The Zac Clark Show - Mission to Transform Young Men’s Mental Health: A Major Announcement with Matthew Stefanko, Founder of MANUAL, a Leading Online Mental Health Platform for Young Men

Episode Date: August 28, 2024

Why are men 4x more likely to die by suicide? Three times more likely to die by drug overdose? Are young men being overlooked in the cultural shift toward greater awareness, resources, and support for mental health and wellness? Are there enough resources and support systems in place to encourage young men to seek help when facing mental health or substance use challenges? These questions were the catalyst for Matthew Stefanko to found MANUAL, a pioneering online platform designed to help young men navigate the complexities of mental health and personal development. Now, following a game-changing merger with Release Recovery, a leading organization in substance use and mental health recovery founded by Zac, Matthew joins us to explore how this powerful alliance is set to revolutionize support for men, particularly young men. Matthew shares his personal journey, from being bullied as a child to struggling with mental health issues and alcohol dependency. He reflects on the unique challenges young men face in seeking help and why partnering with Zac and Release Recovery was a pivotal moment for MANUAL. Together, they’re poised to drive meaningful change in men’s mental health. MANUAL was created to meet young men where they are, providing the tools and resources they need to take control of their well-being. With the support of Release Recovery, this mission is now set to reach even more young men across the country, combining digital and in-person support on college campuses and high schools nationwide. Together, Release Recovery and MANUAL are set to break down the barriers that keep men from asking for help, creating a safe space for them to grow, heal, and thrive. This episode is a must-listen for anyone passionate about mental health, personal growth, and the future of men’s well-being.  Connect with Zac https://www.instagram.com/zwclark/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-c-746b96254/ https://www.tiktok.com/@zacwclark https://www.strava.com/athletes/55697553 https://twitter.com/zacwclark If you or anyone you know is struggling, please do not hesitate to contact Release: [phone] releaserecovery.com @releaserecovery

Okay, welcome back to the Zach Clark Show. Before we introduce today's guest, there's some rather big news out of the release recovery world, which is the company that I am the founder and CEO of, which pertains to today's guest. We recently acquired a company by the name of manual care. Manual is an organization that focuses on men's mental health. And for me, it's a powerful moment because it's something that I've truly been interested in. Our guest today, Matt Stefanko, is the founder and CEO of Manuel.

And I met Matt, I don't know, three or four years ago when he was getting started. But we're going to get into that. All I want to say is release recovery, acquiring manual. We're going to expand the scope of our services. We're going to help more people, and we're going to really lean hard into men's mental health and specifically men's mental health on college campuses. So I'm going to stop talking about it. And I'm going to introduce Matt.

Matt, what's up? How are you? I'm great. I'm excited to be here. I think we'll get into the relationship that we've had over the last few years, but it's nice to, like, this office is familiar. The people on your team are familiar. So while this is obviously big and exciting and new and different and all those sorts of,

of things. There's like a level of familiarity that I think makes this also comfortable too. So I'm excited. I'm excited to dive in. I think it'll be a good conversation. I think we're going to cover a lot. And yeah, can't wait. Yeah. I think for me, any time I sit down with someone who's an entrepreneur in the space, you always kind of say, well, why did you get into it? Why did you start? And your story is no difference. So can you give a little bit of insight into why men's mental health is so important to you and why manual has been and will continue to be so important to you. Yeah, and it's been interesting, right? Because I think the original orientation did have this kind of conversation around men's mental health, but I think what we're realizing

is that like there's this broader thing happening with young men. You see it with the guys who are showing up. And so it's become this even, you know, more interesting and sort of broader issue that we've started to think about. But yeah, I mean, look, the original orientation is very, very personal. I struggled with mental illness from a really young age myself, grew up in an environment where, I mean, at the time, right, that the narrative was not, oh, I'm not getting help because I'm a guy or because of the way that I feel, you know, masculine pressures or whatever it might be. It was just like I'm struggling. I don't feel like I can get help. And so I just kind of kept going, right? Like a lot of people do.

Got to college. Like a lot of people who are struggling with untreated whatever. I had bad coping mechanisms versus good coping mechanisms. For me, it was mostly a lot of drinking and not like fun, a lot of drinking, but like problem, a lot of drinking. And, you know, didn't get help until kind of early on in my career right after, you know, started in management consulting, still struggled throughout all that, really intense hours, always on the road.

It wasn't until I was sort of 23 where I was like, oh, there's a pivot point here and we can do that story if you want to. But, so I've been in and around the behavioral health field for a handful of years because I was really passionate about like giving back to an industry and a thing that made such a positive difference for me. The orientation around men specifically and young men specifically was in a lot of the work that I was doing at Shatterproof. So I'd worked in Baltimore City's Health Department.

Most recently I was leading anti-stigma efforts at a nonprofit called Shatterproof that does a lot of work in the mental health and addiction space. and I kept seeing the data, right? Four times we're not going to die by suicide. Three times we're not going to die by overdose. I had this story of all of these men, whether it be the men in my immediate family, the men in my extended family that had these challenges

that were never talked about. They weren't brought together. And so I started kind of connecting dots between what is going on with me and my family and the men around me and the data. Why aren't guys showing up? why in all of the work that we're doing with Shatterproof that this is the hardest demographic to engage, even though they're the ones with some of the most kind of negatively profound, you know, outcomes, impact, et cetera.

And then you kind of start looking out and you're like, well, what are young men getting, right? There are certainly mental well-being resources, things like that, but those typically don't cater to young guys in a way that they're excited about. And then you've got companies like hymns and all the things. But like those weren't providing the kinds of solutions that I felt like were making really like real, sustainable, you know, effects, you know, around things like suicide, overdose, etc. And so, yeah, I was never itching to start a company or anything like that. It was just like, this is a problem that's not being, you know, solved. Something that's really intimate to me and I want to go after it.

Yeah. I think before we get into the, to like, the nitty gritty around the current atmosphere in men's mental health, I want to go back to you as a young, a young kid. And what was kind of ingrained in you, what it meant to be a man, what you thought you had to or had to not do? Because I think a lot of those things that remain true today. Totally. Yeah. Look, there's a lot of like, these stories are going to sound like much more rough and more rough and tumble than they actually were.

Right. But like, you know, growing up, I was, you know, I was put into school a little bit early. So I was smaller than everybody around me. I had a mouth, right? Like, and I didn't want to take stuff from people. And so I was getting bullied, you know, a lot when I was younger, right? And would have these kinds of moments where I would go. I mean, I tell the story of like, it's kind of funny when you think, it's funny and sad

in the same way we're like, how did nobody pick up on this? But like where I would just like leave class in sixth, seventh, eighth grade and like sit in the bathroom and cry by myself for like 20 or 30 minutes. And you're like, well, that probably was a problem. But in the environment I was in, I was getting good grades. I went to Cornell. Like that was, I was doing. Public school?

