How to Tackle the Youth Mental Health Crisis

[0:00]  totally understand parents saying like you know what like I want to teach my kids a lot of these skills and I'm like I hear you but why not get the additional support right when when we tell parents like coaching means that we're going to help your your kid better manage their time make their bed when you in the morning and like really develop those executive functioning skills like oh yeah please help me do that because I don't want to fight with them another time so it really looking at it's like how how can we get families and communities to think about the power of us all working together uh in and schools being the cracks of where that can happen I mean because it really does take a village right to raise a child it's not just Mom and Dad because your child is also spending from 7:00 a.m.

[0:43]  until 2:30 p.m. with other adults and other environments where they're learning things skills are being pushed upon them and they're able to develop those executive skills and functions all right guys welcome back to a brand new episode of the heart and hustle podcast now I'm incredibly excited because I'm sitting across this digital table with an amazing leader founder and CEO I'm sitting across the table from Maria who is the CEO and founder of clayful Health Maria welcome to the show thanks so much for having me I'm very excited to be here so you know one of the things that we often talk about on the podcast is our heart and hustle now

[1:31]  when it comes to clayful health and the work that you guys do the heart is easy to understand but I think we need to articulate the reason behind why this I would say Venture was actually started in our previous conversation you mentioned a kind of a stark reality where we started talking about an 8-year-old who was not only identifying what suicide was but was also following through with that incredibly horrific act so why was that something that kind of opened your eyes to this space or what's a little bit about your background why is this so important yeah so I've been working in education and education technology pretty much my whole career even when I was you know in high school I was teaching at the nearby middle school and I've always had a a space in my heart for working with kids so in during Co I was really looking at you know the impact of us being locked

[2:25]  up in our houses for a long time and how that was going to affect I mean obviously it was affecting all of us in some way shape or form but but for kids it was let's say it's different right it's oh you're you don't have structure you're not socializing at this time like you're building all these social skills you're not being exposed to people that are different than you or who are like you in finding sort of ways to connect to yourself and to others so as I started to sort of talk to families and started to realize that like oh there's this this generation is going to be a little

[3:12]  bit different and this article that you mentioned uh starts coming out and that more start coming out around like this youth Mental Health crisis and then we start talking about like how this youth Mental Health crisis making its way into schools and all of those things put together I'm like oh no like we have to do something we have to do something fast because over time we've had mental health become more of a let's say like common topic over the last you know decade or so um but we hadn't really have it had it Blow like blow off the L blow the lid off the way that Co did and it felt like it basically got to a reckoning um where we realized oh there's a crisis right and beyond that

[4:01]  this crisis is affecting everybody and schools are at the center of kind of the the inflection point I mean it's it's really just scary to think about where the current state of the mental health of a general young population is you know I was born in 1990 so I might be dating myself for everybody here who's on the podcast but I grew up in a world where when I was eight years old I was kind of WorryFree there wasn't a like a scary thing in the world I was just living life being a kid but it's not the world that kids live in anymore they're exposed to so many images social media being cooped up in the house for years there's one of my favorite sayings is we will often study the things later in history that media often ignored and I think we're in kind of one of those beautiful inflection points where it's like there is so much noise around us and static about what's happening in our

[4:49]  communities but often we just ignore them because we're looking at the next headline we've got the presidential election going on but it's like we have a crisis right underneath us and we really need to pay attention to our younger generation yeah and you're right they're so much more exposed than we ever were and and the the way the algorithms work is they're you know exposed to one thing and they're like oh this is interesting it's sad it's you know content as a whole is more polarizing so you're it's designed to provoke a reaction and then you become a little bit interested in this topic and then all of a sudden that's all you're seeing and all you're learning about and it it it's it ends up becoming a it can be become a really negative spiral very very quickly um and you know when I was a I was like playing in the

[5:37]  playground and just like playing with Barbies exactly Different World um but with with so much access to technology and to information it means that we have to find protective factors U because if they're creating if they're accessing all this information anyway using a device then how can we also help them realize how to manage that device and how to use that device for good when they need it what is the role that our school systems are supposed to play in a perfect world when it comes to mental health I bring that question up because I'm not sure about you but my parents never talk to me about mental health the conversations in which I was exposed to

[6:24]  these things was actually in the academic setting so is that the responsibility of the schools or what do you kind of think about that yeah look like the I think the responsibility has been evolving um and responsibility is an interesting word right because it it's more of a need in some ways than anything right when you're you know you talk about what is the media ignoring what they're not ignoring is the school shootings and these horrific acts that are happening in our communities and when you look at the reasons why these are happening there it all goes back to mental health and mental health support right so we're seeing that the things that are affecting us as communities are because of these challenges that

[7:13]  that students are experiencing like really we come from a place of hey let's work upstream and let's prevent and let's give young people life skills so that they never get to a breaking point but when you're having school shooting or students harming themselves or someone else they schools have to be they you know not only is their responsibility like they need to be the ones providing that that support because it's happening there right so I mean I'm from Columbia and my I would say like our mental health didn't really enter our sort of family's conversation until later on and I when I came to the US I was 10 we you know I was playing I brought my Barbies over

