Don't you always want to be the best you can be. The Frankie Boyer
Show it's more than a lifestyle show. It's a show about living in today's
world. I think something is happening. Frankie enthusiastically brings an amazing, eclectic
mix to the airwaves. One of the reasons she's earned legions of loyal fans
is very simple. When you listen to The Frankie Boyer Show, you just
never know what's going to happen. So listen for yourself. Here is Frankie
Boyer. Welcome, It is Frankie Boyer. So glad you're with us today.
And many people from younger generations are wondering, are absolutely wondering. Are
they going to have jobs? Will will artificial intelligence take over? Will they
be able to be trained in a skill that will be obsoletely? Well a
third So this was a new survey that found almost half Americans think artificial intelligence
could easily replace their jobs. So it's from Bloomberg. A third of employees
surveyed are already using AI at work. So what does that mean for them?
For the next generation of workers? And joining us today is Education and
Global Workplace expert and I have to say, Robbie, Robbie huttiasing author of
Pivot, Empowering Students today to Succeed, kind of surprising how high those numbers
are that people really think AI is going to knock them out. You know,
it was just a few years ago when it was the opposite, where
it was seventy five percent or so of people thought that their jobs were safe.
But now AI has just become so apparent, you know, and so
it's such a big part of the conversation that statistics really flipped and everybody's starting
to get a little scared about it, and you know, maybe with good
reason, but you know, at the same time, where there are challenges,
there are opportunities. And that's what I try to focus on and when
I give my keynote speeches to education leadership, that's what we're talking about.
How do we convert these challenges into opportunities so that our students today really can
succeed in the future. So, Robbie, we interviewed two high school students
a couple of weeks ago. They were absolutely brilliant. They came up with
a new technology using AI to help with eyesight, and it was brilliant and
their technology and their background and when you listen to these two young high school
kids, so this is an example of how they were using it, using
AI to enhance and to create new technology. And I think that we forget
that that's that's what this is all about. But I did see I have
to say, Robbie, I saw a brand new list of the top thirty
movies coming out for the fall, and one of the movies is about AI
taking over and it's about robots that just take control. And I think that
this is a trend and I think that this is where this is. This
is a concern a lot of people have. Well, you know, Steve
Wasney at co founder of Apple, he said some years ago I heard him
in an interview and he basically said the same thing. He's really scared scared
of what technology can do. I mean, when AI starts making AI,
you know, do we lose control over it as a human beings? And
does it you know, do we start to become the pets of the robots?
You know? So I think that's what a lot of these movies explore.
And you know, I think it's it's good to keep that in check.
It's good to stay aware of you know, what that possible. He
looks like. But at the same time, you know, then your other
example of these two high school students, I mean, look at what they're
doing. They're doing exactly what we need to be teaching them to do,
which is to embrace technology, to use it in a way the benefits society,
to stay in control of it, but not be afraid of it.
It's it is, you know, at this point, it is a tool,
and it's a tool that we need to be using as a you know,
as a force for good and a force for productivity and efficiency and all
of those things. So you know, when we ask this question, right,
you know, asking the question will these kids have jobs in the future,
Statistics tell us that forty percent of the jobs today are going to be
automated within the next ten years. And what that means is that about sixty
five percent of today's students are going to work in jobs that we don't even
know about yet, that haven't been created. So there's lots to be excited
about as well. You know, that's I think that's really the point.
I also want to say that technology scares the heck out of you, and
should It's at times. But a couple of weeks ago, we were on
the way to a location and we we had our phones because we rely on
GPS. I put on I put in a separate set of directions, and
he put in a separate set in his phone, and we got two.
It was a very very hot day and we were in the country and we
got two different, totally different sets of directions that were really confusing, and
one route kept taking us around in a circle like and I said that this
is we've we've been down this road before. It's like, no, yeah,
we literally have been down this road twice already. And it was it
was maddening, and it added an extra hour I'm not kidding, an extra
hour to where our destination was. And again it was very hot and we
were in the country. But but even technology today can fail us. And
that's my point is that we need to have backups as well. You know.
It's uh, you know, my background really was as a musician.
