Episode 333: Sonny Caberwal: How To Raise Confident Kids

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins.

You're listening to Habits and Hustle, Greg.

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Welcome to Habits and Hustle.

We have a really great guest today because I'm personally invested in the topic and what we're doing.

We have the founder of an amazing app for children.

It's called Legends, Build Legends, I should say, which is a self-confidence training app.

And the co-founder, founder himself, is here with me, Sonny.

By the way, how do you pronounce your last name?

Caberwal.

Calverwall.

I'm so glad that you said that, not me, who is a serial entrepreneur and he's made it his life mission to really help kids build their confidence and their self-esteem starting very young.

And I love what you're all about.

I love what the

platform, what the app is doing for people right now because we need it so badly.

And thank you for being on the podcast.

It's my pleasure.

All right.

Here we go.

All right, Sonny.

Now, let's start with the obvious beginning.

What made you feel that you wanted to even create a self-confidence training app for kids?

Did you have issues as a kid yourself?

No, you know, the reason this app came to be is because I've been an entrepreneur a long time.

And a few years ago, I was actually misdiagnosed with head and neck cancer.

And I thought, you know, there was a time where I was like not sure how much time I had to spend with my kids.

And luckily, the issue was resolved.

And it turns out I didn't have cancer, which is an incredible, scary thing we could talk about later.

But it also.

Hold on, the doctor told you that you had cancer.

He says very likely I had head and neck cancer, which is an extremely dangerous thing.

And my kids were, you know, that was maybe five, four or five years ago.

And

based on what?

Like, why did he think?

I had a lump, a hard lump in my lymph nodes.

And then we sat down and they couldn't go in and do a biopsy because of where it was.

And so he said, I'm not, I can't say this for sure, but based on what you've just told me, it's reasonably likely that's going to be the case.

And I was sitting there with my dad and my wife.

And my dad is a surgeon, by the way.

And he's like, I don't see how you can say that.

But he's like, well, we'll have to wait a few weeks because there's some inflammation near where we need to go in.

And if you, if we do that, you have a high risk of facial paralysis.

So for six weeks, I thought that that might be the case.

And at the time, I was working in a, I was, I had a great job post-selling my last company, but I didn't see what I was going to do about that.

So I actually never went back to work after that.

And I thought about what can I teach my kids about the future?

Wait, hold on a second.

By the way, in like full transparency, you know, I'm like, I really love everything about what you're doing.

And that's why I'm very, not just passionate, but I'm involved.

And I've never heard you tell me the story before.

I had no idea.

So for six weeks, you literally thought that you were going to die.

Yes.

And my kids were, and my kids were all like under eight, three of them.

And I didn't spend that much time with them because I was super commuting.

I don't know if I told you the story, but I sold, I had sold my company and I became the head, like a senior executive at this big global 50,000 person CPG business.

But I was like, no, you never told me to see that.

And I was living in, and I was living in, we had just moved pre my company being acquired to North Carolina, and the company is based in New York.

So I was super commuting four days a week to New York, North Carolina.

And I remember when my, I remember when it was the weekends, my kids would say, not to be jerks, just matter of fact, they're like, oh, it must be the weekend because daddy's home.

And it made me feel so bad, but I was trying to figure out how we were going to like bring everyone back together.

And I realized that I was just spending my time wrong.

So I spent a lot of time thinking about time and I spent a lot of time thinking about the future.

I kind of take these contrarian bets in technology and the way the world will work.

And now I'm very focused on taking those bets on the way the world can work for the next generation, for Gen Alpha, because it impacts my own kids.

So when we started looking at it, we were like, well, what are, it's obvious the world is changing in a number of different ways that are really important.

Technology changed every aspect of our lives.

and I don't see why our kids are still being taught the way that we were taught when we were younger.

It doesn't make sense.

Life doesn't operate.

We don't have jobs the same way that we had when we were younger.

Everything is changing, but we're not changing what we're teaching kids.

So, I spent three years

prior to this just interviewing thousands of families and experts on what kids should be learning.

And when you see things like the mental health crisis taking place in young adults, 80% of kids and young adults are as stressed out as they've ever been.

34% report depression.