[8:02]  you know we were playing it was like a very let's say like kid-like um childhood but then you know as I became a teenager and was like trying to find my way and trying to understand you know like okay I'm Colombian but now I'm sort of American like what does this mean and who am I and how do I fit in like do you wear limited to do you not like what's Hollister how do you how do you manage all these questions uh existential questions uh and and it sounds silly but like that's what young people think about right and like because so much of what you're trying to do is fit in and figure out who you are and develop your personality and if you're doing that in a place where you're exposed to all these other negative things like that's going to

[8:50]  come to AE right and schools are dealing with it whether we talk about shootings but like with the bullying as well right like that's becoming a huge huge issue um with lack of attendance like students being so anxious or depressed like they don't want to go to school so there's a lot of ways in which schools are being affected and they're yeah they're being forced into the conversation and then in parallel like I totally understand parents saying like you know what like I want to teach my kids a lot of these skills and I'm like I hear you but why not get their additional support right when when we tell parents like coaching means that wean help your your kid M or manage their time make their bed when you in the morning and like really develop those executive functioning

[9:36]  skills like oh yeah please help me do that because I don't want to fight with them another time as they're making their way out the door and running late so it really looking at like how how can we get families and communities to think about the power of us all working together uh in and schools being the cracks of where that can happen I mean because it really does take a village right to raise a child it's not just Mom and Dad because your child is also spending from 7: a.m. until 2:30 p.m.

[10:05]  with other adults and other environments where they're learning things skills are being pushed upon them and they're able to develop those executive skills and functions so the question for clayful is we recognize this macro issue that we're dealing with how are you guys from a business perspective kind of tackling this problem tell us about the model a little bit so it might not this is probably not surprising but we partner with schools I believe so much in the power of schools in supporting this work and we provide on demand coach based support for students so students can log on to an app either on their own device or on a school issue device and connect with the human in 60 seconds and the human piece is really important because I know

[10:52]  you know AI is all the way right now um but so much of what we lost during Co was that human connection right and giving young people another trusted source that they can talk to uh without judgment but to talk about whatever is going on goes such a long way and helps them build those skills in real time when they're experiencing the things in real life right so so that's when we talk about like what's the big innovation is that we're providing support on demand when students need it and where they need it uh in a way that hasn't been done before what are some of the early conversations that you have when you go to a school system and say Hey listen either we're thinking of this idea right did you get any push back did you have any like early lwh hanging fruit victories when you started

[11:39]  approaching this with your solution or like what was the ideation process like we I would say took a very the user centered design approach but realizing that there's a lot of users to design around right we we have the student at the core so a lot of these ideas of like why it's on demand came from students like why it's chat based came from students um and but then we think about okay what is a school need and what are not only what do they need to roll something out but what do they need to be able to showcase the impact of something right so then we built out a curriculum that schools could use on an ongoing basis because it turns out that yes having a on demand chat is really helpful for those

[12:28]  students who know who already have those help seeking behaviors right but if you don't yet know oh how to Greed your emotions or how to do something when you have those emotions then it's hard to do something about it right so we've developed this curriculum to both s support schools in having these conversations and to help students start to like put two and two together of like oh when I feel this like heat in my chest that's anger what is that what is that telling me and how do I work through it um and then we look at you know the impact measurement aspect of it and that goes to funding and how do how do we get funding and how do we prove out that this this intervention is working and you know we measure everything from qualitative student feedback to anxiety

[13:17]  and depression levels to attendance rates we did a research last um last year that where chronically absent students were attending who use clayful attended School two more weeks than those who didn't no way yeah whoa that's a huge like that's a tangible impact that's crazy what so what is it like when you first getting start getting back some of that data where you see like hey kids who are using clay FL are attending school two weeks more than kids who are not like what are some of the internal excitement or some of the internal conversations you guys are having because that's like profound data it's amazing we're super excited about it and then in we start to so we were already uh Gathering some of this information from students themselves right so we would ask um after in our feedback form we would ask like are you

[14:04]  more motivated to go to school or to learn after this conversation and about 86% of some of them said they were so we were we were getting that feedback and then now we're able to actually tie it to real outcomes and so because you know school districts would say okay you're saying students are saying this but like are they actually doing it exactly right yeah so to be able to put two and two together there was I really powerful and now we're able to share you know when school districts are looking at getting new resources they there's very robust processes and very very um intense due diligence that they do which is great because we know that our funds are going to great places um and as part of that they they look at the evidence

[14:51]  base and say okay what have you seen in other in other places that we can expect to see and what's the outcome that we will expect to have and you know there's states that get funded based on attendance so for them it's like oh great this can pay for itself um which is also big wow so did you realize that initially when you guys started going out with the value proposition because I'm guessing right as you go to the market you have a solution for a problem to support mental health but then you start finding all these different qualitative and quantitative different pieces of data where it's like oh well if we position it as an attendance enhancer that is directly tied to funding for the organization or the school district we should position in this way so what was the iteration process like when you guys started going to Market this is really interesting to me this is where listening to your customer is so so so important right and like I said we have all these different