But after that, and I was a guitar player for the band Hanson back
in the late nineties, top selling band in the world. Yeah at the
time, you remember Hanson, of course I do. Yeah, And it
was it was an amazing, amazing. Actually your band, your band,
your band was a top selling band and and Triple Grammy nomand and my goodness,
yes, you were on the stages of the White House, Madison Square
Garden, the Tonight Show, Good Morning America, Saturday Night Live. I
mean, Robbie, you have been everywhere as a rock star. Yeah,
and you know, it was a really, really exciting time in my life.
But I also also always call you know, when I tell my audiences
about my time in Hanson, I refer to Hanson at the Harvard Business School
of Rock and Roll because it was also such a learning opportunity and a and
a you know, lifelong learning opportunity of you know, the music business and
the things that were really important to me. But after the industry basically collapsed
because of ye uk and Napster and peer to peer file sharing, you know,
my my career in the music industry went with it, and I some
years later pivoted and became a pilot. And one of the great things about
becoming a pilot is I found that the cockpit of an airplane was the greatest
classroom I had ever been. And one of the reasons is because it taught
me data triangulation, which is what you're talking about with this GPS situation where
you had two different sources that were conflicting each other. You know, in
the confit of an airplane, you never rely on one or two sources to
tell you what your airplane doing. You always look for the third, the
tiebreaker, and then you ask, you know, does this all make sense?
And I think to your point that technology does fail us at times,
and therefore we have to have the common sense skills to be in, the
analytical skills, the critical thinking skills to be able to say, well,
wait a second, this just doesn't make sense. Let me try and figure
out something else that will help me understand what's going on. So we have
so much to talk to you about, Robbie, because not only were you
part of of the guitars for Hansen, but you're also the first America can
warn member of the family that created and governed the world's largest democracy for over
forty years. You're the nephew of of of India's only female prime minister,
yep and Dera Gandhi exactly, and I grew up in a very politically charged
family that was amazing to be part of those kind of geopolitical discussions and have
that sort of thing. I can only imagine. So when did you become
okay, the rock hot wait man, how does someone from your background wind
up in hands? I'm like puzzled here, how do you wind up?
How do you wind up in Hanson? And then did you become a pilot?
And then the entrepreneur, so tell us the sequence sequence of the of
events. Yeah, so I grew up basically, you know, right in
this in this family that had a political legacy and fought aling Mahat and Gandhi
of course, and then of course who was the youngest prime minister as well?
That was well, so that was my cousin, Rajiv Gandhi. So
my great uncle jabrajo El Neru was the first prime minister, and he and
Gandhi, you know, fought against the British in order to I'm sorry,
an independent nation. Robbie, we have got to take a quick break,
so when we come back, we have so much to talk to you about.
Your new book is out. It's called Pivot, Empowering students today to
succeed in an unpredictable tomorrow. Give us the website. My website is is
RAVI Unites dot com r A v I n U I T e s dot
com. It's all about bringing people together in uniting them so and all my
social media handles are also rav unites wonderful And we will take a quick break
and be right back for we have so much to talk about. On Frankie
Boyer joining us today, someone who I don't the background. Your background is
so extraordinary and that's what makes you so unique to share your vision for young
people. And Robbie at Teasing is with us, author of Pivot empowering students
today to succeed in an unpredictable tomorrow as a global education and corporate speaker and
a cultural diplomat for the US State Department. Nice to have you back with
us, But I have to go back to your background, your family and
you have had this amazing life because the first American born member of the family
that created and governed the world's largest democracy and India in Daria Gandhi, and
she was India's only female Prime minister and the cousin of the youngest prime minister.
What tell us what came first in your desire to be a rock star
pilot and an entrepreneur. Give us the sequence of events, and then we
need to talk more about the family, because that's just so extraordinary, all
right. So we were an immigrant family because my dad decided not to go
into politics in India, so he decided to come to the United States and
go into business. And he was actually one of the first Indians to ever
work on Wall Street. So I grew up in the suburbs of New York
City. I had two older brothers, seven and nine years older than me
that followed in my dad's footsteps. So here I was coming from a family
of a political legacy, but working in finance. I basically just rejected at
all. I didn't I didn't want to have anything to do with that.
