The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Sonny Thadani, CEO of Robin, Empowering Educators, Students and Families Well-being, Personal Growth and Potential

Episode Date: April 16, 2023

Sonny Thadani, CEO of Robin, Empowering Educators, Students and Families Well-being, Personal Growth and Potential My-Robin.com

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where there is a giant seminal knowledge that we bring to our listeners and make them smarter, wiser, and also better looking. Because, you know, we all know that if you're smarter, wiser, and better looking, you're more sexier. At least that's how it works for me and the babes. I don't know. That's true, folks. Anyway, as always, for further show to your family, friends, and relatives, go to goodreads.com, FortressCruzFast. Go to youtube.com, FortressCruzFast.

And the big LinkedIn group, 130,000 people over there, and the LinkedIn newsletter. That thing is killing it. Every time I go in there and post something every day, it just keeps growing like weeds. And of course, they made it accessible to the public. So you don't even have to follow me on LinkedIn. So that is as well. We have an amazing gentleman, entrepreneur on the show. We've been going through some different issues.

People are always trying to figure out how do we fix these school shootings, these school problems that we're having. Just yesterday, we had five people killed in Louisville, Kentucky with a bank shooting there and someone who clearly decided to do something very inhumane. And so a lot of people are trying to figure out how to square this Rubik's Cube and how to solve these issues. And we're going to talk to a CEO today who deals with some of this and is trying to come up with a solution to these problems. Today we have on the show Sonny Thadani. He is the CEO of Robin.

And he is a gentleman who is trying to fix this issue. About seven years ago, he met a father who lost his son in the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. He introduced him to the Sandy Hook Promise, an organization dedicated to preventing gun violence in schools by teaching young people to recognize, intervene, and get help for individuals who may be socially isolated or at risk of hurting themselves or others. He was inspired, and I'm inspired by his mission as well, which was all about creating a cultural change that destigmatizes talking about mental health.

Welcome to the show, Sonny. How are you? I'm well, Chris. Thank you so much for having me. There you go. Thank you for coming on. Give us a.com for Robin, your company. Yep. It's my-robin.com. There you go. And so it sounds like your company has been created to try and resolve some of these issues. Tell us a little bit about your origin story and what got you here in trying to square this issue. Yeah, I appreciate that. And so many things got me here.

Family, friends, born of immigrants, came to this country and landed in New Jersey, spent my high school career there, then college up in Syracuse. And really over the past 10, 12 years, a couple of life moments put me in the position today. In 2010, alongside some of my best friends, we started a professional services company called Accordion. We had a lot of fun. We were sort of addressing the problem in the post-financial crisis of a mission-based finance company, tagline, A Better Way to Work in Finance, where we took a bunch of our colleagues, friends that were in the investment banking and private equity world that were sick of working 100-hour work weeks, but were smart and wanted to put their knowledge to work. And

they came to work for us. We grew a company over the last 10, 12 years. But during that time, Chris, a couple of things happened in my personal life that led me to this seat. One, I had some close family and friends go through a mental health crisis and I saw it firsthand. And at that point in my mid-30s, frankly, I didn't understand it. Maybe I didn't want to or maybe I just didn't understand it. So I started learning more about it and how real and scary a mental health crisis can be. The second you alluded to this, I met Mark Barton, the co-founder and co-CEO of Sandy Oak Promise. And we were at an event and he told me the story about what happened that day. And I think we all know the story and of the story, but when you hear it from a father and you start having, it was two years after I had my first

daughter, it just, it sounded different and it felt different. And I asked Mark, what can I do? How can I help? And he started sharing some stories on how I can help. I became a promise leader. I went through the training. I learned more. And what I learned is underneath the headlines

of gun prevention and gun violence, which was extremely important to this organization, was about mental health programs for kids, was about knowing the signs. We talked a little bit about that earlier, that a lot of these young men and women, there are signs that led them to this point. And if we knew about them, we could potentially stop them. And that organization has done an incredible job of stopping some school shootings around this country. And third organization has done an incredible job of stopping some school shootings around this country. And third, a couple of years ago, a friend and mentor of mine said, Sonny, I think you need a coach. I said, what's a coach? A life coach? And at that time, I didn't