[15:38]  stakeholders right so you have the student the teacher the admin the the school admin the district admin the parents right so there I spend a lot of my time out talking to school leaders and even when my team has meetings when we're reviewing data like I will you know go on the peton and listen to the calls sorry Cody wiie I'm no longer listening to you but it's staying close to the customer is so so so important and that's where we start getting some of these ideas right where they're they they're flagging the problems that they're having and so we saw attendance come up a lot last year and that's where we we started to say okay let's make sure that we're measuring that to see where we're having an impact because we see anecdotally

[16:27]  that students coming in and they're saying you know I don't want to go to school tomorrow because I didn't study for that test or I don't want to go to school tomorrow because my friend isn't going to be there and I don't have any other friends to eat lunch with or I don't want to go school tomorrow because this person posted this about me on social media and I don't want to face them and like those are all again very real things and if we're able to work through that it can change this is literally I'm not I'm not saying this in a degrading way whatsoever but this is like a mini life coach that's on demand access that directly ties into our mental health because when I think about mental health normally right a younger age demographic or somebody who hasn't been through so much life doesn't have the language to be able to explain how they're feeling and so me feeling like I don't want to go to school tomorrow because my friend's not going to be there I have

[17:13]  nobody to sit at lunch means I'm feeling a little bit anxious and I don't have the language to be able to describe that what an amazing model to be able to kind of I would I'm not trying to pigeon hole you guys any way way anyway but in healthcare we talk about like whole person Health right you're looking at the entire indiv idual and the challenges that they're facing but giving them on tap on demand support so they can navigate some of that stuff wow wasn't a awesome little model this is so cool thank you I mean I'm biased obviously but I agree well and like I mean these are examples for attendance right but think about the student who's like they just found out something about a friend and they're really angry and they are want to get in a fight and we've had kids come on and they're like I'm going to punch them right now we're like okay let's play this out what's going to happen if you do right and what what are

[18:02]  the potential outcomes of you like is that going to get you what you want what do you actually want out of this conversation right and having that conversation right in the moment I always say that like the time between a young person feels an emotion and when they get to work through it this Delta is when you make bad decisions 100% so if we can decrease that time and or like help them process it in a way that is healthy then then that's lifechanging that's life saving especially when we're looking at you know emotions and think about like your middle school self that it's like you know it's a roller coaster so and and unfortunately because they're exposed to so much more you're exposed to a lot more extreme actions too so we're we're seeing just by having this

[18:52]  these early interventions we're creating a lot more support for students before they start experimenting with much you know scarier things man this is so cool have did you ever have a conversation with yourself where it's like man when I was in Middle School when I was in high school as I was at a younger age I wish I would have had this and it would have helped me make better decisions when I navigated some of these life challenges that we come across oh for sure there is a fully selfish Endeavor I this is what I wish I had when I was 15 so that's why I mean people always say you know Founders will build something for them for themselves or for the community they know so well and I was your perfectionist who would it mean still sometimes I'm um who is uh strong and doesn't need anyone's help very

[19:42]  independent and I can figure it out on my own until it I couldn't and if I had had the support when I was 15 let me just say I would save a lot of money on therapy now uh and I it would have been a lot easier like my relationship with my mom we talk about this all the time I I get her she she's we're Columbian she speaks Spanish so every time we do any sort of parent Communication in Spanish I'm like hey Mom check this out can you just tell me what you think and the last time I send it to her she's like oh my God if we had had this it would be so much easier seriously I mean even not not just supporting the kiddo but also supporting Mom and Dad right so even like a multifunctional type of solution I want to I want to know a little bit about your jumping across the C from going from a 9 to5 right to being a CEO

[20:31]  and founder and going to a 247 365 so what is that process like for you are you having conversations with friends with your family I'm gonna take this jump I'm gonna start my own thing what is that early day like so my I had always thought I wanted to start a company and really I think it was because two reasons one my my dad is a civil engineer and he had a construction business growing up so i' had always seen him kind of running his own thing and I thought thought that was yeah it felt exciting to me and then of course I did I I went to Stanford and they like feed you something in the water there to make you be an entrepreneur I don't know how they do it but it's magic so so I I was very exposed in a lot of ways and and what I was looking for because I had seen other people

[21:18]  build companies is and I know how hard I knew how hard it could be I wanted a problem that I was so passionate about that I not only like didn't mind working the 247365 but that it didn't feel like work most of the time because I was so excited and passionate about it and it wasn't until I saw this article that we referenced earlier that I was like that that's it that's the thing and you know Steve Jobs has this quote that he says like when you you don't see the dots look the dots connect looking forward but you can always see them connect looking back and I remember being in this moment where there there's like all these different experience points or all these people that I had met that I'm like well

[22:06]  it all makes sense like I was meant to do this everything from like taking AP Psych in 10th Grade and like being obsessed with psychology ever since dude literally this is so interesting to me I was listen I'm sorry to interrupt you but I was listening to a podcast um Chris Williamson it's called modern wisdom he recently just hosted um Matthew MCC and they get on to the question about do you believe in fate and Matthew in his age of wisdom says you know when I was younger I always thought that things were happening at random I would run into somebody at the Starbucks or I would miss somebody just and I would actually meet somebody else who I became best friends with but when you have the perspective of life and you can zoom out it seems like everything has been incredibly methodical and mathematically aligned to give you the opportunities that kind of put you on a path that you can find your passion and I've just been like tapping into that message and like when I have a tough day