And even in talking to that former, to the former dean of students at Duke, she said on college campus, their biggest issue is how kids feel about themselves and how they treat other people, which we've all seen in the news.

What are we going to do about that?

And so Legends is an outcropping of me as a parent trying to solve a problem for myself and then putting those tools in the hands of as many families as possible.

Wow.

So basically out of this, this happens a lot, like out of despair, I guess, in a very low point in your life, you basically had like a life-altering decision to change and pivot what was important to you.

And then really like decided to do this because of that, because of

where you were.

in a bad place and you turned it into really doing something positive.

Yeah, I think it just helped me understand something that really everyone understands intuitively on their own, but it helped me reprioritize, I would say, where I wanted to spend my time and effort and energy.

You know, my background now for the last 20 years, I've been an entrepreneur.

So I wanted to use my entrepreneurial skill set on what I think is my top priority, which

is my kids.

My job.

is as an entrepreneur, but my main job is as a parent.

So that's 100% true.

I feel the same way.

And so did you start?

So you said you started this three years ago.

So for two years after you realized you weren't dying of cancer, what did you do?

Did you kind of stay at the job that you were doing at the CPG?

No, I never, I never went back.

Right.

So whatever.

I never went back.

So what I, so in that time, I decided to unwind a lot of things.

So we were friends moving back to New York, doing a bunch of things that I decided I didn't think made as much sense anymore.

I worked on a project to try to build community.

I have another big belief that when you're part of something bigger than yourself, there's a big epidemic of loneliness.

I love building community and bringing people together.

Even with ledges, I think about the idea of like, how do we help?

Like we met each other as parents who are working together on the same problem.

So I worked on a community project in North Carolina where I was living at the time.

Where was it?

And then it was, but it was, it was called Union.

So the idea was, can you build a physical space that can bring people together in much the same way you see private members' clubs, but could we make it really affordable and focused on diverse interests?

So for instance, like, you know, right now as a parent, you meet people, a lot of times you meet people through your kids and things of that nature, but it makes way more sense to meet people through your own interests as an adult.

And I think that happens less and less.

And it's very difficult, particularly the more involved you are in your kids' life.

Could we find ways to use technology and physical spaces to bring communities together around adults' interests.

So what happened to it?

I mean, COVID was

pretty debilitating to the

in-person

in-person meetup.

And the other thing I always think about is affordability in space.

So I want to make things that can change how we operate as a society, but I also want to make sure they're really affordable.

And creating affordable physical spaces is really difficult when costs creep.

So that was a big challenge.

Okay, so then walk me through how this started because, okay, so three years ago, you said that you started to interview a lot of people, thousands of people.

So it was it that when the union idea was when COVID hit and you couldn't do that anymore, then you started to rethink this idea.

And then how did you land on doing a self-confidence training platform for kids?

Like, where did that go?

How did it go from what you were doing to what it is now?

Yeah.

So somebody reminded me by asking in COVID, what would the Boy Scouts look like if they were started today?

And I thought that was like such an interesting provocation, you know?

By the way, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, they're still around and they're thriving still.

People are still doing it.

Yeah, I mean, I think that there's like a variety of different opinions about the Boy Scouts have been plagued with scandal and even the Girl Scouts to some extent.

I think they are valuable.

I think the idea of preparing your kids, you know, a lot of times your kids aren't getting lost in the woods anymore.

They're getting lost online.

And so we're thinking about

what are new skills like, do they need to learn how to tie a knot or do they need to learn something else?

And I think it doesn't mean that I don't think those skills are irrelevant, but what would be the skills you would teach if you were starting from scratch today?

So it's interesting you bring that up, right?

The Boy Scouts, right?

Just because the way I would see it,

forget about all the other things, but what I like about the concept of it is

getting your child involved with team, like a team, not a team sport, but yeah, like a team group of some kind.

And what they do in these scouts things is that like they sell, they raise money for people who need it.

They come together as a, as a group of community and they are there for each other.

They do activities together.

So it really helps with the social aspect, the loneliness aspect, the confidence building, because you're, you're, to your point, what you said earlier is like you're doing something for a bigger cause, right?

Like you're raising money for something bigger than yourself.

When you're, I don't know where the money goes with these cookies or whatever else, probably to their own organization.