Yeah, it was just, and not a bad public school. It was just a good public school, right? I was just in public school. And, you know, they were trying to get kids to graduate and go to college. And that was never for someone like me off, like I was always going to go to college. And so, you know, check the box. And no one's kind of checking in. You know, and this was, you know, whatever, 20 years ago.

So it's not like there was the infrastructure that we have around mental health and a lot of public schools today. And so, yeah, you just, you go through this, you know, all these stories growing up of times where clearly what I was dealing with was anxiety and social anxiety and then getting into college, substance misuse and all these sorts of things. But at every step of the road, and I think this is where society is really good at this, and I think this is where men are really good at this, but in a bad way, we can rationalize a lot of our behavior as like, oh, like, I'm not going to walk out of this bathroom looking like I cried because what is that? going to show to the people around me right um i'm not going to admit that i have a problem drinking because what about all these people that are around me that are also drinking a lot that don't have that problem right so you tell yourself all these stories as a way to kind of like lift up into that presence of being a tough guy being guy who's like desirable right if you're

trying to date like all that stuff starts to come up and you're like well i'm not if i admit that i have these things that i'm dealing with we think that that is an indictment of that you know facade that we're sort of putting putting together for ourselves did you anyone in your life know in six seventh eighth grade that matt sefonco was leaving class and going and sitting there because that's trauma man like that's real that that's like a core experience i don't want to this is it's stefanco oh stefanco is that yeah stefanko i should probably know that should we like is i don't know no you're fine okay yeah um the uh um no i the answer is is nobody knew, right?

I mean, I think there were some, there were a couple times, uh, there were a couple times like growing up where random, like, you know, we, I would get, go to a therapist or something like that, but it was, it was almost always through the vein of like, you're asking your teacher too many questions or you're doing like that kind. Like, it was never this kind of conversation around like, like mental health, at least from my recollection, was never part of the conversation, anxiety was never part of the conversation. I mean, I never dealt with anything that was in and around something like depression, but it's not like that was, like those were not the words being used. Maybe it was

like, oh, ADHD or what, like there was some of that kind of like, that could be what's going on here. But for the most part, no. Like, who was I going to tell? You know, like that wasn't the culture in the men in my family. It really wasn't the culture of it. You know, my grandpa, he passed away recently, but he was a long haul truck driver. Like, well, I'm going to go up to him and say, yeah, grandpa, like, I know you're on the road all the time and you're, you know, my uncle, like, jumped dirt bikes and stuff. He would literally, like, go to, like, county fairs and jump over 13 cars, and I would go there. I'm supposed to go to him and say, no, no, yeah, just like every couple days after I get bullied, I go to the bathroom and I cry for 20 or 30 minutes. What do

you think of me, uncle? You know, like, that wasn't the sort of culture. And certainly I wasn't going to tell the boys around me that, you know, you're trying to get invited to sleepovers. You're trying to fit into that culture and be a part of that. So no, of course, you know, who was going to be that person that initiated that conversation or had that dialogue? It's scary. It's scary. And I feel like this is something that we're finally paying attention to and we're finally starting to see people recognize that bullying and adoption. And some of these things that weren't talked about 10, 15, 20 years are, it's traumatic. You know, like they're traumatic things that finally. I mean, I hope I'm not, I'm not, I'm not in the middle school environment. I'm not in the, you know, elementary school environment. But I would hope that teachers are more aware to some of the damage that can be caused. by something like that. I think the scary thing, right, is, and I think, like, you can look at the opioid epidemic

the same way, which is, like, our resources have gotten so much better in the last 15 or 20 years, but the problem has gotten so much worse, right? So it's like this, I mean, because we do, you know, we mostly work with manual in a lot of the university settings, but we started to do some work in high schools,

and we're doing some work with some prep schools and things. It's been really interesting to go into that environment because I see the resources that those guys and those students have relative to what was available you know, 20, 15, 20 years ago, and it is monumentally better. And at the same time, all the stuff that gets talked about, social media, you know, it's so much, in some ways it's so much easier to bully in private, right? At least like when things were happening, like there were teachers around,

that people did intervene, even if they didn't, you know, go through the steps of saying, hey, let's get you mental health resources. There was a network there of support kind of theoretically. Now all this stuff can be online. All this stuff is much more subversive. So we're making so much progress with the supports, but we're losing so much ground on like how much young people are struggling today. And like that's where I don't, you know, that's what it felt like in Baltimore, right?

Like we're rolling out amazing things. And yet the problem, the availability of drug, like you can't keep up even if what you're doing is awesome. And so I think that's where the challenge with youth and young people are is like, we're rolling out some pretty good stuff and the problem keeps getting worse. So what you do in that scenario? Would you, so in high school. I'm always, like, I feel like college can be the perfect storm, right? Because depending on your high school experience, you're working really hard just to get the hell out of the house and get to your freedom and get to this life that, like, you almost want to leave behind.

Like, I had a couple classmates in high school. I'll never forget that. Like, all they wanted to do was graduate high school and begin to, like, live their, like, their life in a way that they took some freedom back or whatever it was. And that was maybe because they were bullied or picked on or their home. home life wasn't great. When you were in high school, were you super motivated to just get out and kind of launch into the world because of some of the experiences you were having? Yeah, I was excited to get out into the world. I don't know if it was this kind of like this like overrotation of like, oh, screw my hometown. I'm like I'm proud to be Minnesotan. I'm proud to be where I'm

from. So it was not that, but it was definitely like I want to see more of the world. I want to get out there. I want to meet new people. And so for me, I think where like college became kind of a storm was I like I wanted to just move right like I wanted to absorb all of it I wanted to you know I did this internship with in India at a nonprofit for a couple months when I was 18 years so I was exposed to all these things that I never even got an inkling of you know growing up and now you know when things are moving so fast you can't like you don't realize how much the ground is shifting underneath you and so like I hadn't had a sip of alcohol until March of my freshman year in college

Oh, wow. Dated a girl back home. I was like, I'm going to, you know, be good, all this kind of stuff. And, you know, we break up. And then all of a sudden, I'm like, you know, two or three months later, I'm like blacking out like a few times per week. And like you, but when when everything's going, right, you're on the move, you're around. I mean, I'm around these incredible people, like brilliant people who are, you know, still. This is at Cornell.