I was a younger kid. I was the rebel black sheep of my family,
and at the age of eleven, I basically decided that I wanted to
be anguts young of ACDC. That was what spoke to me. And I
was lucky that my mother. My parents were going through a pretty ugly divorce
at the time, and I was just alone with them and she said,
Hey, I'm glad my youngest son here is into something. So she brought
me an electric guitar, and I had just found my passion at that point,
and that's what I pursued. And didn't you know anyone that played the
guitar? Did you know of any other family members or I mean, did
just pick up the guitar and take to it as such? I mean,
it's amazing. Yeah, I just took to it. You know, my
brothers were into music, and my eldest brother classical piano, so music was
always part of our life growing up. But for some reason, the electric
guitars what spoke tomantic. I had a friend in school that maybe got one,
and I thought it was really cool, and so I just wanted to
travel down that road. And I was so lucky because you know that my
educational journey, which is what I talked about with my audiences, was complicated
because I didn't relate to school. I wanted to be a rock and roll,
a rock star. I didn't want to go to classes in school and
all that. But at least I had two wonderful music teachers in high school
that gave me a reason to get up every day and come to school.
Because it's only so much later in life that I realized how valuable my education
has been for the journey you know that I've taken. But but for me,
it was all about music. And I had my own recording studio and
I was teaching guitar before I graduated high school. And when I went to
college, I just didn't relate to college either, and I wanted to drop
out. And one of the stories I love to tell is what my dad
said to me. Right this investment banker, highly educated, comes from a
highly educated family, and his youngest son wants to drop out of school.
And he said to me, said, Okay, there's one thing I want
you to do for me before you leave school. I want you to write
me a business plan. No one had ever asked me to articulate my vision
for my future before like he did. And it was probably the greatest lesson
that I've ever had. And I think it was that lesson that's allowed me
to do many of the things that have done since then, because you had
to create a plan, you know, and you had to formulate and articulate
my vision. Tell us how you got into the rock band, I mean
not just getting into a rock band, but you got into a famous a
group that became so famous and Grammy nominated how and tour it all over the
place. How did that happen? Yeah, well sort of. The short
version of the story really is that I had a studio client while I was
in high school and running the studio out of my mother's basement, and he
got a great job at Mercury Records, and somebody asked them one day for
a recommendation of a young guitar player for a band that they were trying to
launch, and I was the first one that came to mind, and he
gave them my phone number, and basically, you know, after a few
conversations, they hired me to help launch this band. It was just for
one show, one appearance, and the band took off so fast that the
Hanson family and they're now the Hanson Company, hired me as their guitar player.
And I was on the road with Isaac Taylor and Zach Hanson, you
know, living the dream for the rest of that year, playing everything from
David Letterman to Jay Lanos, Saturday and I Love One House, Today Show,
Good Morning America. I mean, the list goes on. It was
unbelievably fortunate that I happened to land in a band that that just a few
months later, outsold every other band on the planet that year, So why
would you leave that? Well, so what happened was the Internet popped up
and the music industry didn't know how to handle the Internet. Napster then came
out and people were starting to share files and all of our contracts were put
on hold while the music industry was going to try to figure out how to
contain this threat to their bottom line. And it's an interesting when we look
at artificial intelligence today and we look at the education industry that's trying to figure
out how to deal with chat GPT, we can look back at the music
industry and say, wow, there was an industry that didn't embrace technology,
and as a result, tons of people lost their jobs and lots of record
companies closed. Instead, they could have tried to embrace the technology, seen
it as a marketing resource, and used it as a tool the way we
have to be using artificial intelligence today. So it wasn't so much that I
left it. It left me unfortunately, and I had to pivot, you
know, like like what I talk about in my book is that all important
skill of pivoting, which is when I ultimately got into flying airplanes. And
while that was really a hobby, private pilot, you make it sound like
you could just fly an airplane takes a tremendous amount of schooling and education.
