What Founding a Music Education Platform Taught Me About Personalizing All Fields of Education

From Music Lessons to Universal Learning: A Founder's Journey Through the True Cost of Educational Equity

The Problem I Didn't Know I Was Solving

When I founded Practicing Musician in 2017, I thought I was solving a simple problem: making quality music instruction accessible and affordable.

I was wrong.

Or rather, I was solving that problem—but what I discovered along the way would fundamentally reshape my understanding of education itself, across every sector from kindergarten classrooms to corporate training rooms.

The breakthrough came during the most unlikely moment: a global pandemic that should have destroyed everything I'd built.

The Unexpected Gift of Crisis

On March 20, 2020, as COVID-19 shut down schools and music programs nationwide, a Facebook group called "Music Educators Creating Online Learning" was founded (now rebranded as Music Teachers Guild Forum). Notice the operant word “creating” in the original group’s title. That’s because online music learning for school programs didn’t exist. Practicing Musician did, but we weren’t well known yet. 

I watched as this group grew to nearly 50,000 music educators in just a few short months. On July 19, 2020, I made a decision that seemed straightforward at the time: I would crowdsource additional educational content to help struggling music educators.

I posted on the group, and approximately 150 music educators—people scattered across different states, time zones, and teaching contexts—volunteered to help. They had never met each other, and most of them never communicated with each other. What happened next should have been chaos.

Instead, these 150 strangers, working in complete isolation, created 7,500 perfectly integrated educational video assets that worked together seamlessly as a unified curriculum.

Think about that for a moment.

150 people who had never spoken to each other produced thousands of educational pieces that fit together perfectly. No prior relationships, barely any communication... Yet the result was coherent, comprehensive, and pedagogically sound.

If 150 educators could achieve this, what could 1,000 do? What about 10,000? What about 100,000 creators, each bringing their unique cultural perspective, teaching style, and expertise—all working within a framework that ensures quality while enabling personalization at a scale previously unimaginable?

That question changed everything. It became the foundation for what I now call Community-Driven Cultural Adaptation—a model where communities of educators, not corporations or algorithms, ensure that learners worldwide can see themselves reflected in their education.

The Mathematics of Representation

Here's where my education in psychology intersected with my work in technology to reveal something profound about educational personalization.

We talk about "personalized learning" constantly in education technology. Adaptive algorithms. AI tutors. Customized pathways. But we're not actually personalizing what matters most: representation.

Let me show you what I mean with some math that kept me up at night.

The Language Calculation

Consider a platform like Khan Academy—I use them because their data is public and they represent the gold standard of free, accessible education. They've produced over 10,000 video lessons in English, averaging 6-9 minutes each. It's an extraordinary achievement that has helped millions of students.

Now, I need to be intellectually honest here: Khan Academy videos are primarily screencasts—screen recordings with voiceover narration, using digital pen tablets to write and draw on a virtual blackboard. This format is actually quite inexpensive to dub into different languages. You could theoretically record voice-over translations for all 7,100+ world languages at a fraction of the cost I'm about to calculate.

But here's the critical insight: Language dubbing solves linguistic accessibility, not representational equity. When you're listening to a dubbed screencast, you still don't see yourself in your teacher. You hear your language, but you don't experience someone who shares your cultural context, your life experience, your worldview explaining concepts in a way that resonates with how you understand the world.

Language is simply the most objective dimension for calculating what true representation actually costs. Let me show you the math—not because this is what Khan Academy should spend, but because it illustrates the scale of the challenge facing any educational platform that wants to deliver genuine personalization:

• 10,000 existing videos

• 7.5 minutes average length (midpoint of 6-9 minutes)

• 7,100+ world languages

• $1,500 per minute (industry standard for professional talking-head educational video production with visible educators)

The math:

• 10,000 videos × 7,100 languages = 71,000,000 total videos needed

• 71,000,000 videos × 7.5 minutes = 532,500,000 minutes of content

• 532,500,000 minutes × $1,500/minute = $798,750,000,000

Nearly $800 billion. That's what it would cost to reproduce that library in every language with visible professional educators from each linguistic community presenting the material—not automated translation, not subtitles, not dubbed screencasts, but actual teachers you can see, whose presence reflects your cultural identity, delivering instruction in ways that resonate with your community's learning traditions.

And that's just language. True representation extends far beyond linguistic translation.