Yeah. Core people in my life. And when all that movement is happening, you don't realize how much has shifted underneath you. You know, when things slow down, you can kind of see, oh, my life's actually changing. At the time, I was just like, wow, I'm here, and I'm here, and I'm here. And so that energy was really infectious. And at the same time, like, it prevented me from being able to see what was transpiring. And in your childhood, when is the first, like, or maybe it's high school, maybe it's college,

the first time you think to yourself, like, I might have anxiety or I might be a little depressed, right? Wasn't until after college. I mean, there was, I mean, there's... So those words weren't even in your strategy. No, no. I mean, like, I'm sure I conceptually knew them or whatever. but it's not like I was going up to people and saying like, oh, this could be a problem

or I'm a little like, I don't know, no, it was like, I'm stressed, this is what it takes to get good grades at Cornell, this is what it takes to be successful. I was trying to get these really hyper-competitive jobs. Like that was just like, oh, those are the, you know, and I think this is, I mean, in a lot of the work we're doing with Manuel and with a lot of these young guys, like the challenge is helping them define

what is normal stress, what is resiliency and what is like a problem, right? So I just like, I looked at the guys, guys around me that were also drinking heavily because we were in college and I said and I could justify my behavior relative to them because I also saw them get drunk occasionally right now they weren't blacking out three times a week or four times a week they were maybe blacking out once a semester right or never but they look drunk to me and so that was enough and everybody was stressed there you know it's a really it was a huge pressure cooker environment so like yeah what you know like

oh I'm I'm nervous about my test I'm but everybody's nervous about their test right so you just you get into that justification mode. And so you never even get to the point. I mean, I always joke with Manuel, like we don't, when we go and bring this to the guys, we don't tell them it's a mental health platform. We talk about it as men's personal development because how many guys are on college campuses right now

that have a mental health issue, that don't define it as a mental health issue. And if you say I have a mental health solution, that's not for me. I don't have that problem. They're not even trying to send a message. They just legitimately don't think that's an issue that they have. And so that was me up until, yeah,

Yeah, 22, 23. I think that's one of the confusing parts about mental health. And it's like with any, I mean, if you want to use the word illness, that's fine. But, and I don't think social media is doing us any, any favors because so many people are talking about mental health now. It's just, it's so in your face. And a lot of that is really good. But, you know, there's like low level anxiety and depression. And then there's extreme, extreme examples of I'm not sure if I want to live any.

anymore. The way I describe it, right, and these things can over, and obviously a lot of the work that I've been doing over the last few years is so focused on these young guys, but at least in the lens of the problem that I think Manuel is working on, we have two issues, right? We've got a mental health crisis in youth. It's a real thing. We also have like a male disconnection, disengagement, lack of fatherhood, male role modeling issue, right? Like, we have both of those things, and those things feed off of each other, and sometimes they overlap, and sometimes they're different, right? Sometimes for young guys, the answer isn't a therapist, it's peer connection or male interaction. But because, and this is a lot of people who have big hearts

who are trying to do the right thing, because of the narrative around mental health, we default so quick into that, right? It's, oh, you're struggling? Therapist. And a lot of these guys are like, I just need a friend. You know, I need to buddy. I need to be able to hang out with you. I mean, that's why I'm excited about it. Like, you guys are healthcare, but you're also community and connection. and like that's where I see so much interaction because that's how we think about it too is like when guys need health care, we want them to feel comfortable doing it

because they need it. At the same time, we're dealing with a crisis that's like also separate from that that is really profound and throwing a bunch of clinicians at it is not going to be the thing that solves the problem, at least not in its entirety. So you graduate college and you go back home

or where do you land? So I'm in Minneapolis, but I'm working at McKinsey, so really intense job. I mean, I'm barely home, right? I mean, I think I racked up, you know, 250 hotel nights in the first year or something, right? So I'm on the road all the time. Terrible environment, right? You're sitting by yourself in a hotel room. You know, I have stories, right, of per diemning bottles of wine, just drinking at the butt. But I mean, I'm like crushing work, right? I'm like, and is there any level of support outside of like, hey, get your work done? Is there, is there, you know, is there anyone pointing you to like, hey, if you're feeling burnt out, like, go talk to this therapist. It's an interesting balance. I think like it's a like a lot of really intensive environments. I think it's a place where if you are ready to ask for support, they have a lot of that support. But at the same time like the culture is intense, right? Like it's it is a busy, intense work environment.

And so it's not like anybody's looking out for that kind of problem necessarily. Right. Like they're assuming that everyone's a high performer. And so if you're willing to raise your hand and say, hey, I need help, I think that's, it's actually probably a pretty supportive culture. but if you're just grinding like everybody else they're not going to stop you like they're like yeah keep you know keep producing keep being you know great right like that's what they want out of you so I was not in a place where I was ready to ask for help so it's hard for me to like say oh they would

have or would not have done yeah you know more but no I mean the culture was like you're getting your work done awesome yeah I mean the reality is and I think it's very easy for us to blame organizations or places or employers or schools or whatever, if we ask for help, my experience is that you will find it, you know, in one way, shape, or form. I mean, like, if you are willing and you're at that place like I was at 27 where I knew that I had a real problem with drugs, alcohol, and mental health, and I, you know, it's a good teller.

Like, you know, it can come in a lot of different ways, but I think as society, what we are doing a good job of is making it a little bit easier to say, I need help. Yeah, look, the not every environment is right for every person at every moment of their life, right? Like, I was not, like, in a healthy enough place to be in an environment that was that intense, right? And, like, I mean, I've said this to you. I've said this to our investors. Like, I can't, I've learned what my limit is, right? Like, I have, just like everybody has limits for other things.

Like, I have a cap with my mental health of how much I can work. I work a lot, right? I mean, you know that. But, like, there's a limit to it. And if I pushed past that, when I was at McKinsey, like there was, I just pushed past that limit. And I didn't, but I didn't even know the limit was there. And so I think similar to how, you know, certain people who, you know, that I've met who are in recovery have, you know, friend groups that don't fit with them anymore once they get to, you know, and, you know, there's these places where if I want to be in a certain spot and I'm not ready or prepared to do that, that might not be the right place for me.

That intensive an environment, given all the challenges that I had, mixed in with no. coping mechanisms built in, which is a recipe for failure for sure. I think if I went back now with all the coping mechanisms, probably a different story. But at the time, no way. So you do the McKinsey thing and then you decide to yourself like, hey, I want to make impact. Is that an accurate way to say that? I would say the accurate way would say $135,000 student debt says I should probably go get a job in consulting. I think I always wanted to do the impact stuff, right? I mean, in college, I had started, co-founded a nonprofit grocery store that worked on food insecurity. Like I've always wanted to do that kind of work. Yeah. Um, so I think there

was more of like a genuine financial like means to an end kind of thing with the consulting thing. So I always wanted to work and I don't, behavioral health was not this like calling as it is now, right? I think at the time, uh, it started to become that because of the, the mental health stuff. But it was, um, I knew that I wanted to transition back into that work. Um, I knew that I wanted to kind of get to the East Coast, Olivia, who we just got married. Congrats. Thank you. But she was going to do her MPH and got into Hopkins because she's really smart.