Tell us, yes, that room, yeah exactly. So well, that's
another interesting experience where I met an airline pilot and we were just talking and
I said to him, I said, you know, I've always wanted to
learn to fly airplanes. And he said to me, said, you know,
I've always wanted to learn to play the guitar. So we bartered airplane
flying lessons for guitar lessons, and I spent the next you know year learning
to fly with him and getting my getting my license, and I just loved
it. As I mentioned earlier, you know, I thought that the cockpit
of an airplane was the greatest classroom I'd ever been in. So I started
visiting middle schools and high schools and telling kids how cool it is to listen
to your teachers and then apply your education so that you can go out and
live your dreams. And so I made we have to take another break in
the industry. Can you stay with us? We're gonna do this is there's
too much to talk about. We have so much to talk about. We're
going to keep you for the host show because I'm just I think people need
to hear the gut, the determination and how creation can happen with what you
want and then go out and get it, get your dream. We'll be
back in just a moment. Give us the Robbie, give us the best
website, Rabbi units dot com. That's r v I U n I t
ees dot com. I'm Frankie Boyer will be right back. Stu too,
and welcome back. He is here for the full hour because there's just I
have to tell you. We just have too much to talk about in just
a couple of segments, because you're fascinating. Life is so amazing. Robbie
ut Teasing is with us, author of Pivot, empowering students today to succeed
in an unpredictable tomorrow. Okay, starting out as the group Hanson, you
meet a pilot, you barter. What how long did you become a pilot
for? Well, So this was in two thousand and eight, after the
global financial crisis. You know, it was just like I had to find
something. I had to pivot and find something else to do because my music
industry, I had a career. I wasn't able to revive it. Between
two thousand and two thousand and eight. I was just sort of plugging along,
but it wasn't growing anymore. And I really always wanted to learn to
fly an airplane. So I spent about a year learning to fly, and
I was able to get my, you know, my first license at that
point, and was able to go out and see the world from above,
which is a vantage point that I've always loved. And as I mentioned,
you know, for me, I just loved everything I learned when I was
in the cockpit of an airplane. Is I like to say, somebody taught
me trigonometry in high school, but I learned it in the cockpit of an
airplane, and I didn't know it was trigonometry experiential learning. And so I
started speaking to high school students and medical middle school students about how great it
is to apply your education in an experiential way. And all of a sudden,
I was an aviation speaker. And I found myself hanging out with people
like Buzz Aldrin and the Tuskegee Airmen and you know, these astronauts and Blue
Angels, and I mean, I was in an arena that I never imagined
I would be in, you know, I haven't come out of the rock
and roll industry, and now, you know, flying high with some of
these just amazing, amazing people, and it was wonderful. You know,
I just really enjoyed that until the next pivot I had to make, which
was in twenty fifteen. I got an inner ear infection and I could no
longer be a pilot and I lost my gosh, and so I had to
pivot again, and I managed to get myself invited to speak at a conference
in Moscow and Russia. I wanted to go really international and go to places
that I'd never been and see parts of the world that I'd never seen,
and that evolved to me meeting the ambassador, and the ambassador introducing me to
the Indian ambassador, and to getting to know people at the State Department,
which, you know, to keep keep a long story short, ultimately resulted
in me becoming a cultural diplomat for the US Department of State and being able
to do lecture tours in Russia and in Indonesia, Iraq, Lebanon, all
about two different things, the arts and also entrepreneurship, two things that the
United States really excels where the US excels. So this was part of something
I could do as a cultural diplomat, is really showcase what the United States
has to offer the world. And it was a very proud opportunity for me.
And again that's another thing I never thought i'd be doing, given that
I just wanted to be angus here in the BCDC when I was eleven years
old. Wow, unbelievable. Now all of this makes sense. It makes
sense the title of your book pivot, because you know that what life Isn't
that what life so has become, Robbie, And you're trying to get younger
people to know that it's okay to pivot. And how many athletes have had
to leave their sport and have recreated new lives for themselves. How many people
in everyday life there aren't that many role models out there to say to us,
wait a minute, just because it didn't work out the way you thought
or wanted or however, doesn't mean it's not going to work out. And
pivoting is so critical? Isn't it so critical? You know it really is.
And you know I wrote the book during the pandemic where we all had
to pivot. And it just seemed that obviously this was something the whole education
industry was pivoting. Everybody was going into online learning. People that used to
go to offices were pivoting, they were working room totely. Everything was just
changing so fast, and I realized that this is this is a skill that
I guess I have, but more important than that, it's a skill we
need to be teaching. It's a skill that we need to be encouraging.
We have to be able to encourage our students to take risks. We have
to encourage them to fail so that we can teach them how to get back
up. There were a lot of things that I started thinking about in my
own education and in our education industry that needs to change, that needs to
pivot in order to make sure that we do prepare our students for an unpredictable
future. It's it's really essential, and you know those I sort of I
break it down in the book into four things. We need to inspire curiosity,
we need to nurture talent, we need to provoke critical thinking, and
we need to foster communication. And those are really things that have guided you.