But like, what overall, what I like about the whole Girl Scout, Boy Scout thing is that A, I think it's really important for kids to learn team building exercises and that gives them these things for leadership and they raise money and they do things together, they learn how to socialize.

And there's a lot of great things about organizations like that, which I think is really helpful for confidence and self-esteem for kids.

Like, I think it's great when kids are involved with that versus being on an iPad.

Yeah, we didn't,

so we should go back to that.

Yeah.

No, no, no.

Let's go back to the iPad and its pros and cons, but I didn't get to the idea of confidence only didn't emerge as the thing to teach.

In the conversations we had, I started talking, I talked to this woman I mentioned, Sue Wasilik.

She was the dean of students when I went to Duke undergrad, and she was really impactful in how I saw the world and some of the programming I did there.

She has been at Duke for 42 years, responsible for student life.

So in a way, she's seen 42 straight years of 18-year-olds in America, hundreds of thousands.

And so she knows what almost like a 1988 vintage.

American at Duke looks like and a 2007 vintage American Duke.

She's been there and she's been for 10 of those years or maybe more than 10 of those years.

She lives on campus in a dorm.

What did she say?

I'd like to say

this is interesting.

Because I don't have, I only have like an N of three.

I only have three kids.

I know what I know.

My friends know what they know.

I was curious to know what does someone, my job is, our jobs are to take our kids to the time they're 18 and then they're on their own, right?

She, meanwhile, has been seeing 42 years of 18-year-olds in America.

So I thought, I bet bet she has an opinion that I would like to hear.

And I had my own thoughts, what she would say.

And I was blown away.

It's not what I thought at all.

She said that if you need to teach your kid how to take care of themselves, kids who are successful at 18 know how to take care of themselves, you know, their family and friends and their community.

And increasingly, they're unable to do so.

It's our biggest problem on college campuses.

They're spending tons of money on psychiatrists and therapists and all these interventions that are taking place when there's already a problem.

And it is a huge problem on college campus.

You can see it on the news if you look at what's going on in college campuses.

Without, it doesn't matter what political spectrum you fall on.

Nobody thinks, including people who run colleges, that the kids are okay.

Not only that, I've saw a ton of research recently actually talking about kids today, 18-year-olds, I should say, not kids, but people who are 18, 19,

are the generation, I thought it was like Gen Z, isn't that Gen Z?

Is the most ill-prepared for life.

They have all the variables to be successful, but they have almost zero self-efficacy, less than ever, ever before.

And so they're scared to even do anything.

So there's less on, there's less entrepreneurs.

There's less people who are trying things because they don't feel they can.

And so that doesn't surprise me that she says that.

What did she say?

If that's happening now, let's say

she's seen that in the last few years.

What did she see as the evolution of that?

Where did it, did it start with social media?

No.

Well, social media has an impact.

She thinks it starts with how people are parenting.

She thinks that the parenting has changed a lot.

So there's,

you know, a technique that we've seen.

And when it comes to that's a thing that's damaging to kids' confidence is actually how parents treat and talk to them.

So when you snowplow and you remove the obstacles in front of your children, you remove the ability for them to have productive struggle, you're actually doing them a huge disservice.

And so, you know, you've probably seen this recent study of 800 hiring managers that took place and 20%

of Gen Z applicants attempted to bring their parent to the job interview.

And that was

an amazing statistic to see.

And

a very large percentage wouldn't turn on their cameras.

And so her suggestion was really though rooted in mental health and the health generally of kids.

There's a saying that says, you know, when you get something wrong once, it's a mistake.

When you get something wrong twice, it's a choice.

So as a parent who's the, we are raising the next generation after Gen Z.

Gen alpha implies a chance to start over and reconsider things.

I have a question about that.

Do you mind?

Because everything you're saying is, is I think this is like very,

extremely important information for every parent to listen to because this is, this is like backed by legit research.

What I find interesting, so you're saying that more so the self-efficacy that has been like basically

just completely dismissed from what's happening is really from the parents.

Is it because of the woke culture?

Because now I call it the caudal culture, where

everything is about, you know, feeling your feelings, saying your feelings, ruminating in your feelings, talking about your feelings, where it's too much of your feelings and therefore, and people are just putting too much onus on that.