And I found a really inspirational leader at the time, we know when, who's the health commissioner. I was like, I want to go work with that person. I want to go learn. Did you, like, seek her out? Did you? So I knew that we were moving to Baltimore. I knew that I needed to get a job in Baltimore.

This was pre-COVID. So, like, remote work was not. Like, you couldn't be like, I'm going to be in Baltimore. but, like, I'll do all my calls on Zoom. Like, and it seems like that, like, it's not that long ago, but it was that long ago. And, uh, every single person that I talked to was like, if you want to work with a smart person, go work with Lena. Like, I, everybody I talked to in Baltimore was like, she's a friend now, right?

Dr. Lena, when? So she, like, tell me a little bit about it. I hope that she would, I consider her a friend. I think you'd have to ask her, you know, but, um, uh, yeah, I mean, she's, she's been an advisor, you know, investor and manual, all these sorts of things. But, no, I mean, she was a really kind of formative part of my, you know, career arc, but that was it. I was like, I want to go work in an impactful space

in behavioral health with someone who's considered a leader and every single person I talked to said Lina. And so that was sort of that. Sweet. So you go, you work there for a little bit, you end up at Shatterproof for a couple years. You grow their stigma campaign. Is that the way you say it?

So the division is the National Stigma Initiative, right? So Shatterproof does a lot of cool stuff, including some policy work, some treatment, quality work. But then, you know, Gary's story, who's the CEO, is that Gary Mendel who really prominent in the space a lot of people I'm sure know him that that are listening but you know Gary you know blames stigma as something as a really a key element of what happened with him losing his son and so he wanted to take a really big and profound swing at it I had gotten connected with him and and was excited about being the first person into this new

thing he's like yeah build it yeah and Gary's built a lot of stuff in his career and so to be able to like learn about how to build something from someone who's built a lot of things was like a really nice natural kind of you know place after working with lena yeah and i think at some point during shadow proof is when we met you were hosting uh an event or a panel's the inauguration stuff yeah with with with with with with with a couple and lina myself yep uh it was an honor to participate in that and then i think we kind of followed each other's careers and and and and for me i just remember being at a place where I had just kind of come off TV. I had been, you know, some would say given this platform and trying to make sense of it all. And at the same time, somewhere along the

lines, you decide to bet on yourself. So I'm just curious to you, like, how you got to the point of saying, all right, like, I've worked for some other people. I'm going to give this a shot. Like, I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I'm going to go start this thing manual. And, and, like, because I'm always fascinated by like the story of how someone gets to start the business. Yeah, I still don't know. It's only been a couple of years and I'm like, I can't believe that we're, I mean, it's the fun thing about starting something is how quickly you can go from having nothing to something that's really real, right?

I mean, like we had, this is like a total tangent, but like the other day I was talking with one of our partners, Clark Atlanta University, HBCU, and this guy was talking about an interaction that two students had. He runs their disciplinary hearings. and one of the guys was in the fight and he could have fought back but he decided to walk away and he's telling me that like the reason the guy did that is because of manual right and like within a period of two years you go from like this this student could have been expelled from the university and because of our content and the platform he's not right and two years ago this thing

didn't exist so like that's like that is a really cool part of starting something yeah that's why you do it but it it has happened so quickly that I don't know if I have like a perfect pin on exactly when I decided, to be honest, and maybe this is the itch of starting something, like, shatterproof in the stigma initiative, Gary probably wouldn't agree with me, but I was like, it is in a place where it's going to exist. Like I had a number two there who now runs the initiative. She's phenomenal. And I was like, this is going to be good.

Like, I don't need to be here. Like, I got, like, me and Gary and the team that we had built had got this to a place for like, this is going to exist. This is going to grow without me. This is going to be a thing that's going to impact a lot of people. And so there was both the itch around this issue of men and what's going on that I was like wanted to scratch. But at the same time, like, the other thing that I had helped start with Gary and a lot of other people was at a point of like being established. And I want to say I got bored because there was so much stuff that was happening.

But I just like I made my impact. I helped and I could go do another thing. Yeah. So how does it happen? What's like how? I mean, yeah, the story, man. I mean, like, you just, you know, you woke up one morning and said, I'm going to do this. You talk to your fiance or girlfriend at the time or you obviously went out and you raised some money.

I mean, I think there's something very fascinating about, you know, someone following their dreams. And I know, I know for me, like, I just, I just knew that I was always going to do that. Like, I just, I always knew that I would be an entrepreneur. I always knew, you know, that I had some leadership qualities that I wanted to tap into. And I loved building things. I mean, at the end of the day, I consider myself to be a. a community builder. I mean, that's really what I do, whether it's with our employees or the nonprofit organization or release recovery. Like, that's what we do. We specialize in community.

And so for you, obviously, you had had at this point some personal experience around, you know, what anxiety, what depression, you know, you probably looked at some of your things that happened in your childhood and up through high school and college and said, and you saw the gap or you saw whatever it was. I mean, that's what, that's what I'm curious about. Like, why, how you, zeroed in on what manual is going to be. Yeah. So, I mean, the thing, the way I describe manual, and I think this gets back to like why I, you know, because I think, I think anybody who starts something and you just said it with community, like, you, you get up one morning and you're like, this thing needs to exist in the world. And it's probably not going to exist if I don't go and do it, right?

That's how at least always been like, and that's when Gary pitched to me the stigma stuff. It was like, I knew what Gary said, you know, this was not going to exist if I didn't go and build it. And like that, I loved working for people like that, the grocery store and call. Nobody was going to do that unless me and Emma, who was my co-factor, like, unless we were going to go do it, it wasn't going to exist, right? And so I just woke up one morning and I was like, I think this thing needs to exist in the world. The shadowproof thing already exists and I trust Courtney and the team and they're going to do awesome. So I'm going to go do this thing that needs to exist. But the thing that I decided that I think needed to exist had a really interesting kind of like through line to my entire career, which is when, which is when things started to click of like the health promotion, the anti-stigma stuff. Like what became very clear to me on a lot. out of these college campuses was two things were happening. One, men and young men were having all of the worst outcomes, right? They're not graduating. They're most likely to drop out.

Our split in college enrollment right now is about 38% male, 62% female. I mean, this is a massive, like, demographic shift that most people don't know about that's been taking the place over the last couple of decades. Most likely to die by suicide. Most likely, I mean, you run through the list, right? And they're underperforming relative to their female counterparts by a pretty significant degree. That's data point one.

Data point two is a lot of these universities, a lot of these institutions have resources. They have counseling centers. They have academic advising. They have all that kind of stuff. The problem is men don't use any of those resources. So there's this very interesting combination of things going on where you're like, on one hand, this is the group that theoretically should be using these resources the most. They're actually using the resources the least.