Beyond Language: The True Dimensions of Personalization

Language is only one dimension of representation. A Hindi-speaking student in rural India learning Python doesn't just need Hindi—they need an instructor who understands their cultural context, their economic reality, their learning environment.

True personalization means accounting for:

• Ethnicity and cultural identity — seeing yourself reflected in your teacher

• Delivery style — academic, casual, humorous, serious, fast-paced, methodical

• Teaching approach — visual, auditory, kinesthetic, project-based, lecture-based

• Life experience — teachers who understand your context, challenges, and aspirations

• Learning pace and style — adaptive to individual cognitive preferences

Each of these dimensions multiplies the requirement. If we hyperconservatively estimate just 10 meaningful variations across these qualitative factors, then $800 billion becomes $8 trillion. With 50 variations—still far from true personalization—we're at $40 trillion for a single educational platform.

This is why educational technology has failed to deliver on its promise of personalization. The economics are impossible at traditional production costs.

The Accidental Discovery: Structure Enables, Culture Personalizes

During that pandemic crowdsourcing experiment, I stumbled onto something that would take me years to fully understand: while content needs to be personal and culturally relevant, the structure of great instruction is universal.

A well-designed music lesson and a well-designed corporate compliance training course share the same pedagogical architecture:

• Clear, measurable learning objectives

• Scaffolded activities that build understanding progressively

• Meaningful assessments that verify learning

• Engaging presentation that maintains attention

What if technology could automatically create this structure, transforming any content—textbooks, compliance documents, training manuals, video transcripts—into a comprehensive educational framework?

And then—here's where it gets revolutionary—what if thousands of different educators could teach within that framework, each bringing their unique perspective while maintaining quality and coherence?

Suddenly, the economics change completely.

From $1,500 Per Video to $0.50: The Cost Revolution

Through years of iteration and development, I discovered we could reduce video production costs from the industry standard of $1,500 per minute to approximately $5 per video using a manually-operated collaborative process.

That's a 300x cost reduction.

And we're targeting $0.50 per video through automation with our patent-pending Instructional Design Generator and patent-pending Educator Collaboration Process—a 3,000x reduction from industry standards.

This isn't about cutting corners or reducing quality. It's about fundamentally restructuring how educational content gets created, moving from centralized production to distributed collaboration.

Community-Driven Cultural Adaptation makes this possible—not by replacing human expertise with AI, but by using technology to coordinate thousands of educators who collectively provide the diversity learners actually need.

Testing Beyond Music: The Validation That Changed My Vision

As I developed these systems for music education, curiosity got the better of me. Would this framework apply to other subjects?

Our team started testing:

• History and religious studies: The pedagogical structure adapted successfully

• Corporate compliance and HR training: Complex regulatory content transformed seamlessly

• Science and mathematics curricula: STEM subjects validated perfectly

• Project management and technical skills: Professional development confirmed

• Web development and coding: Technical training proved viable

The conclusion became unavoidable: this pedagogical structure works across all educational domains.

The breakthrough I'd made in music education wasn't about music at all. It was about learning itself.

What K-12, Higher Education, Corporate Training, and Hobbyist Learning All Share

Through this journey, I've come to understand that educational personalization isn't sector-specific. The same principles apply whether you're teaching:

K-12 Students

Who need to see themselves reflected in their teachers, learn at their own pace, and experience instruction that respects their cultural context while meeting academic standards.

College and University Learners

Who require flexible, accessible instruction that accommodates work schedules, family obligations, and diverse learning preferences while maintaining academic rigor.

Corporate Employees

Who need training that respects their time, speaks to their cultural context, and delivers measurable outcomes without the one-size-fits-all approach that wastes billions annually in ineffective compliance training.

Adult Hobbyists and Lifelong Learners

Who want instruction that meets them where they are—in their language, at their pace, with teachers who understand their goals, constraints, and motivation for learning.

The Three Universal Truths I've Learned

Truth #1: Representation Matters More Than Technology

We've spent billions on adaptive algorithms and AI tutors, but what learners actually need is to see themselves in their teachers. A Black student learning calculus deserves to learn from Black mathematicians. A Spanish-speaking worker completing safety training deserves instruction from someone who understands not just the language, but the cultural context.

But here's the critical balance: while learners need cultural resonance, they also need exposure to diverse perspectives beyond their own experience. Education shouldn't create mirror echo chambers where students only encounter teachers who look, sound, and think exactly like they do. True personalization means matching learners with educators who reflect their identity and expanding their worldview through exposure to teachers from different backgrounds, teaching styles, and cultural contexts.