Well, now you're ruminating on all these bad feelings and labeling yourself as, you know, AD, you know, ADHD or anxious or all these things.

So now we're walking around with these labels.

And then because we have these labels, then we play into these labels.

And, and, like I said, this idea, this like caudal culture of like, God forbid, we let our kid just figure something out on their own for five minutes or get their bored for a minute.

We over program, over schedule.

And these helicopter moms, you're creating, quite frankly, very fragile, weak people with zero ability for resilience, which is very dangerous for Generation Alpha.

So, so what, here's what, here's what we did and how that ties into, I think, what you're saying.

So we spent, so actually she left Duke and runs, she started, she's one of the first people to join the team to help build our research center because, you know, my, my role is as a entrepreneurial parent who cares a lot about the solution, right?

And I think what we're talking about is what are the solutions, what can we do about this practically?

When we look at what we're talking about, actually, is you were interviewing her initially to kind of, because you're curious about the evolution of 18 year olds and then how you came up with okay what we really need is an app to train kids on self-confidence it's it's not that it's

the product is important but it's actually an it's at the outcome level what i was seeking and what i'm generally seeking is what are we going to do about gen alpha if we know the mistakes have been made with gen z that's the broader thing that's important and i think there are so the so our research began to point to this decline in confidence.

And it began to also point to the fact though that confidence is a skill that can be trained.

And when we started interviewing thousands of families, like what do they want out of their schools?

And you could, there's so many arguments about every aspect of school.

And it doesn't matter where you stand on

something like what should be taught or how do you feel about bathrooms or some other kind of political feeling topic.

The main thing that parents want is for their kids to feel good about themselves.

Everybody knows that the system isn't working for them, no matter where you sit on the political spectrum.

Nobody believes that the system is constructed really well for a modern era.

So we can talk about the things like the issues

like the kids are feeling stressed out.

and giving an increasing number of labels.

That's creating awareness.

And I think that's okay.

I don't think it's bad to be aware that you have a problem.

I think personally speaking, the challenge is creating awareness without creating solutions, because then you just drive anxiety around, oh, I have a problem.

I have a problem.

I have a problem.

I'll give you an example.

Like you need to help people reframe those problems into things that they can do about them.

And that is where we're trying to move to a like a confidence building app.

If confidence was the number one problem, the things that families wanted, and we see that it's like important for success.

We see its decline in this generation for Gen Z, right?

It also turns out that confidence is a skill.

It's not a trait that you're born with.

Athletes have it.

People who think about mindset, performers, even astronauts,

as we looked into the research, there are confidence coaches.

There are ways to measure and assess confidence, which means it is a skill that you can practice and improve, which means if that's what people want for their families more than anything else, and it's a tactical skill that you can practice and improve, why are we not doing that as a society?

That's where the,

you know,

a confidence app for kids came from.

It's an outcome of the research.

Right.

It's a solution for what the problem is.

Because otherwise, nobody knows what's the solution.

And so all we know is that there's a problem.

And that's not enough anymore for us.

Look, we're gen alpha parents.

I don't have time, and nor do I have faith that the powers that be are going to come up with solutions for our kids in the timeframe that we need solutions.

So, we need to take matters into our own hands and be able to go, what are real solutions, and how can we give them to as many people as possible?

So, you're basically saying that this was part of a bigger plan, and that you just found a solution for what you saw was a real driving problem, which was the confidence has been on a nosedive, lack of confidence, lack of self-esteem.

And so you figured out a way to kind of a solution for people to, for parents to help their kids get, get that.

But that's not even at the end.

That's not the end point.

That's still, that's just one solution of a bigger plan.

Yeah, I think that ultimately, the way I see it is what kids learn and how they learn it, it needs to fundamentally change.

Okay, wait.

So let me just say the other part.

So then the other thing is you said that confidence is a skill like anything else.

I'm a big believer in that, as you know.

I think boldness is a skill.

I think these are not traits that you have to be innately born with.

I think you can work on them.

But what I want to ask you, I want you to tell people is if it is a skill that you can get better at with practice, how do you practice it?

How do you measure it?