And so the question then became, and the way we sort of described manual is like, how do you build connective tissue within these institutions? between where these men are today, which is in a place where they don't feel comfortable seeking help for whatever reason and all of the things that exist, right? And that was like the, that is what we wanted to go and build. And that was in a lot of ways like something that we thought was different than Ahim's or Andrew Tate or all these other like, you know, things that are out there that a lot of men become attracted to. They always pitched themselves as the solution. And we were like, we don't need to be the solution. We need to get men to a place where they're comfortable.

absorbing all of these solutions that are there for them. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the questions it always rattles around in my head when we talk about men's mental health and just what I'm seeing in the world today, and I'm curious how you feel about this in terms of manual and just the overall resources that are available in the world. And it goes back to some of the stuff I talked about in social media. Do you feel like we will go too far? Like, do you feel like we might go too, like, and almost get, like, I don't want to use words soft, but I For me, is there like too much mental health? Is there too, like, like, because there is parts of like growing up with my dad who was like a guy's guy that I value and benefit from in my life today, you know? The way we at least think about it, right, is it's not about, and this is I think where a lot of men that we interact with have that same. I mean, we talk about guys who are guys guys. I mean, we work with fraternity men at the University of Alabama, right?

Like they ask these same sorts of questions, right? And the answer that I always give is, like, what we don't want to do, and this is what they fear is happening, we're not necessarily saying that some of those core traits that you're getting from your father or whatever, right? Like, wanting to be a provider, wanting to be tough and resist, like those aren't net, like we don't need to demonize those things as traits, right? If that's what you see as masculinity and that's something that you're proud of, you want to be a provider for your family, you want to be tough and adverse situations, I don't think saying we want more mental. health care is an indictment of any of those things. What I think it's saying is, are you actually being a provider to your family when you're not opening up? Are you actually being tough when you don't seek out resources around you? Right now, look, if you're well-adjusted, if you've got a great community around you, if you know when you're pushing yourself too far,

if you've checked all those boxes and you say, I think I'm tough enough, I don't need mental health care, you're probably right, right? You're probably like, but most men that are saying, I'm too tough, I don't need mental health care, they're not hitting that checklist, right? So that's kind of the way we try to talk about is like if you, if you really do have these supports and you really know when you're pushing yourself too much or you're treating the people around you not well, like if you've got a real read on that and you prize being a provider, you know, prize being tough, whatever those traits are that people associate with masculinity, then yeah, maybe mental health care is not a fit for you.

Maybe you don't need that thing. Not everybody has a mental health issue, right? And I think that's okay to say, most young men that I talk to, that's not what it is. They think that they need to put on a show, right? It's all the stuff about my story, right? They think that being tough is not seeking help, not seeking resources because relative to the other guys around them, they want to show that they can do it in a way that they can't, right? That is not a good reason to not give me. So I think that's at least how we try to distinguish it in terms of that kind of question on like, can I be tough or soft or whatever.

like, you can just know what you mean when you say tough, right? And if tough is like absorbing all the shitty stuff and then taking it out on the people around you and hurting the people around you, it's not tough to me, even if you're not asking for help. Yeah. No, it's interesting. Like I, I, someone was giving this test. They had asked me the other day and it ended up being part of a psychology test, which is,

one of the questions was what's your favorite animal and why? and my answer to that question was the elephant and essentially like don't mistake their kindness for weakness. Like the elephant is very like loving and caring but we'll stomp on you and take care of business when they need to, right? And I thought it was interesting because I later found out that that question is basically like how you see yourself in the world. And for me, as someone who's very open about my story and mental health,

I think both things can be true, right? Like, we can be kind. We can ask for help. We can put our hand up and say, like, I'm having a bad day and still be like total badasses, you know, and be strong. I think there's a level of like, you need, if what you're doing is intentional and you're waking up and you're thinking every day, when I do this, this is how it's going to affect the people around me.

Yeah. This is how it's going to affect me over a long period of time. Nine times out of 10, the people who are doing that, kind of stuff generally are good to the people around them. They feel confident. They're strong, all those sorts of things. I think that a lot of the guys that we interact with, they've never seen intentionality. They've never been taught, you know, what it's like to take care of themselves. So they just kind of do, right? And they, and the default for a lot of young men is the tough exterior, right? That's what they've been taught to show. Now, if that's an intentional

decision, you think about that every morning, you think about how that's impacting the people around you, you're probably a good person that probably affects a lot of people in a good way and being tough is not the problem. The issue is what I was saying before, right? It's that they're not doing those things intentionally. They're not putting in the work to know why they're behaving the way they're behaving. They're just behaving. And that's where the problem often lies. And I think it, you know, it bleeds into fatherhood. I mean, the work we do at release is fascinating. We run this family. It's a not mandatory, but I would like to think, every family in our system would want to show up to a family support group every Wednesday night

and for every 10 wives there is one yeah uh 10 moms there is one dad yeah and we ask continually like where's dad where's dad where's dad and he doesn't want to do it he doesn't want to feel dad doesn't want to participate dad wants it to just be fixed he wants to pay the bill and it's it's fascinating and then when the dads do end up showing up and they do step in with two feet like they end up being like they need the clean acts they they're the most vulnerable ones there and it's so beautiful to see but i think at a young age these things are instilled into us and it does it carries all the way into fatherhood and beyond and that's why i think it's so critical to be getting to the men when we are going to be getting to them

in college because we truly have this ability to create long-term uh sustainable impact And I don't know, you know, maybe I'm rooting a conversation that should be a strategy conversation separately, but like, I think we need to go younger, right? I think we need to be thinking about, I mean, it's funny. I made this joke to plenty of our partners of like, I thought by starting at 17, 18, I was like, oh, we'll get to these guys young enough. You show up and talk to an 18 year old guy and you're like, oh, shit, we're late, you know, we need to go way earlier, right? So there's, I mean, and we're working on things. I mean, you know, for all of our fathers that are dealing with this stuff, think about the experience they had with their father's father. So there's a lot of this layering that starts to happen and there's so much work that needs to be done across all these sorts of things.

But yeah, look, I think what's been a really, really amazing thing, and I tell this to the guys that we work with in these college settings is like in starting manual and having these conversations, one of the things that's been the most profound is meeting the men who are in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and saying, like, the biggest mistake I had is not thinking about this until I was 45 or 49 or 50. The way I treated my children, the way I treated my wife, the way I treated my friends, that was wrong for so many years. And these are, by the way, like, these are guys, you want to talk about, like, these are guys who, these are guys guys who people look at and like, that guy's a winner. And they're telling me at 57, I can't believe it took me so many years to ask for help, seek therapy, you know, or just even like talk with the people around me about what I was going through. And so I always try to, like, tell that to the guys who were 17, 18, 19 of like, you were going, I have so much conviction that you are going to get to a point in your life at some point in the future and you're going to say, man, I wish I wasn't so stubborn. Man, I wish I told the guys around me that I cared about them. Man, I wish I took better care of my part. Like, you're going to get there.

