have a conversation where once a week uh Parent professional will come on for a webinar, but it's it's engaging. It's not a one-way webinar It's engaging so if you're a parent and I'd start to share with you an activity Um, and then you may have well how would that work with my five year old? Um, the parent professional will be or the the um parent professional will be addressing those so it's a more of an open conversation That's really cool. Mm-hmm. That's really cool But this isn't live yet. The notebook the drilling That's not live yet in fact um by the beginning of next week It will be approved through the Apple store and google play Fantastic news um now you've mentioned closing learning gaps really really really early What are some of the most common gaps you see and how can parents get ahead of them before it's too late Number one that one of the most important gaps that we have is our self-esteem Self-esteem plays a big toll in in a child's development A lot of times our children don't have the confidence to believe in themselves and as they move as they move through great to grade Their confidence level goes lower if Their reading skills are not the best if their writing skills are not the best So we need to build those reading those writing skills and those math skills so that they do feel confident But also as parents we need to support them and be their number one cheerleader We need to be there for each one of their children, but also just put kind of like Every child has a A positive thing that they do very well, but they also have some weaknesses really Enhance and and encourage those positives and and what they do well and continue to build that up so that their confidence builds And their self-esteem builds You know, I'm asking these questions and it's like for me. I got four kids. Uh-huh. I'm always trying to figure out balancing You know their self-esteem education, etc. Because it's very true like If they feel like they're not at the same level of their peers Like their self-esteem is just shot and it's a struggle. I deal with frequently myself, you know for my own kids Exactly exactly and it and what we're building is we're building a society we're building children that In the future are going to be successful in a global economy as we're looking at a global economy. I am a Professor of global education We're working with our students to really look at the economy worldwide and how do we become successful in not only dealing with our own Community here, but globally how do we deal with with the The issues that are out there. There's three areas that I focus on number one helping people to be successful helping Countries to prosper but also saving our planet and looking at how do we save our planet? So those items are also part of our our training that we do with our our kids and our parents. We talk about how do we How do we keep our environment clean? How do we you know, it's kind of funny I started teaching at Yokohama, Japan at Kanto Kaka Queen University and I had this idea. Ok, let's go do a volunteer project And they go volunteer like what do you mean? And I said well, let's go do this and they go we already do that That's not a volunteer. Okay, I said well, let's go pick up trash Okay, so I go over there We have all these big bags and we have gloves and we're going out to pick up trash They they were human marine In Japan, there's no trash and so we started at the beach The university is very close to the ocean. We started at the beach and there was no trash and we walked Across the bridge we walked up we ended up I don't know trash no trash We ended up with a handful of trash in these big bags one probably a handful auto maybe two or three bags but And in other parts of the world there is trash and so how do we help our our children to see it's important to keep our community clean And to do positive things in our community actually I was while I was in Japan I had a paper in my in my pants and I got something out of my pants and a paper fell to the ground And the gentleman came over to me and hit tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to the trash and I picked it up nothing nothing negative nothing judgmental he just reminded me there's trash on the floor So how do we become a community that is is really looking at keeping our Community safe keeping our community clean and everyone working together So I learned a lot from that experience lovely it sounds amazing. Let me ask you this um What is the framework right now that you use to create content to design content and uh, you know How do you Support it with research backed uh Articles and you know all the different things that you're you're doing to basically The the interesting thing is back when I started my company it actually was called healthy Henthe Henthe in Spanish means people so it was called healthy people my my background. I was on the at state of California um I guess it was the advisory board on healthy education and so I went from there And transferred into growing the business that way But throughout the years I have developed activities focused on helping parents to to be that educational leader at home. So Over 20 years. I've been developing all of those um activities so that those activities are put into our app the same thing is um I wanted the the investor asked me How do you keep it on bias? Because oftentimes people will will have their own agenda or the Whatever they feel is most important We keep it very neutral. We keep it just basically these are activities that you can do with your child and there's no Uh bias and what we're doing it. It's all about Just good stuff good stuff that we do Um to help our students and help our children to succeed um When you when you focus on only developing and only creating Things that students need Um and not looking at them in a bias way is where we really Grow our children to be successful but also to be non-judgmental now um If you're you're in uh education business. What kind of competitors now do you worry about in your space? I couldn't like hooked on phonics come in Do this in education? I'm there um our number in fact I shared with the some investors is the edtech Market is over billion dollars a year The edtech market and how many competitors are in that space? When you get to edtech um there's probably a 20% of them uh it could be anywhere from maybe 50 to 100 It's not a large amount globally who dominates um I don't think there's a dominating force. I think it's like the large companies are are Kind of coming up to the plate to try to figure it out We have a five-year plan Our five-year plan is to get traction to make it work to make it successful To get to the point where we partner with one of those large guys Or we sell it to one of the large guys or we go public um Because what we have I shared on a show that I was on That as entrepreneurs we seem to think that we're the only game in town that we are the best at what we do and nobody else doesn't Everyone thinks that but in reality we're not But what can we offer is we can offer a niche that nobody else offers or be our niche Our niche is that we provide the parent portion of it, but we provide a community We provide resources