Because you just said that you can measure it.

through you can measure your confidence.

I think that to me is a really fundamental piece here.

Because a lot of these things are very much like esoteric and we don't know how to measure it.

Yeah, it's important.

I think, because I think confidence is a word like nice.

It can mean a lot of things to everyone.

So for instance, confidence is very obviously contextual.

You can have confidence in math and not have confidence in public speaking.

And so it doesn't mean the same thing.

When we talk about confidence at legends, it means three things.

How you see yourself, so your self-concept, how you treat yourself, self-compassion, and how you believe in yourself, self-efficacy.

Those are the three aspects that are really important.

And there is very well established research in each of these areas.

And they're all measurable.

A lot of that measure is done through self-assessment and points in time.

But in our program, we're also leveraging artificial intelligence to help us actually measure how families actually give their responses so that we can deliver more or less content and activities based on how people are doing it.

So for instance, I and my daughter tend to, when we, when we measure, we develop these confidence profiles.

And again, this is coming out of the world of sports psychology.

You can take a confidence profile and it'll tell you how you rank, how you rate.

It's not like an absolute number, like you can't get 100% or make 100 out of 100.

You can just score in like low levels, high levels, and develop a range, right?

On things like self-compassion or self-efficacy, self-belief or self-identity, right?

Some people tend to score score low on self-compassion.

I do.

Probably a lot of entrepreneurs do.

And when you think about high performance, that's an issue where you're like, you're really hard on yourself.

That can be detrimental.

So you want to improve those areas over time.

So you might get in the Legends program, you might get more activities that help you work on improving self-compassion.

Some people are really actually good at treating themselves well.

They just don't see themselves doing great things, right?

They have a a hard time with self-concept.

So they get more stories that are rooted in different things.

So for instance, if you think that self-concept is rooted in narratives.

So there's this idea of like, there's an author, like, what is my life going to look like?

How can I stitch together the events in my life in a logical way?

Then there's the actor and the agents.

When actors, like, what are the roles and values that I play?

And agents, like, what are my, what are my values?

You know, those are things that we don't talk about in our society.

Very few adults, if you ask them, like, what are your goals and values?

How does your life stitch together in a relevant way?

Right.

You have to do it, whether you're on a date, college interview, a job interview.

These are really fundamental things that we should be teaching children that dramatically improve how they show up in the world, not in like a theoretical way.

Your performance is determined by how you feel about yourself.

And any, any elite athlete already says that, right?

Really, in the NBA, you hear it all the time.

All these guys are saying the vast majority of people who are in the NBA aren't there because of their physical capability.

They're there because of their mindset, right?

So they are really, really good at focusing on developing these skills.

We want, I want to live in a world where we start that early on, upstream.

Remember, we're only talking about right now in colleges, it's intervention.

Let's hire more therapists, et cetera.

But what if we started practicing and doing work way earlier on?

But like, again, using the athlete mindset thing, they say, you know, amateurs practice till they get it right once and pros practice till they can't get it wrong.

So for me and my family and for a generation of kids, I want us to be able to practice over and over and over again so that by the time they get on social media and the time they get to college, they know how to handle things.

People right now in the culture wars that you hear, we're trying to legislate away the bullies and the bad guys and the meanies.

And that is doing everyone a disservice.

First, you can't make them go away.

You can't write laws to make it illegal to be mean to people.

You can train people for how to remain calm and have civil discourse.

And that is very obviously the solution.

But what to do about it?

Well, that work has to be done through some set of tooling that's actionable.

We can't just talk about it once or watch it on a podcast and hope it goes away.

We need practice.

So if the way that we use Duolingo or Calm to help train mindfulness or languages, I believe you could use to train confidence.

That's why that's how you get to an app for building confidence and offering it directly to families instead of hoping that you get it into your school is what I think is going to happen.

Families need choice for what they want their families to learn.

And the best way to do it is to bypass the system and offer it directly to families.

And that's that's our strategy.

And that's what I think the future looks like.

That was so great.

I love everything you just said, Sonny.

I wholeheartedly agree with all of that.

That was so good.

I swear.

And I, okay, but you said something that I want to know just tactically:

are you able with this platform, with AI, to really target someone who is, like you said, who's showing that maybe their area is self-concept, is that's their struggle versus self-efficacy.