really understand, but I gave it a shot. And I started working with this coach, both professionally and personally. And as cheesy as it sounds, it changed the direction of my life. I learned about my goals and values. I'll remember, I'll never forget this question. He said, Sonny, tell me some of your goals and how are you thinking about your life? And he said, well, all my goals, it's a hundred million in revenue and 25 employees. And I listed all my professional goals, right. And he said, no, what are your goals? And I couldn't answer the question. I didn't know how to answer what are my goals. And, you know, besides happy and healthy kids, which, again, hopefully is table stakes for a lot of people that are lucky enough to say that. But as I thought about it, I said, wow, what are my goals? What are my true values? And I started thinking about that. And as I worked with this coach, I said, wait a minute, I'm learning about better decision making. I'm learning about what is grit, what was in high school, and I didn't make any varsity sports, and every girl said no to the it. But how come we're not teaching some of these life skills that are preventative?

And that was sort of the origination of Robin and why we're here now two plus years later. There you go. You know, people need to do that. I mean, there certainly could have been more mental health schooling for me in high school because i suffer enough mental health damage from trying to force uh algebra 2 down my brain which i'll never use since but it is a great thing for mathematicians and people that are scientists i suppose but not for me um but yeah mental health i mean you go through so much of a struggle as a as a as a teenager through junior high and high school and stuff like that i mean there probably should be mean, there probably should be a lot of mental health going on at that point because it shapes you in so many different ways. So give us an overview, a 30,000-foot view of what Robin does. Yeah, Robin goes into schools and really first understands

what the challenges that are facing that community. And by community, I mean, not just the students, but the teachers, the staff, the administration, and the parents. Because what we learned early on, in order to make true change and sustainable change, we have to support the adults in our kids' lives as well. So Robin brings a coaching platform to school communities where real life people, right, not just software, go into schools virtually and in person to talk about these lessons and reinforce these life skills through stories they tell. They don't go in and say, hey, to learn resiliency, you have to do A, B, and C. We share a story how a coach was

resilient, how a coach was made self-aware, and what they went through to become the person they are today. And I think what that does for students, and we live in a very different generation. I grew up in the 80s and 90s where, of course, we had our problems and challenges, but very different than my kids are growing up certainly today and this generation is growing up. The second, we have an online digital curriculum that reinforces the messages that our coaches talk about. Because when a coach goes in, and I'm a big Tony Robbins fan, I'm inspired by him, I've listened to him a bunch. But even a guy I listen to him all the time, 24, 48 hours later,

I sometimes forget what he was talking about. I took my notes, and in that moment, high energy, excitement, I want to learn. But unless you're building these habits every day, every week, every month, you're not really going to learn. So our software curriculum reinforces these messages every day. Maybe it's two to three minutes a day, five to 10 minutes a week, sort of these micro steps that are too small to fail, start building these habits with students, with teachers and parents. And the Robin program is designed to build more connection. Right. Connection.

If you look at sort of the child psychiatrists out there, they talk about connection is directly correlated to positive mental health outcomes. And if we see what's happening, as you alluded to in some of these shootings or other mental health and mental anxiety and depression and some of these challenges that kids face, at the root of it, a large part of it is connection, their ability to be in a safe space and communicate. And I think, you know, people say this time is different, this time is different. I do believe that the generation that is destigmatizing mental health, the generation that is leading this change

is going to make a change. And that's why companies like ours exist because the students out there are asking for it. There you go. And you know, it's something we need to identify. I mean, we always hear about how a lot of these school shooters are loners. We talked in the green room prior about how we just had an author wrote a book on the maladies, a behavioral scientist who wrote about the maladies of Hitler. You know, Hitler was a loner, had problems socially adjusting to people. We need to somehow bring these people into the fold that are struggling from society, from either childhood trauma or other things like that. You do this live group coaching and it appears to me, I'm just going off the website, that it looks like a very sort of group environment as opposed to someone just oratory or rotating at the front of a group. Is that correct?

And give us some insight to how it applies. Yeah, all by design. A lot of the coaching we do currently is all in groups. We don't do one-on-one coaching. It's not clinical. Yes, we do have coaches that have medical degrees, but we're doing tier one and tier two. So everybody in the building can learn these preventative and proactive skill sets. And the way to do it that we've seen real change and real change in a few short months is by getting a group of students together that are going through a challenge, a group of educators together that are going through a challenge. So I'll tell you a recent example. We had a school in upstate New York that had a group of transportation