It's just a matter of how many years are you going to build up until you regret how many years you weren't doing that kind of stuff, you know? Yeah, no, I mean, look, I'm lucky enough from my dad is still, still very much alive and a part of my. my life and the thing I'll say about that is I didn't see him cry until I got sober probably around my one year anniversary we had a moment where like he truly got emotional and he he credited some of that moment to obviously like my strength in in asking for help and getting help but I will say on the flip side of that he did at a young age like let me know that I was loved, you know, and that really, it made me respect him and it made me want to make him proud and it made me want to be someone that carried himself in the world like

he carried himself. And so that male role model is such a real, is real thing. Look, we have a massive issue with the, I mean, 80, 85% of the single parent households in our country are female led, right? So I tell the story a lot. lot of like is that right 85 it's it's a high number yeah it's like it's like 75 80 it's up there yeah it's a very like a very significant portion right certainly the vast majority um are female led versus versus male led and so when you think about that you think about like the the proportion of teachers that we have which trend female you go to the college environment I always encourage people like just you know look at where your child goes to college and look at the counseling

department right and look at the gender diversity there look at the student support session So there's a real scenario, right, where you might have a young guy, grew up in a single parent household, maybe he didn't have, you know, a lot of male role models in his life, he goes to high school, middle school, all of his teachers are female, he gets to college, right? All of the therapists are women. You're like, where are you, where would you even learn how to show up as a guy in a healthy way, right? Like that is like a, like there are, if not millions of guys, certainly hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of guys that have that exact kind of trajectory where it's like, the first time that they've interacted with an adult man is like the 21 year old guy in their fraternity or the 21 year old senior who takes them or a boss like yeah yeah totally right and like that is good in some ways that finally they're getting it but like you're you're kind of talking about a group of people that also has never experienced that right so you're you're all like trying to learn within your own environment and so it is beautiful what we're starting to see is that like there are young guys that are taking this seriously I mean we see like examples of men's groups. groups that are being put together. But these are all things that are results of these guys being like, like, they wake up

one day and they look around and they're like, oh, shit, like there's not anybody that is like me or had my experience that's having this kind of conversation. That's a pretty amazing thing when you think about it. And then, you know, the thing that this is my big, like, this is my big, you know, if I were to ever do a TED talk, this is my big thing is like, we need to change the conversation from men don't want help to we are not delivering the kind of help that men need, right? Because we so quickly look at the fact that men aren't showing up and we default to that kind of conversation of like, oh, they don't want this. And then, but when you take a big step back and you're like, well, who would have said to them that they need this?

The answer could be there's literally nobody. And that's kind of a crazy thing to think. The thing is, I mean, like, I love that you said that. And I actually, I agree and I see it in my life. There's probably like three or four guys in my life that I will get a phone call from like every two or three months. and it would be something along the lines of they're drinking too much or they're feeling sad

or anxious or depressed and every time I will kind of like share my experience which is like I went to rehab therapists, meetings, support groups and immediately they're like

well I'm not that bad. I'm not that bad. Like I'm not doing that stuff. Like this is just like it's almost like they just needs to say to someone and then shove it down for another three months

and then my phone will ring and it's sad because there is it's not. Not a huge pivot, but what we need for men is a middle space. And what you're just describing is exactly what. I mean, we've got 50,000 guys on the platform. It's exactly the story we hear from these guys, which is help seeking is very binary in their world.

Big, scary counselor on a hill that I've got to go, you know, I mean, when we talk with guys who describe seeking out a counselor on their campus, like it's a walk of shame. I mean, it's like, yeah, I'd have to wake up. I'd have to walk by all these people. They'd see me. What would I be wearing? I'm like, what? It's not, you know, Sunday morning after a bad night. Like, what are you talking? You're going to see a therapist. But like, that's what they'll describe it. Like this kind of like walk of shame-esque thing, right? And then, you know, or I'm going to figure it out myself. I'm going to keep it bottled up on it. And when you talk with a lot of young women, what they'll describe is more of a spectrum, right? I could figure it out myself. I could do some self-help stuff. I, you know, I know these sorts of tactics or I could call my mom. I could talk to my sister. I have the women in my sorority that I, you know, we talk about this kind of stuff all the time, right? I could, I could, I have friends that I could go to. And then maybe if I'm really struggling, my mom might say, why don't you go talk to a

therapist, right? Like they have that kind of spectrum, whereas a lot of these other guys, it's a huge jump, right? And so it's like you're expecting all of these men with all the context we just described, not having male role models, all these sorts of things to go from, I'm going to figure it out myself to like this big scary walk of shame type scenario. And like, it's a big leap for a lot of guys. And the fact that they decide not to do it, isn't that surprising. Yeah. So all the stuff we're talking about is kind of, because I want to take a second here and just acknowledge, you know, where I was turned on to manual, why I believe in it so much. And a lot of it has to do with the things we've talked about so far. For me, you know,

I was introduced to you, as I said, when we, when we were on that panel around the inauguration, was it by, so it was four years ago. Yeah, it was, uh, yeah, it was, uh, yeah, 20. Biden's inauguration. So yeah, so four years ago, uh, was on a panel. We kind of started chatting. you informed me of some of the things you were going to be doing with manual and I will tell you when I first heard... I think I needed money. Well, you needed money, but...

I liked you, but that was probably a big part of it too. And we did. We invested, but here's the thing that, you know, kind of like the reason was I was jealous. I was like, this is an unbelievable idea because it, for my whole career, I had been dealing with people when they get to me or they get to release,

they are in chaos. I mean, like, it is, it is 9-1-1, we got to go and we got to go now. Like, this kid is not going to make it. And this, for me, was a much wider entryway and a much wider front door. And you started to tell me about how, like, women were really kind of like sucking up all the resources that were available on college campuses in terms of like the counseling center. In a good way, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, they're willing to ask for help.

Yeah, it's not their fault. It's just like, you know, this. services that are available are available and available to everyone. They're using it in the way that we want men to be using it. Right. So manual, as I understand it is a, it's an enterprise, it's a software. Yep. So it's it's yeah, why don't you tell the people what manual actually is so we can, you know, 50,000 people on this platform. What the hell is the platform? Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's a primarily digital platform. I mean, the way we really describe it, this gets like really, you know, silly and then I'll actually explain what it is. But we call it like an engagement suite, right? But the idea is

how do we create as many touch points where these guys are, right? Which is often, in the digital space, which is often, unfortunately, by themselves, and then sort of bring them to where they need help over time. So we have kind of three main components that we describe in it, all of it pretty much digital. And you're right. Like I think, I mean, what's exciting to me

about release is the depth. I mean, when you hear about the stories of the people that you've affected, you're talking about deep, profound change. We're talking about broad change, right? And so how do you marry those things together is obviously what you and I are thinking about quite a bit. But yeah, so three main components, right?