[22:53]  or I don't know how this experience is going to affect me it's all connected in some way I just can't really see the dots in front of me but I sure as [ __ ] can see them behind me which is crazy that I'm stealing that quote by the way that's actually killer that's what on every day I I'm so glad it resonates and it during so I quit my job in September and then I I had seen this article in like July and I gave I literally emailed the CEO in that moment was like Hey so I gotta talk to you tomorrow I made the decision right then and there and I ended up leaving in September and then I this didn't start until like November December MH and it was during that time those like two three months in between uh I I read this other book that basically has that same

[23:40]  message it's just like you know you know the universe is basically aligning conspiring to make it all work for you and conspiring is the word not conspir and they when I was reading I was like this is you know woooo stuff but then you I started connecting all these dots I'm like wait you know the universe knows the universe is just there it's doing it's doing its thing so I it it gave me I think a lot more a lot of confidence to jump into it and uh because I had had a lot of different experiences that were valuable you know so much of what investors we'll talk to we'll talk about in this like preed seat stages is not so much product Market fit but like founder

[24:28]  market fit and founder product fit and um as I was sort of tapping into a lot of this it became a really clear there there was a lot of alignment um for why this is the work that I wanted to do and needed to do and that then ended up shining through I think in the conversations with investors and with um team members down the road what is your reaction when you have so much conviction you go in and speak with an investor and they're just like n you know Maria I just really don't believe in this I'm sure you guys are going to do great stuff but like this isn't for us what do you kind of do in that moment like to either revalidate yourself or put them on like the hater list what does that look like for you thankfully I had a lot of practice with

[25:16]  that uh I in the previous company we we were it was also an education education technology and we pitched a lot of investors for the series a and uh let's say like a lot of investors especially at that time like didn't this was like 2015 2014 didn't like selling into schools and like selling into education and so we would have these what we thought were great conversations and they be like yeah no thanks um and it was great character building and then that example like the company wasn't my my baby right it wasn't I was chief of staff and was doing a lot of of impactful work there but it wasn't like my baby at the core uh and so I learned

[26:06]  a lot about like what to expect from that from that experience and then in when I started having conversations you know a lot of them are happening on Zoom whereas before everything would happen in person so in a way it's you know it's harder but it's easier it's like harder to connect with someone because you're not seeing them in person and it you know instead of this like small talk where you can break the ice you're basically just like jumping into it um but it's also easier because you can bounce back a lot faster right so it would be okay we have a conversation and there definitely were some patterns that I started to identify early on and I you do you mind sharing those patterns this is really

[26:52]  interesting to me because I want to give as much value for the audience as possible here definitely so because we were talking about youth Mental Health if an investor had a kid in that pre-teen teenage yeah the target audience right they got it because they're like oh yeah my kid is blah blah blah blah blah and like they would just open up really quickly uh and they they understood why we were building what we were building a lot faster um if they didn't it was harder for them to see it unless they were working like mental health space more generally and had a had a good understanding of that of the needs um in general but that was a big so right away you're okay I'm realizing okay we need to start with a little bit

[27:38]  of like a introduction to to see do you will you get the problem do I have to like explain why this matters or will you just get it um so that's one example uh and I think you depending on the the company that you're building and depending on the product You're Building uh trying to identify you know how what's going to get people to connect to your solution because at the end of the day we're all humans right so we're all making emotional Solutions and some or decisions and some way um that went a long way um I would say the other thing that I did and it wasn't even on purpose but I started while remember we were talking about how we were building the product with a very user centered design process I through that process I was also talking to

[28:26]  investors and I was get trying to get their feedback I'm saying like you they're seeing all these companies they're seeing all these business models like hey this is what kind of what I'm thinking about does this resonate does this not like what which companies are you excited about that are doing good work in the space that I should look at and made it a much more like collaborative conversation from that perspective so when we were getting to a point where we wanted to raise money it wasn't a cold introduction like hey wna want to give me some some of your dollars but it was a like you've been giving us feedback and they're like wait I see why this can work um how can I how can I help and like what do you need to make this work so you one one thing I tell entrepreneurs

[29:14]  is like always ask for advice because when you're when investors are putting their head they like advice giving hat on they're looking at reasons why it is going to work and like they're looking at the bright spot and they're looking at like how you can put this together and make it work when you ask them for money they're looking at all the reasons why it's not going to work dude what a subtle way to attack the problem but also the Mind share and the knowledge of these individuals who are exposed to so many different opportunities and Deals very smart wow and then this is something that you intuitively picked up on or this is from your education experience when you guys are trying to go out and raise and be able to kind of get traction as well I think I kind of stumbled up on it honestly um you yeah there was it's a