team, the bus drivers. They were going through some key challenges. And as the superintendent of that school and leadership was talking to me, it dawned on me that the bus drivers are the first person to see the students and the last person to see the students. Right. I just it just it just clicked at that moment that if they're not getting the support they need, they're the first interaction. And if you think about a typical day of a bus driver, which I didn't think about until the last two years, they have the challenge with the students, they have challenge with parents, administrations, unions, etc. And if we're not supporting a cohort like a transportation team and giving them the support they need, how are we ever going to impact and affect change at the student body level? So we got this group together, I think there was about 16 to 18. And we started working with them on some challenges they were facing with their community. And part of it was honestly building some resiliency, leadership skills, and giving them a forum together to talk about some of their challenges, which they might not have gotten in their union or maybe in their school. And what the Robin ecosystem has allowed schools to do

is we're not the best to identify who's going through a challenge at your school. The school is the best to identify that. But as we think about our expertise in bringing a coach that has this coach that was in this particular school training with the transportation team, he's a former school counselor. He happened to be a father of four boys. So he's got his own experience in that way, but he's a master resiliency officer in Fort Hood, Texas. He teaches our soldiers how to build resiliency.

And now he goes into schools and to school ecosystems to talk about how people, adults and kids can start building these skillsets every day. And that's why we found so effective about our program is to get people together in a group talking about this. This is what I thought was interesting. Not only do you have group coaching and these applications for students, but also for educators and staff. My mother was a school teacher for 20 plus years. She didn't deal with any of this stuff they're dealing with today.

She was kind of, she kind of retired about the time that, you know, the school shootings really started accelerating. But, you know, just the stresses, you know, I would have phone conversations with her and just the stresses of what she was dealing with then as an educator, you know, she was starting to see you know the parents really becoming activists and sometimes almost uh almost troublesome in in expecting you know them to raise their children uh and and uh of course the participation generation of parents going my child could do no wrong it must be the teacher's fault uh you know that he's not getting good grades and and that sort of thing. And it wore on her and was

tough on her. And I can't imagine being an educator today dealing with the pressures of what you do. I just showed her yesterday, actually, it was a video of a TikTok teacher who actually broadcasts a lot of stuff on TikTok. And he showed this bucket that they have. It's a five-gallon bucket that you can, it not only has a ridge line that you can poop in if you're in a lockdown emergency, or you can utilize, but he also showed how he has body bags in his packet. This bucket has basically a survival kit for a school shooting or a lockdown of extended period of time. And one of the aspects of it was body bags and just the sheer shock of seeing the video, uh, and showing it to my mom and seeing her shock and awe of it,

that a teacher has to, you know, not only deal with being the inspiring teacher who tries to get people learn and the love that they have for the job, which usually brings them to that work, having to have body bags. I mean, you know, he made the comment. He's like, how many other companies or how many other people have to go to work and have to pack body bags into their briefcase? You know, it's something we really don't think about.

But it looks like you guys help educators and staff, you know, with the mental challenges as well, burnout, mindset, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. And frankly, it was, as we set out as a young company, a couple of years ago, we wanted certainly impact change. And we knew as a young company, we can only do so much. So we were at the New York state school counselors conference, a booth and talking to school counselors and a school counselor came up and said, I love this concept, but can we do coaching for us? And I said, what do you mean? We do, you know, for your class, your students. And she said, Sonny, you know, as a group of school counselors and educators, we're going through a lot on the

mental health side, all the new things they have to learn and deal with, you know, from parents and kids and unions to school shooting drills and God forbid, whatever else they might face day to day that we don't know happens inside of a classroom. And that light bulb went off and said, wait a minute, who's servicing the educator, right? Who's nurturing the nurturer? Who are supporting our teachers out there? I happen to be, Chris, very lucky. I was in a company that grew and we had access to funding and coaches. I had an executive coach. I had a speaking coach.

I had a board coach. I had all these things. Athletes. One of our coaches, George Mumford, famously known for being Phil Jackson, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant's mindfulness guru. And I met him a couple of years ago and lured him over to the Robin ecosystem. And he was telling me about the work that he did with these athletes. And there are some fun stories if you're a sports fan.