We call it content, coaching, community right are kind of the three elements the content piece being that like we need uh you know it's primarily video content to think like calm or master class but specifically oriented towards men but we need content around things like mental well-being substance misuse etc that uses the kind of language verbiage et cetera that guys are excited about and you know you were in one of our you recorded some of the videos that we had i mean in sort of our content library we also wanted to get guys the guys wanted to become when they were older right they were seeing in a lot of the content and a lot of the things out there they weren't seeing examples of people that they

wanted to envy right like I always talk about who our main competitor is and it's like Andrew Tate and these like male influencers that are really really scary you know for me from like a societal standpoint like that if that's the role models that we're saying but what Andrew Tate and people like that are capturing is telling young men like you can be like me and they're just yearning for that and so we need to meet them with content with with guys that I think are a hell of a lot better than Andrew Tate and say like you can be like this guy if you do this kind of stuff. You can be like this guy, right, putting those people in front. So that's the content. Second piece is the coaching. So all the stuff that I was talking about, the lack of

male-to-male interaction, we kind of wanted to just hack that, right? I hope and think we are moving towards a world where men are more comfortable calling up people like you and saying like, hey, man, I could use some help or whatever. But until we get to that point, we need sort of a stopgap solution. So what we have is text-based coaching. It's really kind of savvy, I think, how our teams built it. But pretty much any time, you can reach out to a guy. you know, a couple years older than you, trained, not a clinician, but someone that you can interact with and have a really good productive conversation. And, like, you know, the most common conversation we have in those coaching, you know,

kind of coaching conversations is a referral into some sort of care. Guys knowing they need something, but not being willing to say it themselves. I mean, we'll even have guys say, like, can you tell me the exact words I need to use when I go to the counseling center and ask for help? Which is, like, if you think about that, it's like, that's the barrier, right? Like for that particular guy, the barrier is literally, I don't know the sentence to say when I walk to the counseling center. And so by just helping him think about what that sentence could be, which is not that hard for our coaches to do, that guy's getting help, right? Yeah.

Final piece is kind of this community element. You know, we love the guys we work with, 18, 19 year old guys. You can tell them something 20 times and they'll act like they've never met you before, right? So like you've got to be in front of them constantly. And so we're doing monthly live streams. We're doing weekly newsletters. We're doing all these little touch points that maybe those guys don't think of those touch points as particularly profound, but they're always reminders like, hey, this thing's here for you. We get a lot of feedback, which is fascinating of, like, guys who never use the platform, but say that they are more likely to, you know, like they feel like they belong at the institution more just because of the signal, right?

The signal of saying, hey, there's a thing for you here is super profound for them. And that's how much they're yearning for something. So that's the platform. and, you know, we launched it in October of 22, so it's been quick. I mean, we've only really done three full semesters of this. So we're still in kind of our baby stages as we think about this coming together. But, yeah, 50,000 guys in sub two years working with almost 50 schools across the country. You know, some big, I mean, we're about to launch at UC University of California, Santa Cruz.

We're at Indiana University. We work with a bunch of HBCUs. We have a really cool partnership with the – I always like shouting them out because They're like one of my favorite partners, but the University of Missouri, Kansas City and working with their men of color academy. So some really cool kind of partnerships and collaborations that we've been building

and it feels like we're just getting started. But yeah, we think it'll play a really, you know, similar to how things like women's resource centers in the 70s and 80s, you know, created a sense of belonging for women in universities that didn't feel like they belonged there. Same way that LGBTQ plus resource centers did that for, you know, folks that, you know,

are in that community in the 2000, in 2010s like it's a weird thing to say that men don't feel like they belong in these spaces but that's what they're telling us and I think manual serves as one small thing that sends a signal to them like hey we're we're going to provide support for you yeah yeah no I mean the the way that you explained it to me at one point was basically like we're trying to reach the guy who's in his dorm room and the only thing he's actually capable of is like going on his phone and opening the like that it's the lowest we call that yeah we call them like the uh the college clock in clock out guys right like they go to class go back to their drawing they go to class they

we do a lot of amazing work with fraternities but in some ways those are the guys who are like the most connected they have the most resources right um not that there aren't areas where we can provide additional help but like yeah there's all of these guys out there who feel really really disconnected really really lonely don't have close male friends um you know don't have people in their lives that they're dating right i mean there's all these there's all these trends out there of like lower you know lower dating rates less less friends for men so all these sorts of things are like these guys kind of saying hey I'm like just going to kind of retreat into myself and so as much as I know like for example that the runs that you guys do on Monday nights that things like

that create more profound interactions the got a lot of the guys that we're working with would not like they're not in a place where they're ready to do that right for people to show up at our runs on a Monday night like you got to be like ready to really like throw yourself into a social situation where you're going to be uncomfortable where you're You're not going to know anyone. I mean, that is like leaps and bounds away from like, you know, asking someone, can you give me the words to go to the counseling center to maybe ask for some help at some point? I'm not sure if I'm even ready like right now.

We'll get university administrators. You're like, I hate phones. I don't want. And I'm like, that's where they are. I don't know. Like you can't, you can't wish that away, right? Like if these guys are only going to class and they're only on these devices, you have to meet them there initially, right? Like, I hope that, you know, manual is kind of this weird business, right?

Because if we do our job well enough, it sort of puts itself out of business, right? Like, and that's hopefully where release and all these sorts of things come in. But the goal is to get men away from what we're doing. But they're so, I mean, to your point, they're so far away that there's, I mean, there's a million steps between now and then. No, in a lot of ways, I'm proud of, I'm proud of release. I'm proud of the two of us for getting to this point. You know, I think it's going to be a beautiful, uh, partnership. I think our teams are just going to work.