Whatever, are you able to kind of find out and really hone in on someone's particular area that they need, that they clearly need more help in than others, and then give them the program or the training module that they need?

So it's not just like a umbrella for like an overarching program for everybody on day 16 or day 12.

Yeah, and remember,

that's the promise of why we need technology in education.

Right now, if you think about it.

So yes, you can do that.

Yes, you can do that.

And increasingly, we're in an era of, we're in an era of amazing advancement in technology.

And all we do is talk about why it's so scary and it's so bad for our kids.

And that is a massive mistake.

All of us, okay, we grew up, you remember when people are like, TV is bad for you, rotting your brains watching TV.

Yeah.

These screens are bad for you.

We all heard that growing up.

Same thing now as adults.

We're like going to our kids, these screens are bad for you.

But just like Sesame Street was like, we could use these screens to put good content on them.

It makes sense that we could use these screens and technology to help our kids.

They don't have to be tools that are bad for our kids, as long as we take a point of view on what is it that they're supposed to be doing.

So instead of just like painting it with a really negative brush, it's part of what it's part of our society.

It's part of our culture.

So you might as well do the best you can with what you have and provide it with content and educate things that can actually up level you.

And deliver personalization.

So personalization,

whether it comes to legends or anything else is the answer.

Remember back

in the

early days, you know, you

know,

private education with, you know, in the time of, you know.

education's outset when you're looking at like Aristotle and Plato.

There was, you would get to know the child and they would get, you know, an education in that regard, right?

Then, as society got bigger and bigger and the needs got different, we moved into an industrial area.

You can person, but basically, you're saying that you guys can personalize someone's needs based on what you find through technology.

And you're going to see that happen across education.

So, what's going to happen is education, kids are going to be able to learn more and more and more things in a more personalized way.

And we're going to see the move away from one size fits all education because one size fits all fits no one no one buys everybody gets customized things you barely door dash knows what you want to eat netflix knows what you want everyone is consuming everything in highly personalized ways and it's so true obvious that that's going to move to education you know it's so fun it's not so but things like sometimes the things that are so you know common sense is not so common and it's interesting that you just said that because you're right like if you really think about it everything now has become very personalized, right?

Like personalized telemedicine, personalized supplements, everything is so customizable to exactly what that person needs and wants.

But yet the most single most important thing for kids is education.

And it's the most archaic thing that has not been customizable yet.

And we even say things like,

you shouldn't even be allowed.

There's

a number of people who believe you shouldn't even be allowed

to have a say in what your kids learned, which is an crazy thing to do.

Look, if you think about it, America is built on two things, in my opinion.

My parents, I grew up in rural North Carolina, and my dad came with $7 to the United States for the American Dream.

Actually,

he went to Albert Einstein where they just did that billion-dollar,

that woman just gave a billion dollars so that everyone's always free tuition at Albert and

the Bronx.

So he came there to his medical school.

Wait, wait, wait, no, topic.

You just said that to me.

So there's a philanthropist just gave, she's one of Warren Buffett's early Berkshire Hathaway person, and she's in her 90s, and she just gave a billion-dollar grant to help so that they're no, so all the students at Albert Einstein School of Medicine, Yeshiva University in the Bronx,

will receive, yeah, will receive free medical tuition for, I think, forever.

But so I was talking about, I think right now, there are two important things for Gen Alpha that will dictate what the future looks like broadly.

America has two things that I think are so important.

There's the American dream and there's the freedom of choice.

That's what it's built upon, right?

So when my dad came here, he came with $7

with the idea that he could build this amazing life for himself.

And a lot of people can identify with that thought.

We moved to, we moved from, you know, the Bronx down to Asheboro, North Carolina,

rural north carolina town and people always say when i grew they asked me now nowadays people look and they look at me as a seat guy and they go that must have been horrible and it just shows you where we're at like it certainly i had differences with people around us but i enjoyed living in that town my my parents still live there and they love their community and even though they still live in north carolina yeah they still live in this small town that they've moved they've lived in there for like 45 50 years they've been living there and they love this town and they find that they have a lot in common with people, even though they're really different than them.