But what he taught me and what I took away is the Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant's of the world. The reason they were that amazing is not only the work they did inside the gym, but it's the work they did outside over here on their mind. Michael Jordan never worked so hard on mindfulness and his emotions and how to regulate outside of the gym. People don't see that, right? It's not as exciting or maybe as sexy. And you think to yourself, and I think COVID, at least for me, put a sort of magnifying glass on frontline workers on the healthcare system and in education. I saw my daughter, now a second grader, on Zoom, right, trying to learn. And this teacher, this incredible, incredible teacher trying to teach a group of five and six year old

over Zoom during the pandemic. And hats off to Ms. Coates because she was masterful on keeping kids engaged. And I'm thinking to myself, why aren't we giving our teachers the support that they need? Now, I'm not here lobbying for more pay or more X or more Y. I'm saying to you, even though I do think some of those things at times, but I'm saying to myself, why can't we provide coaching and support? And not just, hey, someone to talk to, because that's certainly everybody needs, but for educators and administrators to be more proactive, to understand what they're going through and to help them through these situations to make sure they're the best they can be because they're the ones teaching our students in our

future they should be sort of first in my mind again all these services to be quite frank and that's more for what we do right we're educator first and i think it's so critical to get this out there i can see something on the website that says something about four families as well. Do you have a curriculum for them? Yeah, we started coaching, again, learning through the customer, right? So we started working with students. We started working with educators. And we do a lot of work in New York City.

That's my home. And we do a lot of works uptown in the Bronx. And I started talking to a parent coordinator at a school and we started talking about some of the challenges she was facing. And she said, wouldn't it be great? There's a couple of families that they would love to be aligned in terms of what we're doing. And they don't know how to support their kids. Right. I think we all I'm a parent of three young ones. I don't know how to parent. Right. I'm still learning every day, quite frankly. Hopefully I'm doing an OK job. But again but again that that opportunity said wait a minute of course caregivers parents grandparents aunts uncles how are we not supporting them so we started a family

coaching program that now schools are opting to have and to invest in because again once they go home nine to three or eight thirty to two thirty they're in the four walls of the school. But after that, they're at home at some point learning, understanding in an environment, how do we support those caregivers and parents as well? So I think, again, that school community is really critical to, again, making long-lasting, sustainable impact in communities. So it sounds like you're incorporating everybody. You're incorporating the student, you're incorporating the teacher, the administrations, the families, and everyone focusing on this stuff with mental health. I've always had issues with the schooling that I got, and I don't know that it got any better, but so much of it was trying to ram things through my brain that

there were, I can, I can say in hindsight, there were better things that I should have been learning, uh, mental health, uh, you know, how to deal with finances, balancing a checkbook, credit, uh, credit, you know, the importance of your credit report and how it's going to do your life, how to maybe, you know, why, you know, what does the mortgage do mortgage do how does it how does it work for you uh i i i you know i i'm i don't have any children but i've often joked that what there should be is if you're going to have kids you got to go through two years of college on how to be a good parent how to have a good relationships with your thing maybe heal some of your trauma and issues that you're going to drag into a marriage marriage and pass on to your

children, you know, how to, how to, you know, the whole commitment, even like the finances of being, you know, married and children or being in couples with children and, you know, all these different sort of real life skills, you know, that you're going to use. Cause I gotta be honest with you. I, you know, I'll tell people the only, the only one class that made all the difference in all my life, and it did because I became an entrepreneur and had to type invoices, was typing class. It was the most important class I learned from, and it really shouldn't have been. And I'm still waiting for that leather, wood, and metal shop to kick in as some sort of thing I'm going to use in life. But I don't know, maybe there were some survival skills there of not getting your fingers chopped off that I learned from the grinder.

So it sounds like you guys got a great colloquium into this. One aspect that I thought was kind of interesting that I found on your website was you talk about regulating emotions and building mental flexibility. That seems like something a lot of these people who end up acting out in violence or having issues maybe maybe throughout life that maybe they don't shoot up a school maybe but maybe they have issues with life and their contributions life talk to us a little bit about that and the importance of it yeah i think you know you take examples and um you know i have three little ones uh eight four and almost two and I see temper tantrums all the time with all of them.

That's me on Fridays. Even for us, right? In the moment, that's why they say don't ever make a big decision when you're mad. Don't write an email to your staff or your boss when you're really upset. I think that same concept can be taken to our kids today, right? There is going to be different degrees of disappointment maybe it's a bad grade or it didn't do well in your sats maybe it's something much more significant in terms of your family home in terms of death or divorce and our ability as kids

to say how do we deal with grief and trauma and challenges there's's not a playbook. I don't remember getting a playbook in school and health class, words and B's and gym and volleyball to say, if you get in an argument or a fight, here's what you should do. And there are practical things that students can learn. And, you know, what better place to learn than the school? You use the word life skills, coping mechanisms. These are the skills that we need to teach, because we don't know what's going to happen in our kids' lives, or even in our adult lives. I do know that challenges in different forms and facets will come up. Our ability to say,