so well together and integrate into one and for me like we did this college tour I don't know two or three years ago where we went to your college where I went but University of Delaware University of Maryland Rutgers University of Penn and we we kind of like did some research and we talked to a bunch of of men and women and it was very very clear that the women were much further along in the process in terms of identifying that they needed help the ability to ask for help like having a sense of community. And so since that college tour, I've had this kind of pull in my stomach to do something in a much more meaningful way on college campuses specifically for men. And I always had, you know, manual because I'm an investor and all the other things, like tucked away

in the back. Well, we're getting you back out there, right? You've got a couple more big college tours that are actually, and that's, I think, I mean, this is just a small part of the collaboration, but like being able to bring you and release to the campuses in which we're serving, like that's going to be such a cool, such a cool connection. And, you know, I'm excited for you to like meet the first guy who's like a manual user, you know, like, you know, at one of these schools and like, hey, yeah, that, you know, I'm excited that you're here and I've been like that kind of coming together. I think it's going to be really cool. Yeah. I mean, look, I've been working in kind of that direct care world for many, many years now. And I think for for us and for our team and, you know,

there's, there's impact to be made. And as I kind of transition and, and think about, my legacy and how I want to leave this world which is like a crazy thing to say you know I think it would be a major disservice if we if we didn't think about affecting people on a much bigger scale which which manual is doing and I would imagine that that 50,000 person number is only going to grow in leaps and bounds over the next couple years as we kind of combine combine our entities so I'm curious just kind of some parting thoughts around the future of men's mental health like what you think we really need what you're most excited about with, you know, this partnership and, yeah, anything else that you think is important for people to hear. I'm excited for a lot of

reasons. I mean, look, no one's asking me to do a podcast, and I don't think that's ever going to change. And so I'm excited about the voice and the reach and the conversation that we're going to be able to now have and initiate. So I'm excited about that. I mean, I've known what's cool about this is I know the team, I know your team, I know the culture you're building. I'm excited to be a part of that. I'm excited to bring something to it, hopefully. So I think that that combination is really exciting to me. And I think I've always acknowledged, and you and I've had some real conversations about this of like that breadth, first depth, the conversation. Like, I know that we often will send guys away and they are getting the right resources, right, for one reason or another.

And so to be able to be plugged into a provider of care that can provide that, like, I don't, you know, I don't think the future of, you know, this sort of digital care or whatever is going to be entirely digital ever, right? There's going to need to be this marriage of providing that in-person support, that community with that lighter touch kind of digital engagement. And so being able to create that space for young men, I think is going to be really interesting. I don't think we have the perfect answer yet. I think you'd say that. I certainly think that. But there's that combination of coming together that I think between a lot of really talented people that we have will get us there. And look, I think this problem is only getting worse, right?

I mean, the unfortunate thing is there's going to be a lot of opportunity. I mean, gambling addiction, college dropping out is going to be even higher. I mean, we're starting to see the high school drop out rates with men. I mean, this problem and what happens with all the men who dropped out of college 10 years. So all of these things are going to just continue to compound upon themselves. And so we're fighting an uphill battle, but there's not many people that I've interacted with that think more that we can overcome it than you.

And so that's going to be a fun thing. Yeah, you've got to have hope. You've got to have hope. All right, toughest question for last, and this is, you know, you might have a long answer. I don't know, but I'm just, I'm genuinely curious because when I think about, you know, the world right now, it's a scary place.

And I want to put politics to the side because that, you know, in itself, I think it's going to really hurt the mental health of our country. But last week, we saw, you know, one of our assassination attempt on one of our former presidents, Trump. And when it came out and they identified who the shooter was, it was a 20-year-old kid. And I couldn't help but look at the pictures and some of the things. things that I saw around this kid and, you know, think about manual and think about the work we're doing and the profile that this kid kind of falls into. And I'm just curious your thoughts. Like when you see that, is it a specific profile that that you see kind of continuing

to come up? Is this a kid that you feel like, you know, maybe was bullied or picked on and like this is his cry for help or is it just straight mental illness? Like I'm just, it's very sad and it's very disheartening for me, but I think if we fail to talk about it, then we're kind of doing a disservice to the work that we do. Yeah, look, it's a huge conversation. Obviously, I think it's still early in understanding all the motivations and all these sorts of things. The reality is, and maybe this is a bit of a cop-out, but I think it's an important answer

is like the more and more we have disaffected young men, the more bad things will continue to happen, right? And I don't know where, you know, and sometimes that could be a smaller bad thing. thing, like a guy decides to drop out of college and, you know, doesn't go and get a job and then, you know, has, you know, his own challenges. It might be something like suicide. And then, you know, in a very extreme case, it's something like this. So I think the reality is we as a country, really the world, we don't have an appropriate understanding of what happens if we don't figure out how to support these young guys. And we're going to only kind of continue

to see it, you know, accumulate more and more, right? The more that guys are don't go to college and drop out, the more that they feel disconnected, the more that they don't seek out resources. Like, those things feed on themselves, right? And so, yeah, I don't know what, like, I don't know the exact stuff of what's going on, right? I mean, there certainly has been conversations around mental health. There certainly seems to be that kind of disconnection narrative that people talk about, right? Like, who was he going to, right?

And so, yeah, I think that this is a really, it's obviously a very tragic. and a very, you know, big, like, it's like a kind of, I don't expect that this example to be the thing that happens a lot, but, you know, gun violence, sexual violence, domestic violence, you know, all of these sorts of things, they come from a place of most of these men don't know what to do with themselves, and they don't have the kinds of supports around them. And so if we just decide not to solve that problem, I think we're going to hear about these things more and more. Yeah. yeah i mean it's it's uh it's a lot man it's a lot and it's it's overwhelming to think about but it's also exciting because i do believe that we have the ability to to make change i mean like look we wouldn't be doing this work if we didn't believe that right i mean we have to believe that and so i just appreciate your willingness to come on i appreciate your willingness to be a thought leader and a thought partner and i'm just excited for this journey and the work we're

about to embark on look that the shift is amidst all the really scary news and the lack of hope you know you're going to be on some of these college campuses i know you see these guys coming through your doors like there are young men that i'm interacting with that you know i graduated 2016 conversations that would have never happened are happening now and like that's where we've got to kind of invest in hey here we've got a shot here you know so they're there it is very scary these guys really scared. I mean, we have a, you know, we've got this guy. I'll leave on this positive note, right, because it starts from a dark place, but it ends in a really beautiful place. The guy who leads some of the student groups at Michigan State, you know, campus shooting a couple

years ago. And he said, like, I, like, I, me, 19, 20 year old guy. I mean, I imagine that, you know, we weren't doing that kind of, you know, I need to bring something like this. I need to create solutions around mental health for the guys around me because I know they're being affected by all this stuff and there's nobody else kind of reaching out to them and so there are these guys on the front lines that are young that are like fighting and saying like we can chart a different path for men in our country that like maintains who we want to be but also like puts us in a better spot and you meet those kind of guys and you're like oh I think we got a shot here yeah too I mean look it's a perfect note to end on and I've I've said it for many many years like counseling

centers, therapists, like behavioral health care professionals, we are always going to be burnt out. We are always going to be busy. We are always going to be overrun. So what is the next kind of like thing in line? It's just a peer to peer support. And my hope is that, you know, by providing this platform and some of these resources to the kids on these college campuses that they're going to sell to love on one another and there's nothing really more beautiful than that. Yeah, I'm pumped. Yeah, pumped. All right. Thank you. That's it for today.