How do you save them again? Because they're they're all important, say
it again. Inspire curiosity, nurture talent, provoke critical thinking, and foster
communication. Yes, because you can have all the challenge in the world,
but it doesn't necessarily mean you'll go anywhere. You know. That's one of
the things that I often tell people is there were so many more talented people
than I who could have done you know, playto himbop and handsome. I
mean, it's it's the fact is that there's so many talented people that don't
have the other skills to leverage their careers in the way that they need to.
So it takes all of that, and it takes It's really to me,
those are the four pillars of lifelong learning. That's what I call them,
and I think that if we empower our students with those, then they'll
be fine in an unpredictable future. It goes back to what I said at
the beginning of our conversation Frankie, is that sixty five percent of today's students
are going to work in jobs that we don't even know about yet. So
if we give them those tools, then they're going to be fine. They're
going to be able to create the opportunities that they need and convert and capitalize
on the opportunities presentatism. You know, Robbie, those tools are so critical.
And what concerns me, What concerns me and I and I chuckle because
I'm wondering, where where do we get people to start becoming independent in their
thinking and how do we even promote that among kids? What I'm seeing are
a bunch of sheep. It's like everybody follows everybody else. And we've had
this this these fifteen year olds in Boston and downtown Boston, gangs of fifteen
year olds that are coming from the suburbs, and I don't know if it's
through social media, but they're gathering and they're and being destructive at the same
time on the expense of other people. They crowded a movie theater and trick
it over, and they harassed police officer in downtown Crossing. They came into
the festival, the North Ends Sacred Wonderful Saint Anthony Festival. They just seemed
to be everywhere, freewhere. They are part of the sheep mentality, and
that just I just am saddened by it, so saddened by it. You
know, you're you're touching on something that's that's something I talked to my educational
audiences about, you know, when I was telling you about my cultural diplomacy,
and I had all this opportunity to do this work and meet all these
different diplomats, including Jill Biden and Colin Powell, and get to learn from
these people and talk to them. One of the things that happened around that
time was on November thirteen, twenty fifteen, the terrorists attacks in Paris,
where young radicalized terrorists. Basically, we're going out and killing innocent people in
cafes and in nightclubs and everything at random. And the next day I woke
up and I asked myself and then asked all of these new ambassadors and everybody
that I knew, what are we doing to help youth rise above this violence
and this radicalism, what's causing it, and what are we doing to combat
it? And you know that led some of my significant work with the State
Department, where I created a sonwriting camp we launched in Indonesia, and it's
the idea was, why don't we have why don't we put people from traditionally
opposed cultures and religions and put them in a room together and have them write
music and see what happens. So one of the things that I think our
education system needs to do, and this is what I sort of proved to
myself and to others through this project, Well, we need to make sure
that we continue to have the arts in education and things that generate more empathy
so that we don't get this sort of destructive youth mentality that is often promoted
by social media and by other influences that encourage this kind of activity that you're
referring to. That just, yeah, seems so what we need. I
have a new idea for you when we come back from break, we'll talk
about that. Robbie give us the best website ravunites dot com. That's riv
i U n I t ees dot com. His new book is out Its
Call, which is what he does. He pivots all the time, pivot
empowering students today to succeed in an unpredictable future. And Robbie Hutti Sing will
be with this our last segment in just a moment seeing is can you only
imagine what the memoir is going to look like at the end of one's life,
At the end of Robbie Huttinson's life because it is such an extraordinary life
that he's had. And Robbie, welcome back. Pivot. Empowering students today
to succeed in an unpredictable tomorrow is your new book. You're a global education
and corporate speaker. You've served as a cultural diplomat for the US State Department.
You've been a member of the rock band Yes, I know it.