let me take a deep breath, let me take a step back. Let me write down what's really bothering me. I try this with my kids. That's a very difficult one. But what is it that bothered me when I got an F? Is it that I didn't put the work in, the teacher misgraded it, that I didn't understand Hamlet? I had an issue senior year with that. What is the real challenge that you face? And if you can go through it, that doesn't mean don't be mad or don't show emotion. I actually think that's quite healthy, but it means like it can't live with you forever. This generation, again, I'll just use cousins and family members and people that I see. And yes, social media is

a big part of it because it's just information at your hand, right? You didn't get invited to a party. Oh, well, I went home and you don't see what happened at that party. Nowadays you do, right? You see what you're missing out on. You see what the world around you is doing. And there's, whether it's fear, it's disappointment, it's FOMO, it's a combination of things.

Now, more than ever, we have to best understand how to deal with disappointment or failure. You know, that word comes out, entrepreneurs on this show, you got to learn how to fail, you got to learn to fail. Agreed, but I think you got to learn at an earlier age when things don't go your way, how to respond, right? Every kid's not going to get up and brush off the dust and go to bat again. Maybe there's a kid or two that can do that, but can we teach our kids the importance of that at an early age and they carry that skill set and apply it later in life?

Yeah. I probably could use more mental health training than trigonometry in high school because, you know, the other thing too is it seems like a lot of these folks that go off the edge on the deep end, and there's a spectrum of these people. Like I said, we need to address, you know, people that just have challenges in life. Maybe they don't act out, but maybe they don't fully develop to the potential they could be. You know, bullying in school.

A lot of these people that shoot up schools, they were bullied. You know, I think everyone kind of gets bullied in school a lot of these people that shoot up schools they were bullied they you know i think everyone kind of gets bullied in school it's a it's a horrific hazing sort of experience you know growing up in teenage them and even on the elementary school you know children and kids are mean to each other man i mean uh and so bullying seems to be one thing that sets people off and people struggle with and hurts probably mental health and development. And so this is probably good to focus on mental health, you know, in being able to deal with things that are happening in the school as you're going through, you know, girls and boys going through puberty, you know, dating and, you know, feelings and hormones and, you know and all those things you go through as a teenager that are a real struggle because you don't really have a life history or a pattern to look back on. And you're struggling with the development of your ego and yourself and everything else. I mean, I remember my 11- 11 year old pseudo stepson that i helped raise for a little while i remember he was going through his teens he would say stuff that

would come out of his mouth and we'd look at him like do we need to beat the crap out of you i mean i'm being facetious but um you know we'd look at him like uh time to die or well we're probably going to ground you and uh he would have the look on his face like did that come out of my mouth and but but it was him stumbling to try and find his ego and his balance and you know the whole thing they do so i think this is really important for aspects of that too as well yeah absolutely and you you hit the nail on the head that you know we work with schools and and across the u.s and know, red and blue and different income threshold communities. And yes, the student in the Bronx versus, you know, Austin, Texas versus Seattle,

all are facing different challenges in their community, but ninth graders all over this country, eighth to ninth grade, they're experiencing change and transition together. Seventh graders, right? You talked about a tough, tough year. You talk to any educator. to ninth grade, they're experiencing change and transition together. Seventh graders, right? You talked about a tough, tough year. You talk to any educator. I think seventh grade is probably the toughest year that anybody has faced. I don't remember. Maybe I'm blanking out that year. I was talking to my mom. I said, I remember sixth grade and eighth grade. What happened in seventh grade, right? I think it was sex education classes. I remember something happened that it really,

I'm blanking on it but we're seeing that with schools when they talk about some of the challenges seventh grade right how can we help our students what's happening puberty and hormones and change and feelings and emotion yeah you start getting interested in girls or boys isn't that a good time to start talking about this right and what's happening. And you mentioned bullying and we do a lot of work with cyber bullying these days. And it just dawned on me and I was lucky enough. I got bullied a couple of times here and there.