[30:03]  happy happy happy finding yeah no that makes a lot of sense and this is one of the things I really wanted to emphasize was when I first got into the space of Healthcare in 2014 I saw all of these innovative solutions like patient portals and things that were developed in a vacuum right and I say a vacuum because there was no user engagement and user input actually put into the development of these Solutions then they went out to the marketplace and said hey guys check it out and everybody was like I will never do that and it's interesting to see how when you are user Centric you can develop solutions to problems that people are actually identifying themselves so when you come to the marketplace there's no guessing and I feel like a lot more younger entrepreneurs and older entrepreneurs need to lean into that feedback cycle to avoid some of the pitfalls and the Heartbreak honestly that comes along with thinking that this is my baby I'm G to take it to the marketplace and everybody's like we don't need that and

[30:50]  that doesn't really solve my problem which is something that I think we need to focus on more yeah this Stanford talks a lot about this just like this idea of get out of the building and I I have a strong point of view we talk a lot about you know do we interview versus do we show like I find that people and what people say and what people will do especially in a healthcare like a stigmatized um space can be at conflict and they're like oh yeah I would never I mean but I think I think actually uh online dating is a great example example of this if someone asks you like are you willing to like go on this app and like swipe on people you be like I'm so cool I can just just go to a bar and find find people to talk to now

[31:39]  I don't need that and and the reality is there's a lot of people sitting at home that are like doing the thing but they wouldn't have done it if they they wouldn't have said yes if someone asked them right but I also think about the original days of like when internet dating first popped people like oh my God those people are so weird you're sitting in a basement somewhere you're talking to a troll XYZ and now it's like I don't even know the percentage of people who are finding their actual partner through an online platform it becomes the norm so it's like you almost have to be brave enough to go out into these spaces take a couple arrows to the chest and be willing to say I'm GNA plant my flag here and wait for the entire crowd and population to catch up because naturally when I'm thinking about I've sold into higher education middle schools high schools and things like that did you ever come across the

[32:26]  objection of like well who are these coaches on the other side of the platform because we don't want to just introduce our kids to some strangers what was that kind of objection like how do you overcome that oh for sure we get that question every day and we tell them who they are like they're incredible people many of them are former Educators right a lot of Educators left the classroom during covid and where they're going through a robust training or they have to be ICF certified and we yeah we're very transparent about that that comes up all the time and where where that that goes back to this idea of this is another I think really good lesson that I learned from one of our investors it's like every question is an objection so if you internalize that during any sales

[33:15]  conversation then you redesign your pitch or your the way you answer that question in a different way right so like what's behind that question of who who are the coaches they're really asking like can I trust you is this safe how will I explain this to my families so then you create collateral you create the response based on that uh so oftentimes what's being asked is not it's not the surface level question not like they actually want to know like exactly who they are right it's all these things that are that are being unsaid that are actually the objection and the objective right is to be able to pitch a value proposition your guys' service right and have zero objections that means you guys have to be able to architect the presentation to be able to overcome those questions even before

[34:01]  they pop up that's one of the things that me and my team have really focused on is like that surface level objection right is never really the reason we have to be able to dig underneath that and figure out what it's really about man so what do you think has been the biggest lesson that you've learned about yourself about business about leadership in the years in which you started this being a CEO and a Founder the responsibility and the weight of leadership is intense and it often teaches us a lot about ourselves so what kind of lessons have you learned about Maria have you as you gone through this whole journey with yourself a lot of people ask me this is like how how do you balance I talk about this like mental health and startups are kind of like an oxymoron yeah going back to this 247 365 um and but what I've learned is there's

[34:50]  certain things that I can't compromise on so I need to sleep like I will not give up sleep and that has been I think the biggest lesson about myself that like if I don't get 8 to 10 hours of sleep at night I am a crankier and less effective human overall so it is in my and the company's best interest that I get that sleep um and and for some people it might be like they definitely need to work out that day they need to eat XYZ they need to like have a certain ritual like whatever that might be I think really

[35:39]  understanding like I noticed a big difference in my energy levels and my mood uh when I don't sleep so what might that be for you as as an entrepreneur or as a leader so that you can show up in the best way um have you learned those lessons have you learned those lessons kind of in aough way I have a personal experience of sleep um I had there was this big release of a program you ever heard of a guy named Alex Heros he uh is acquisition. comom him and his wife Lila they have a family office do like 500 million a year like 34 years old so these kids are killing it right they did a release uh Alex did a big book release where he released like all of his like Frameworks for how he creates content and how he builds teams in XYZ and I was so excited right that I like literally got no sleep I like went I popped an Aderall I went

[36:27]  through the entire night got no sleep and then guess what happened the two weeks after that I was absolute dog [ __ ] because I got so excited that I didn't establish my own boundaries and ever since then I've recognized that there's no such thing as overworked there's only underr rested and I'm also in that 8 to 10 hour sleep person and I always used to give myself such a tough time because I was like Keen you can't be sleeping like this is entrepreneurship this is about the grind 247 but it's like dude if I can't show up with not only a plethora of physical energy but also emotional energy to be able to regulate myself I'm never going to be able to show up for my team which truly needs me to support them and pour into them which is a big maturity lesson in my personal entrepreneurship Journey as well that is so big and resonates I love this not overworked but underr rested I'm gonna