The goal isn't homogeneity—it's optionality. A student should be able to learn calculus from someone who shares their cultural background when that connection matters most, while also learning from educators whose different perspectives enrich understanding. The algorithm's job isn't to replace cultural resonance—it's to facilitate both connection and growth.

Truth #2: Structure Scales, Culture Personalizes

The pedagogical framework—the learning objectives, scaffolding, assessments, and sequencing—can be systematized. This is where technology creates value.

But the delivery, the examples, the cultural references, the teaching style—this is where humans create connection. Technology should handle structure so humans can focus on relationship.

Truth #3: Community Collaboration Beats Corporate Control

Those 150 educators working without coordination proved something profound: given the right framework, communities self-organize to create extraordinary value. Top-down control isn't necessary. In fact, it's often counterproductive.

The future of education isn't a single company deciding what "diversity" means. It's thousands of creators ensuring that learners worldwide can see themselves reflected in their education. This is Community-Driven Cultural Adaptation in action—where representation emerges organically from the community itself, not from corporate diversity initiatives.

What This Means for the Future of Education

The implications extend far beyond any single platform or company:

For Educational Technology

Stop building systems that replace teachers. Build systems that amplify teachers—that enable educators to reach learners they could never serve alone, while maintaining the human connection that makes learning transformative.

For Institutions

The schools, universities, and corporations that win the future will be those who embrace community-driven cultural adaptation rather than trying to impose standardized content on diverse populations.

For Policy Makers

True educational equity isn't about giving everyone the same resources. It's about ensuring everyone has access to instruction that speaks to their cultural context, learning style, and life experience. That requires rethinking how we fund and structure educational content creation.

For Learners

You deserve better than one-size-fits-all content that pretends cultural context doesn't matter. You deserve to learn from teachers who understand not just the subject matter, but understand you.

The Journey Continues

I started this journey wanting to make music lessons affordable. I discovered something far more important: a blueprint for making all education truly personalized, culturally relevant, and accessible at scale.

The technology exists. The economic model works. The community collaboration model has been proven.

What remains is the will to build systems that serve learners rather than platforms—that compensate creators fairly rather than exploiting them—that enable true representation rather than algorithmic approximation.

That's the future I'm building. Not because it's easy, but because after founding a music education platform and watching 150 strangers create something beautiful together, I've seen what's possible when we structure education around community rather than control.

The question isn't whether we can personalize education at scale. We can.

The question is whether we'll choose to build that future.

A Personal Reflection

When I was struggling with addiction fourteen years ago, music education saved my life. But it wasn't just the music—it was finding teachers who saw me, who understood my context, who met me where I was rather than where some curriculum said I should be.

Every student deserves that experience. Every adult learner. Every employee completing training. Every person pursuing knowledge.

Building the Future

We have the technology to make it happen. We have the economic model to sustain it. We have proof that Community-Driven Cultural Adaptation can achieve what corporate control never could.

A dedicated team is already building this future through ClimbHigh.AI—a creator-owned platform where educators retain 67% equity. This isn't altruism but proven competitive strategy: when Microsoft acquired GitHub in 2018, they paid a 25-30x revenue multiple—nearly 5x higher than typical SaaS acquisitions—because developer loyalty created irreplaceable strategic value. Our creator ownership model delivers the same competitive moat, increasing investor ROI by attracting top-tier talent that competitors paying revenue share percentages cannot match. The technology is proven, the team is assembled, and early traction validates the model.

What we need now is capital partners with the vision to accelerate what we've already demonstrated works. If you're an investor who sees the $10 trillion global education market shifting toward ethical, creator-first platforms—and you want to be part of the solution rather than the problem—let's talk.

About This Journey: This article reflects insights from founding and scaling a music education platform that serves learners in 46 countries, producing over 7,500 educational resources through community collaboration, and discovering principles that apply across all educational sectors.

Keywords: personalized learning, educational technology, community-driven education, cultural representation in education, K-12 education innovation, corporate training solutions, adult learning, hobbyist education, educational equity, music education, scalable education, distributed content creation, EdTech innovation, lifelong learning, workforce development, technical training, educational personalization, creator economy in education

What's your experience with educational personalization? Have you encountered learning that truly reflected your cultural context and learning style? Share your thoughts in the comments.