Nothing serious. And then a couple of years ago when I was working with Rob and I got introduced to somebody, a former NHL hockey player, played for Winnipeg, I believe. And I was introduced to him by another company. And he tells a story about him, he is the bully. And it's a fascinating story that I really listened to and wanted to understand. And I had a phone call with him. And he shared the story of him in, I think it was eighth grade to ninth grade, where

he was being bullied by, he was being laughed at, excuse me, by a lot of kids because he was dyslexic. He didn't know that at the time, but he couldn't read. And, you know, I guess the stereotype of jock and all these things came out. And what he shared with me and what he shares in his own organization is that he was the bully because he didn't know what else to do. And he was getting made fun of by a group of students and whoever else because he couldn't do the test. He couldn't fill out the quiz. He didn't participate in that way. And his only way to lash out, he was the big hockey player.

So he lashed out at everybody. And at that point, Chris, I had so much empathy for the bully, right, that I didn't fully understand. So what I think we need to understand is why? Why is this person bullying? What's going on at home? What's going on? Did he or she just come out of a test? And I'm not condoning any behavior, nothing of the sort, but I'm saying as a community, it's important to create these safe spaces to have conversation and not be afraid to have tough conversations and if you need to bring the social worker the principal the mom the dad the caregiver that's okay every community can do it in the way that community

decides to do it but i think it's important to do it and to recognize what's happening on all sides of that ecosystem definitely definitely you know i mean kids go through all sorts of things, and then they act out. I remember we were fairly good kids in high school, and we started getting bullied by a set of twins that had some very abusive, probably an alcoholic father, from what we understood. But they became very abusive to us and somehow took a special shine to bullying us. And I remember, I mean, pretty much any time we were between classes, they were going to hunt us down. And it was like being hunted, really, in real life.

And we knew they were going to throw a punch or they're going to push us into a locker. They were going to, you know, slam an elbow into us or whatever the case was. I mean, and you start living in sort of this reactionary thing. And I remember one day me and my friend, we were just sick of it. And I don't know why. We had a bag full of school milks. And for some reason, we decided to just blast them into the wall in the hallway and throw them up against the wall. And, of course, the milk is causing a huge mess and everything else.

And we got caught doing it and we were, and we were acting out. We were acting out because we just, we were just losing it because we, we weren't handling it well and there really was no way to handle it. And, and, uh, I don't know, we, we just hadn't gone to the principal or whatever about it for whatever reason. So we, I remember sitting in the principal's office or the vice principal's office and, you know, we were getting our reaming and, you know, we started talking about how, you know, we, uh, it kind of became apparent to us.

And I think the vice president that we were acting out, you know, these good kids that suddenly, you know, decided to do some vandalism. And, uh, uh, and so we talked about it and we talked about these kids and then he addressed it and he went and talked to those kids. And, um, you know, and, and now looking back, I can see that we were acting out thankfully in a non, uh, violent way. And it was a little bit of, you know, it was a bit of some milk on a wall that we had to clean up. He made us clean it up, which was good. But, you know, I think a lot of these kids, you know, now they see, you know, they want to take a gun and act out or do something more violent. And I think it's important that we try and balance these kids out and say, hey, man, what's going on in your life? What's going on? Let's talk about this. And so that people can, you know, not feel isolated,

not feel bullied and stuff. And I think it can make all the difference in the world. We certainly could have used it in our school. Yeah. I think back of the kids that might have been bullied or shared a lunch table alone or the new kid that transferred into school, like that sophomore year doesn't have his or her friends.

I mean, one of Sandy Hook's programs that just taught me so much, it's called saying hello. Saying hello. Say hello to the person sitting at the cafeteria table by themselves. Say hello to somebody who could use, you know, a hello at that point.

It's these simple solutions we're teaching, we can teach our kids to help reach out and connect. Like look at the numbers, you started talking about loneliness and we see the sort of the loneliness epidemic happening. We see suicide rates in this country, just unbelievable. I mean, if I told anybody anywhere that this is what's happening to our

students, wouldn't everybody drop what they're doing to help address this topic? And these are our kids taking their own life. And these aren't just college kids or adults. I mean, we're hearing about this. It happened in New York City. It happened in everywhere. These are now middle school kids taking their life. I can't even fathom a 10, 11, 12, 13-year-old thinking about that and actually doing and following up on that. So we really have to think about what's important here. What are we trying to do? Because, yes, it happens.