we provide instruction We we give the whole package In the future in in 18 months will provide that um That personalized learning for every student so when we're not only um Providing for our parents, but we're providing for our our students Where we're combining you know as a teacher We we tend to teach the way we learn and if I learn Visually I'm only going to reach probably about 20% of my students In that fashion because there may be some that learn auditorily There may be some that learn by reading and so I'll miss the mark on some of those uh Students but when we have each one of the content give it to them the way that they learn We can pretty much reach a hundred percent of our students wow So it's not only going to make it Phenomenal for our students, but it's going to make life easier for our teachers Now what's the long term vision you have for the company? Is it to go public? Is it to gain market share? Is it to Long long term is to connect there are some companies that I feel we would be an incredible Enhancement to what they already offer But no one's going to talk to us right now because we don't have traction In the last uh The app came out two weeks ago Right now we have 120 followers Users yeah users yes users and so We need to get up to a million two million users that That's right right now, right? What's that it's free? It's free right now You know, we're kind of taking the the dual lingual Business model dual lingual Their revenue annually is about 932 million However 92.7% of their users are free users How do they make that money? they have um They have advertisers that are on there but then if you decide not to uh Not to want to see those advertisements then that's where you have the the the the page description So we want to get to the point where we have millions of of users We're not only talking to the United States. We're talking globally I really feel that our program is going to reach out to the world to families all over the world So that's our focus But to begin with we're starting with the United States Now I want to ask you this last couple of last questions. Well, this one's about legacy now what at the end of the day What do you hope kids and parents? Remember about illuminate about you about your mission I want them to feel and understand when they see illuminate They know It may illuminates makes my life better I feel confident because Illuminate has given me that confidence Illuminate has helped me to be a successful individual globally Successful in what I'm doing here successful in building a life Whether it's as a parent in the future or as an entrepreneur or as a doctor or whatever may be That illuminate when they look at that that word they say they made my life better What a great mission and you know the other thing is that I teach when I when I teach new teachers coming into the world I want Them to be those teachers that 20 years down the line Students come back into their classroom and just praise them for you touched my life You made my life better because I was your fifth grade student That's what we want illuminate to be we want illuminate to be you made my life better Because what you offered this last This is the last question before the final question, but this is a three-prong question And you kind of answer this question a little bit already right now, but I want to kind of dive deep into your goals What's a personal goal that you have for yourself a family goal? You have for your family and a business bowl you have for illuminate You know as an entrepreneur I'm not I didn't come from a rich family so my parents didn't give me millions of dollars to grow the company So it's been a struggle. I left the classroom years ago and built What we have now my wife has been the support of 100% um We still struggle we still need to meet you know meet our our Obligations and so I would love to get to the point where as a family We're living okay But the most important thing that I believe is I raise kids my my my children are good people When when I my one of my son is a um police officer When he was promoted um, I went to the um To the promotion Other lieutenants and other uh police officers came to me and said you've raised a good boy You've made a compliment and that's what my life as a family member as a as a father is I want to be able to see that I've raised good kids and I have I've I've raised solid kids As a company I want to see us get the traction and make the difference like I said Illuminate I want people to see the illuminate and saying You changed my life you made a difference As a business we need to look at our our business goals financially and be able to raise the money right now We're doing a um a fun raising campaign To get to the next level. I'd love to be at the point where we don't have to worry about Money that we can do the things that we want to do and do it successfully So two two prong number one Raise the company so that is sustainable and number two raise the company so that people look at it and say you've changed my life And I don't know if you talked to family goal yet Family goal it's kind of funny because people say you should be retired by now Why are you not retired and I said My kids know that my life has always been in education Raising my kids in a in a home that has been loving has been What we've done from day one and so as a family goal our goal is to someday Enjoy the reefs of our harvest or harvest of our reefs or whatever it may be but but just enjoy my family A grandchildren and and just continue to just grow One last question When you're in front of the pearly gates What do you think God's gonna tell you God's gonna tell me That you've worked hard You struggled but you've shared your heart with your family With your students and with Everyone that you've come in contact with That's the important thing is that it's not about The money that you have in your bank account is not about the car you drives It's about how did you touch the lives of someone else I want one thing that that I share with my with my kids are when they were young. I used to say What's What was the positive thing about your day today? Number two What was the struggle that you had today And number three How did you touch the lives of someone today? Just understanding those three concepts is what I want my family to remember powerful Gary you've been a pleasure. I have on the show people want to get in touch with you. How do they find you? We are on illuminate.net which is I-L-L-O-O M-I-N-A-T-E .net Our illuminate app is illuminate 1.0 on our Apple app store and it's illuminate on Google Google Play or Google Player or whatever maybe but I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on all these other social media I would love to connect with anyone who believes what we're doing is going to change people's lives Or if they don't believe that let me Convent you that it is God bless you Gary. I hope you've ever seen one of your goals even an absolute pleasure from the show Thank you so much guys. Make sure to download that app get your kids on it I'm sure it will edify you and help you build the better relationship and indeed your kids let's go Gary Serdom. Loonie app. Thank you you