[37:15]  use that as well feeling that one it it resonates so much and and it's so simple in a lot of ways right and it affects so much I had the privilege of of um interviewing a guy on the podcast he was a brain surgeon with a PhD in neuroscience and I asked him what is the most important skill set a human being in general can develop and I was expecting him to be like Focus time management XYZ he said emotional regulation because anytime you come across a situation that gets you frazzled emotionally it impacts the way you see the world how you hear things how you perceive people's behavior and you can't make clear decisions in that moment so emotional regulation number one skill set to be able to develop and ever since then I've really kind of focused on how can I show up as the most emotionally regulated because I'm not

[38:02]  saying that I'm hard on myself but I'm definitely aware when I don't have the amount of rest when I'm not properly fueled if that's water or food and I get a little hangry right I'm a little quick sometimes to react to situations in my team and I just want to hold myself to a higher standard of accountability so I can be the person who is you know that sets the tempo in the organization but that's a a role of leadership that I didn't truly understand when I started my journey either yeah so much of what you're you're almost like a mirror for everybody else right and like they'll they'll match your energy and match your mood uh so one thing I started doing it's like okay in this meeting like how do I want to show up right and sometimes you do need to be the like hustle grind like go let's go go go and sometimes um people need more grace and you know we the I would say

[38:52]  like as a leader always thinking about you know because we are in the mental health space we can have more open conversations about went to health and burnout and like what's getting in the way and it's not just like what tool is getting in the way but like what are the things that are blocking you internally what causes you that free state what causes the you to get paralyzed when you're trying to do work and how what are ways that like we can work together to not have that happen anymore right so like you don't like my tone and slock and you're reading into it let's hop on a call and then you know move through it quickly um because we're again we're all humans and we all we all have emotions and we're all sensitive and we all want to do a good work good work so uh how do we not let sort of micro interactions um ruin

[39:44]  that along the way since you've been in this journey for a long time right entrepreneurship we've talked about and leadership in itself really is a mirror right we have to be able to look at ourselves through the way in which we interact with others how they react to us XYZ have you started to focus or have you gotten deep into the path of like personal development in this journey with yourself or have you gotten into that are you not so much interested what's kind of your two cents on personal development I mean I think I always need to be growing and learning myself um and like we're a coaching company so you know I have like three different coaches that I'll talk to yeah and and sometimes that comes from you know investors sometimes growth can come from even like other team members and you know we have like ongoing Performance Cycles where

[40:30]  we're not not talking about like just the work but like what am I doing that is blocking you or what am I doing that's that's not serving you as a as an individual um so I hope that I am like a more evolved person basically if not every day definitely every week yeah I mean I I put a ton of effort into learning to be the best version of Kenan right one of the stories that I often tell myself um and this is really the first time I've actually kind of said this on the podcast is you know I have such a a responsibility to the men and women who came before me my great-grandfather was a Sher copper in Arkansas my grandfather was born in the 1930s as a black man discriminated against for the color of his skin fought for everything just to give his children an opportunity to be represented equally my father was the

[41:17]  first entrepreneur in my family who did things that were so outside the scope of what everybody else did that it gave me the opportunity to do this with you here today my responsibility is to continue to become the version of Kenan who those men and women can be proud of but also when I look into the future and think about the generations hopefully that will come after me then they're going to be proud of me too and they have a foundation to be building on but one thing I've also recognized is I've gotten a lot of flak for the personal development trajectory of my life right I've outgrown a lot of friends I can't continue to be the 30-year-old the 34 year-old who goes out to the club on a Thursday and drinks with everybody else and I get a lot of flack for that I didn't go to Stanford so have you found yourself outgrowing your peers although you came from such a prestigious institution or like what is

[42:03]  that personal development trajectory looked like for you and what's the impact on your personal circle of friends that is such a good question um I have like that resonates a lot and yes I I like I do not basically talk to I maybe have like two or three people that I talk to from high school um because yeah it's just like we don't really see we're not living really living in the same the same life or like the same circles um so that resonates a lot for sure there's a lot that I do for myself to like create those boundaries and yeah because you're right like I don't I can't go to a club on a Thursday and like I need to go to bed at

[42:52]  a certain time in order to get that those eight to 10 hours and I've been a lot more intentional I would say in like the friendships that I nurture as a result of that and at the same time I'm like I am also someone who wants to have and like has a great group of friends and like a very supportive group of friends um but now like the way that we we Bond might be more about this you know talking about these hard things that we're dealing with at work uh as opposed to you know gossiping about who knows what else so it just like the conversation changes and I would say in general have you know it if I think about like who's giving me who's giv me FL it's like my family

[43:40]  thinks like I work a lot and and has definitely I think it's been hard to for them to see how much I have to work to make this work but at the same time they're they're very supportive and they're trying to understand like I know that they're trying to take care of me right so they're they're like make sure you're sleepy make sure you're doing this make sure you get some rest and I'm like yeah yeah like I I I'm prioritizing it don't worry um but when they're like make sure you like go all the friends I'm like I'm like right now it's not the time right I'm like I'm in Focus mode and that's okay and like yes I will find balance at another time and just helping them you know I'll go into my cave and then helping them see that like I'll