You hear it on the news. You hear the shooting over here or this state or this city. And the immediate response or feelings, thank God it wasn't my school thank god it wasn't my community yeah but it could be any community anywhere yeah we've seen it it's it's pretty rampant and in fact these these shootings are murder suicides usually or the intent is murder suicide a lot of the kids plan on offering themselves if they don't uh you know in the thing it's it's a it's a way of taking people with you i guess yeah you know i i won't pretend to know the psyche or fully understand i do know um and other organizations have been doing this for decades

and there's some wonderful wonderful programs out there that things can be done to stop these things. And programs like Sandy Hooks that are out there and others do an incredible job addressing this challenge. Again, why I'm in this seat, I was inspired. I saw the amazing work that people did. These are parents that had the ultimate sacrifice happen in their lives. And their response is to make sure it doesn't happen again. If that's not inspiration, I have no clue what inspiration is. Definitely.

Definitely. So how does the funding go into it? I'm looking at your website. I see it talks about the funding. How does this thing get activated in, you know, if somebody wants to have this in their local school system, what's the best way to reach out and the funding and all the stuff that goes into it? Yeah, you know, in your local school,

whether it's your principal, your superintendent, your director of student services, schools, you know, have money for services and products from textbooks to computers to services like a Robin. And it's a question of allocation, right? Does the school, the school board, the community then think this is our priority? And if so, how do we fit into their strategic plan? And as you said, mental health, it's everybody's using that word, right? So, so often. And so sort of in this umbrella statement, how do we sort of distill a little bit to say in your community, what are the key challenges, right? You come to Robin, we want to listen to what's happening in your community. Now we have certain products and services. We can't be everything to everyone, but if you are interested, talk to your principal, talk to the school

counselor. There might be some great resources at your school that you don't know about already, right? Take advantage of those. Number one, if Robin is the right program for your school community, there is funding, right? These are programs that aren't hundreds of thousands, starting at $5,000, we can have a Robin program implemented in your school tomorrow. This curriculum is K through 12,

is designed to work in any school community because it's designed by school counselors, teachers, and students, right? It's designed by those that are participating in that. I think that's what's allowed us to have this early success is it's engaging, it's practical. It's not this, you know, hey, what if, what if it's taking real life scenarios?

And we had just, you know, March just passed and a lot of communities, SATs and ACTs. Test that anxiety. It's a very real topic. He did test tests and these are students that know the answer. Right. But that that clock goes off, that bell rings, that pencils in their hand and everything goes dark or everything changes. There are things you can do to get over that in 30 seconds, in three minutes to better prepare real life practical solutions, I think is what sort of the message that I want to tell those school leaders out there. And parents, parents can reach out to us and bring us to their communities. Parents, as you said, like it or not, they have a voice and um i think they're concerned about their own um uh kids mental health and as you said they don't necessarily have the resources

to address this and to implement this and to be aligned i think that alignment is so critical that everybody's talking the same language everybody's on the same page they don't have to agree but they have to understand this is the same sort of sandbox that we're all playing in. And we all have to deal with the same challenges together as hopefully a family unit or as an individual.

And I love the concept of this because as I mentioned before, the twins that were giving us problems and all the bullies that I ever saw in high school and school, we became aware that their parents weren't sometimes being on their best people.

And maybe they were bullied in school and whatever. But, you know, being able to have these kids maybe come talk about what's going on at the home, address some of the issues or feelings they're having about that, can make it so that, you know, bullying doesn't become such a, you know, one person bullies another and they bully another and they act out. And, you know, it's, it's tough. Kids are so damn mean to each other in school. I mean, like, you know,

I've run gaming communities and different things and just seeing how the young people, you know, they'll see how these kids go at each other. And you're just like, you're just like, wow, man,

I remember how, how mean we were to each other in school. And so, yeah, if we can cut dial back a ton of that, maybe have some of the bullies that are having problems at home, maybe reconcile their stuff with mental health and make them feel listened to

and maybe how to deal with their home stuff, maybe reach out to their families and have them get some help too. I mean, that can help everybody. I love the concept of that. If there's one thing I've learned on my show and having so many great authors and scholars and PhDs and people that are brilliant in the psychology of people, childhood trauma is the arc of

what that can do across the destruction of your lifetime and the difference it can make and the good, the bad, and the ugly. You can all dial it back to childhood trauma and childhood experiences and if you don't get your feet down well as a child um it can affect your whole life you know it can make a huge amount of difference you're right you're absolutely right and i think you know as as a society and as a culture today, where everything is so instantaneous, right? Everybody's looking for instantaneous gratification. Everybody is trying to divide each other and polarize each other.