He was the guitarist for Hansen. They traveled and toured all over You became
a pilot. We heard your pilot story in an air infection. And now
you are helping young kids and entrepreneurs all over this world. And I my
question to you is what about the next phase taking young people and doing musical
workshops around the country for them. Yeah, I mean, you know,
there's so many things that we can do with the arts that help sort of
realign our young people with humanity. You know, we got into this conversation
and so much of what I talk about now with my education audiences is the
influence of AI and chat, GPT and what is technology doing to the future
of jobs. But at the end of the day, we're all people and
we have to get back to what to the human spirit and make sure that
we never lose the human spirit. And that's one of the things that I
just love about music and the arts, and your idea of creating these workshops
really help will help us keep our young people and all people together and you
know, around the human spirit because ultimately, like we were talking about what
happens when when AI starts to create AI and robots take over. Well,
you know, nothing is going to replace the human spirit as long as we
keep developing it. And so that's where I think the arts and music and
sports and all of those things really help. And that's why our education system
has to keep those types of opportunities available to our students so that they remain,
you know, in touch with that aspect of life. I want to
ask you, is there any plans for you to get back into music or
is that just the early chapter. No, I think, you know,
one of the things that I see in my life all is is kind of
a full circle approach. You know. It's it's kind of funny, right
because I grew up with a family with a political legacy. Never did I
think I would end up work on behalf of the United States for the State
Department as a cultural diplomat, but that was one sort of complete circle.
Music has always remained part of my life even that my work as a cultural
diplomat is creating the songwriting workshops that bring people together from traditionally post cultures and
religions through music. So music's constant threat. It's never left me and never
will. Whether it becomes, you know, at the forefront of what I
do again is yet to be seen. But I'm starting to get that hitch.
To be honest, I'm starting to play my guitar a lot more again
and writing songs again. So maybe, yeah, I just feeling. My
feeling is that it's not done yet. It's not done yet. When when
you are sitting back and relaxing and taking time to reflect between the police,
political and for those of you that that are just joining us, your political
your family tree, oh my gosh, talk about Gandhi talk about your family
tree. A lot of pressure, you know, but a lot of exposure
to to what it means to fight for freedom, what it means to be
a leader. As I tell my audiences, true leadership is empowering those below
you to rise above you. So it requires a lot of humility and That's
something that I've learned from my family legacy, is that if we're really going
to change the world, if we're really going to make it a better place,
it's not about lifting ourselves. It's about lifting others and giving them and
empowering them, just like when I talk about in my book regarding students,
empowering them to really succeed. So that's that's the gift that I've gotten from
my family legacy. The pressure, though, must be so intense. And
by the way, did your dad love the fact that you had such tremendous
success in Hanson. Yeah, he did. You know. I always used
to joke that even before Hanson, when I was playing the dive bars in
New York City, that the three guys in the suits in the back where
my dad and my two brothers. You know, they were very supportive always,
and they were loving it when I was with Hanson, and they would
come to the shows and they would be in the TV audiences, and you
know, they they really did support me a lot, and you know,
I think respected the fact that I decided to venture on my own path and
try to find my own way, and they were all very proud of me
for for succeeding. Yeah, I bet, I bet. I have to
say that that the way in which you have pivoted is inspirational so many and
and that's that's the story, that is so that's that's the piece that we
need to hear. The hope, the fact that if it doesn't work out,
turn around, look below, look above, look beside, and you
have so many connections that you have made, and that people don't realize that
these connections that you think are you know, the power of networking, the
power of connection in your life has been extremely powerful, extremely powerful. One
of the things that I also say in my keynotes is the worst thing we
tell children is don't talk to strangers. How can you imagine if I had
never talked to strangers, I wouldn't have been able to have created any of
these opportunities. We need to teach kids how to talk to strangers. And
you know, that's where you can convert opportunities and ignize them and then convert
them into realities. That's the skill. And then you know, Pivot is
my life story. It is what I talk about in the book, and
it is my hope that it not only inspires people, but that it actually
gives them a blueprint on how they can create these scenarios and these opportunities for
themselves in their own way, so that they can achieve happiness, so that
they can achieve success not just for themselves, but for those around them,
and you for the greater good too, because we all absolutely serve in that
sense. So Robbie, this has been so enjoyable. Thank you, Thank
you for all that you bring to us and the new book. Congratulations,
come back sooner than later. I know it's been a while. We'd love
to continue the conversation because your insights and information is just so critical and very
important. Thanks for being with us and give us the best website. Thank
you, frank I really appreciate it to everybody. Can come and visit me
at RAVI units dot com, r A v I U n I T e
s dot com. Thank you so much, and thank all of you.
This has been another edition of the Frankie Boyer Show. Thanks for listening.
Make it a great day everybody, and as always, smile, handsome