Nicolás Forero educated himself through books, podcasts, and entrepreneurship. By his mid-twenties, he had helped roughly seventy companies generate millions in revenue, working on teams serving Canva, Amazon, Google, and the United Nations Association, despite having been born in Colombia and living in Latin America.

After his mother passed away in 2023, he enrolled in St. John's College's Great Books program — hundreds of hours of Socratic seminars, wrestling with foundational texts through dialogue rather than lecture. It was there that someone told him, "You need to talk to Michael Strong." Michael, a St. John's alumnus, had spent thirty-five years doing with young people what St. John's does with adults: trusting them to engage with serious ideas through real conversation. Within minutes of their first call, Nicolás understood why parents and staff who find Michael tend to stay for decades.

He joined The Socratic Experience as an executive, began shadowing Michael's classes, listening to stories from families he changed, and all it took to be capable of doing so, and wrote Raising Free Learners because these ideas are not theoretical to him. They are the reason his own life was possible.