Isn't this, and I say this to a lot of schools we work with, this is not a red or blue or black or white issue. This is an all of us issue right this is something that i think all of us can agree upon is a huge challenge right and i don't have the exact right answer but we're building towards that and i think part of what we're doing and can do effectively conversations like this chris let's have the conversation out there so people are talking about it locally in their communities whether it's Robin, it's your local resource or something else. I encourage people to have the conversation, be open, bring it to your school board. Because again, this is,

again, these are the communities that we need to change, right? And need to spread. Definitely. Anything more we haven't talked about that we want to touch on before we go out? No, you hit on a lot of things. I could just say most importantly, for me, we talked about Robin and being an entrepreneur and having fun, or I should tell you, I'm having a lot of fun doing it. The most gratifying thing for me in my life is being a dad um i got three kids and it's it's unbelievably hard and unbelievably fun and um i can tell you it's um it's so special and i i wanted to share that because sort of being being a father for me and an uncle before that it changes perspective a little bit right you think differently um about things, not good or bad, just different. And for me, it's allowed me to sort of enter this new phase of life

and see things in, again, a different lens. So I appreciate all that you do, Chris. I've seen some of your other shows recently. It's a lot of fun, and I really appreciate you having me and talking about this. And I really appreciate you coming by because I want the world to be a better world. I want school shootings to stop. I want better children to have a better future because that way they'll pay my Social Security when I get old. No, I'm just kidding.

That's a horrible thing, Chris. But no, I mean, we want a better world to live in. We want a less dangerous world to live in. I don't want to, no one should have to go to school. I mean, my biggest horror in school was, well, bullies and, you know, the Russians dropping nuclear bombs. So we would hide under those five-ton lead-stealed desks. And I'm sure the way to save us, of course. But, you know, that was our biggest fear. You know, I can't imagine going to school every day and have to think about stuff.

I can't imagine being a teacher where I have to have a, a bucket at school in case there's a lockdown that people can use the bathroom in a room and, and there's body bags in it and other survival tools in it. You know, I've, I've seen a lot of stuff that gets pitched to the show, but people want to come on and talk about these protection rooms, these safe rooms that they're building and, you know i've seen a lot of stuff that gets pitched to the show but people want to come on and talk about these protection rooms these safe rooms that they're building and uh you know and and i you know we're all trying to struggle and find what the answer is to this but mental health definitely at this age and help people so they don't enter the world with trauma and

everything else especially over trigonometry and algebra too i mean that's trauma no i'm just kidding i mean it can be it's mental you know because the funny thing was is because i couldn't my brain just was not getting algebra too um you know i i just i was i was getting it uh it affects your self-worth and your self-value and that's the worst foot to get started out with you know not valuing yourself you know a lot of young girls they look at this you know instagram social media and they're having problems with depression and self-value you know because everybody on instagram looks like they're millionaires and the greatest looking people with all the greatest filters in

the world you know i look like a victoria's secret. And if you put the filters on me on Tik TOK, I don't actually, there's, there's, there's not enough amount of filtering that can help me. But, you know, I mean,

they see this, these images and they think that everybody's living this life and, and they're really troubled. There you go. So Sonny, give us your, your website. So people can find you guys in the interwebs.

I noticed there's also a white paper on there so if people want to go there or reach out to you guys find out more about what you're doing. Teachers, students, family members, parents can do that as well. Absolutely. It's my-robin.com Check out our white paper and some of the work we do. Again, don't

hesitate to reach out to any of us on the team. We'd be happy to talk, learn more about your community and talk more about this challenge this challenge. And now this opportunity we all have together. There you go. And try and make the world a better place. And I love this because, you know, teachers are some of the most greatest people in the world. My mother was one, my sister was one. I saw the work and the money, their own personal money they would put in that would never be reimbursed, that my mom would do for her stuff. I mean, sometimes like $250 a month she would spend.

And I'd be like, yeah, you get a reimbursement check like that, like a normal company, right? She's like, no, they don't. They don't do that. And these people really do this job for the love of children, for the love of making the world a better place. And, you know, there's a lot of teachers who left the business because of some of the attacks they're going through and the ugliness of politics and everything else. So anything we can do to support the system, we better. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Thanks for being on the show.

We certainly appreciate it, Sonny. Thank you very much. Thanks, Chris. Talk soon. Take care. There you go appreciate it, Sonny. Thank you very much. Thanks, Chris. Talk soon. Take care. Thanks to my audience. Be sure to go to youtube.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, LinkedIn as well.

Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you next time.