[44:27]  balance it out eventually do you ever have trouble focusing when it comes to doing like deep work in any of your tasks you ever find yourself distracted by the notifications the emails the YouTube the Instagram the Tik Tok all that kind of stuff I would say that my superow one of my superpowers is my ability to just like dive into something and be and be able to focus on it um but I only do that after hours so you know once the team essentially like my day structure so that I'm like in meetings throughout the whole day talking to customers doing going in and out and then probably after like you know if I'm on the west coast it's like 2 to three Pacific um it starts to get quieter because we have a

[45:14]  lot of people on the East Coast that's when I can do more like deep down work Deep dive work and same thing or like if there's big big projects I'll leave that for a weekend to just be able to dive in um it's not so much that like I I I'll get distracted in that I I want to be able to unblock the the person from the question that they have right now because it's like oh shiny object yeah um and but yeah like I like I I I can't really listen to music while I'm working uh I'm very just you're a psychopath just like me I sit in my office all day quiet my my business partner and younger sister like comes over to work in the office sometimes and she'll be like why are we not playing music and I'm like do we need music to focus you know but the reason why I bring that question up

[46:01]  about focus is I'm reading a book right now um called Deep work by Cal Newport and in this book he talks about the skill set and the greatest ideas and Innovations have come from those who have been able to block out the distractions of the world right and actually focus on a task and then as we go through the process of reading the book you start learning about like all of the super villains of distraction and taking our time away from us that have been engineered by these billion dooll companies incredibly smart individuals and behavioral scientists who are willing to develop these tools to keep us coming back for more and I often think about one of the biggest obstacles to us accomplishing our dreams is the distractions that we deal with every day average 18-year-old today spends about nine hours an hour or nine hours a day on screen time that's on their personal

[46:48]  cell phone over the time of their lifetime that's 24 years of their life that they'll be taken away from them I know think about it by just scrolling right the average American adult today is not far behind by spending about eight and a half hours per day on screen time so when you think about those numbers over the rest of their lifetime we're talking about years and years and often Decades of time that you don't have control over so when you want to accomplish great things like impacting the next generation's mental health or innovating in the healthc care space like I do you need to be a protector of your most valuable resource it's not your money it's your time and your focus which is something that I think we need to have a conversation about more because the way which we're going does not seem like it's a result for creating amazing things that have huge impact we hear a lot that a lot from students too where they're looking for ways to focus

[47:36]  and to be less distracted and to be able to sit and I was actually talking to some people from Common Sense Media uh earlier this week around the different how TV shows for kids are made now and when how the when you look at like Coco melon it's in every scene there's something moving so you're just like constantly being bombarded with action and movement and you know little dopamine hits in your brain uh and they they've did some studies where they showed like today's Children's shows compared to you know 90s or like you know Blu clu or like telletubbies or something and when they when they turn them off the Stu the kids

[48:25]  who are watching today's shows are like addicted they're like they want more they're like you know throwing Tantrums because they want to watch more TV and when they turn the90s shows off they're like okay like we can go outside and play so it's like the level of addiction is so different uh and and that sets the stage for everything else on you know as they're growing as as their brains are developing right so if you think that yes like Tik Tok you're seeing all these things moving you're like scrolling you have endless content at your fingertips that has to have an effect on how your brain is developing and that impacts your ability I mean you know you can't watch like a five minute video anymore I'm like it's either 30 seconds or we're

[49:13]  not watching it and that's a loss I mean it's a huge loss I mean your ability to focus and at least sit somewhere right I always got in trouble because I was a Daydreamer when I was a kid this is before the prevalence of like ADHD and everything I'd always get in trouble because I'd be like looking out the window thinking about like what I was going to do after school um I had a an amazing individual um on the podcast uh Dr Robert and he was the former head of the Massachusetts behavioral applied behavioral analysis um board and we were talking about this upcoming generation of diagnosis with ADHD and everything else that comes along with that right and he was like it's interesting to think about how we have an entire generation who's being diagnosed with attention deficit disorder yet when you take them into an environment like

[50:00]  nature often so many of those kiddos who can't sit still in a classroom right will be so enveloped and just invoked in the process of being outside that they don't have any attention issues they have an engagement issue and he said if you look at the things in which they're exposed to at a young age all the hyperpigmented and dialed in blues and reds and greens that get our brain to release that dopamine plus Coco melon and every everything else that comes with all the movement no wonder nobody can sit still these days and so it makes me kind of think about from like I'm going to take put like my tin hat on is this just like a systematic ability to keep all of our younger generations and our society in general consistently consuming and looking for the next thing rather than being able to sit with themselves with peace and actually be able to think about ideas that can

[50:46]  change the world you know maybe that's a little bit too crazy for this episode but you know there's something to think about yeah I mean I think more about what like business models and like what are companies being prized for and measured on and we were talking about dualingo and like dualingo is doing great work and you know my sister's fiance is probably like two years into learning Spanish no probably more maybe probably three years learn into learning Spanish and has his he's gonna be mad I called him out um has his his streak but his Spanish like he's had to find other ways to learn Spanish

[51:33]  because the gamification and the levels aren't enough right yeah so how are we differentiating between this like snack type of Engagement or um yeah like a call it engagement versus like a meal right like what's truly nutritious versus like what's just a snack and what and then there's all kinds of snacks like you can have an apple for a snack but you could also have like you know flaming Doritos uh and and what does that mean for how you're actually nourishing your brain one of the things that I think about is the ability to critically think about the things that we're exposed to is going to become a superpower of the

[52:20]  future you know in this book again as you were kind of talking there there was a small passage that said you know we came from a society before the internet where everybody was skeptical about a solution that was put in front of us like it was going to be the end all Beall Silver Bullet to solve this problem then the internet dropped and we also found ourselves that the companies that were being started were being started by 20s somethings who we had no idea what they were doing but they came to the marketplace with a solution and because it came from the internet it was looked at as being the truth or being the all saving solution for this problem and we've lost the ability to critically think about the solutions that we engag with and think about how they're impacting us on a daily basis so yes dual lingo great opportunity for people to learn languages a thousand day streak of how I've engaged and gone through my little programs awesome but if you go to

[53:08]  Mexico or Columbia or somewhere else and you can't have a conversation in the language although you got your 2600 Day Street going on then we need to re-evaluate the tools that we're using which is really interesting to think about and how can dualingo get measured not on just on those as a company not on the streaks but on are people actually learning man change incentives change the outcome yeah yeah exactly like if they're if all they're reporting is their monthly active users or the daily active users like that's what investors care about but what if we were what they were to report on people who actually I mean then questions about like how do you measure that blah blah blah there's lots to figure out there but it I think so much of our the problems that we're seeing on social media in the General

[53:59]  Media right is we're incentivized to polarize content and to create these like clickbait news and to post things that are going to get a reaction out of people because that's what is monetized and there's a lot of issues with that I mean uh in 2021 maybe 2020 there was a documentary that came out on Netflix called The Social dilemma and it talked about right the power of social media is not connecting the world but changing your behavior in such small ways that you don't even notice it I was having a conversation with a younger entrepreneur kid's like 21 22 years old and he was talking about his scheme of how him and his friends are creating all of these skit based content pieces for Tik Tok and they're using the virality of those

[54:46]  pieces of content to be able to drive people to the Tik Tok shop so they can get an affiliate purchase on the energy supplement that they put on the Tik Tok shop and I was like think about what you just said you're spending your time creating false content to get other people to engage with the skit that you produce to be able to drive them towards this if you think about how these platforms have been created you are the product because you're trying to take everybody else's attention just how they're trying to take yours and the people who are actually benefiting are the people who own the platform it's like we need to take a little bit of a different perspective and zoom out and think about where we're spending our time because continuously investing into the perpetuating system of fake content is only going to get worse in the coming years and an interesting time that's why I believe in the podcast so much because we can have real conversations that aren't just about a snippet in time you know yeah I think the content

[55:35]  creation piece is going to change a lot I mean you're already seeing how AI can create all this content at the you know click of a button that we're going to see a lot of content that's low quality uh how do you and how do we help people differentiate and prioritize content accordingly um we love that there's some things that are more accessible right and like you are now going to be able to put any language captions on this podcast like that's wonderful that's great that's a great use of our technology uh but how do we not lose the humanity along the way and that's I think a great place for us to kind of put the wheels down and leave on that question you know one of the traditions

[56:23]  we have here Maria on the podcast is our previous guest wants to ask you a blind question so this is going to be an interesting one when you find yourself in challenging times and you might not have 100% belief in yourself and those feelings of impostor syndrome creep in how do you correct that conversation with yourself and what are your coping mechanisms to deal with those feelings of doubt we actually just did this with our team uh earlier this week in at all hands uh we what we're putting together I don't know what to call it yet I'm open to suggestions but it's essentially like a folder of validation that like we we first went through an exercise of explaining like what's your why why do you do this work and then it's like what

[57:12]  are proof points that you're doing the things that you want to do and that you're accomplishing we're moving towards that why uh and then getting into a habit of oh like when you see something thing putting it into that folder so that when you feel down you're able to basically pick one from from that we call we we're talking about putting into a jar so like pick one from the jar and have that be like okay yes like I am doing this work like have that have that be sort of the shift in narrative and and get back into it so one of the things that I do if we're ever know if there's questions in like after an investor conversation for for

[58:00]  example that doesn't go so well I'm like I go into our feedback Channel and I read what kids have to say and I'm like you know what literally impacting the lives of hundreds of kids today like it's okay and that helps me can get reentered into why I'm doing this and also like again connects me to that user um who's like the whole reason we're building this in the first place Maria it's easy to understand um why you are the definition of heart and hustle I really appreciate you for coming on the show and sharing your story and diving into so many of these amazing topics seriously thank you so much for joining us really appreciate it thanks for having me this has been really fun and that's a wrap guys catch you in the next one