They have a lot of the same values with people.

They're fundamentally different.

They moved there in the 70s.

And what they taught me growing up at a young age was that you can see all the differences in people, but mostly you have most things in common with most people.

And you can see your differences as weaknesses or you can see them as strengths.

And right now, we live in an environment where differences come across as weaknesses and we look at them like, oh, I should be a victim because of my differences.

And I think that's a mistake.

In my own experience, the differences that I have, when you are able to see them as strengths, have been the reason why I've been able to achieve things.

Like I was able to play in my favorite band growing up, the Thievery Corporation, because I played.

obscure drum that I play at a Sikh temple.

And I thought, I was like, I wish I could play with someone.

I thought I almost manifested this opportunity to play with this band.

After 9-11, there was so much backlash against Sikh people.

And there was the desire to put, you know, people in different, different ways of being represented.

That's how I did this fashion modeling.

And became the first turban wearing fashion model by just taking a different perspective of how can a difference be a strength.

And I think that the way that would be an important skill to teach people, that's a different version of confidence, right?

But that American dream really is alive.

And the majority of Americans, I saw this thing in the Wall Street Journal the other day, that the majority of Americans think that the American dream is dead.

And I think that we would be doing Gen Alpha, our own kids, and that next generation a disservice to believe that.

And I don't think that's true.

And the way we can create dreams is by teaching them that they have all of these opportunities, right?

They have the ability to choose the things that are inside of them that are really strong and double down on making those things great.

Not looking at those, why are all the things bad?

Why is everyone else making me bad?

But they can look at things and go, I could do this.

I am this thing that I see as a difference.

I can double down on that.

And I think if we invested in strengthening that, what we're calling confidence and self-efficacy and capability from a young age, it can solve so many problems through really like mindset training.

And I think that is the most important thing that we can do.

Instead of trying to make everyone the same and fit into a box, I think we should be trying to lean into the differences.

That's what makes America great.

What makes America great is the idea that we have incredible strengths.

I just watched Oppenheimer a couple of days ago and I realized like they bring the best people in the world who are very different together around common problems.

Can I just say something also?

I think what's important about all of this is that people learn these lessons too like later, right?

When they've already kind of like had a lot of like problems and issues and didn't really work on these very fundamental foundational things to make you go for go for it or ask for it or do it, right?

And so what I really love about everything that you're doing and what we're talking about is because you are literally, when I say you, it's like what we're trying to do is we're trying to prime your brain

for

your for your successes in every area of your life early on.

So you kind of walk into college, let's say, with self-efficacy and through your junior high.

And when you're when you are in this world, you kind of have a shift of how you think of yourself and see yourself and talk to yourself.

And you kind of, you kind of nip it in the bud, like you do it early on when it's, when your brain is forming and when you do have that ability to prime.

And you just have to practice it.

Look, you see in the startup world.

So I come from the startup world and I come from the performance, you know, the fitness world, but both places say everything you want is on the other side of like fear, right?

You just

fear, but also doing hard things.

I think what the big

is, yeah, and failing for sure.

Failure is just

basically your entree to success.

But I also believe that the way you really build confidence is doing hard things.

And when you see you can actually accomplish hard things, it builds your self-efficacy.

If you make, you see yourself being competent.

Like I believe there's a big correlation between competence and confidence.

If you see yourself as competent, that's what builds confidence.

And if you can do things little by little, brick by brick, and that's how you build it.

And so when you're building it, when you're starting at a young age, this is why, that's why I'm, I'm like such a huge believer in what, what this is, is because that's what I feel kids are lacking.

Because for whatever reason, because the parenting of the woke, whatever the reason is, you are now get your, you're instead of focusing on only the problem, you're giving someone a solution.

And so it's like, okay, if this is the issue and there is like a real decline in confidence and self-esteem and self-efficacy, here's how we can make it better.

And we can, you can make it better by doing this for five minutes a day, 10 minutes a day.

I really want to ask you from all the research, what have you seen?

And what have you seen to be the amount of time necessary?

Is it a daily act?

of training?

Do you do it daily?

Do you have to train daily for confidence?

Do you train weekly for confidence?

What's the minimum amount of time that you need to do this?

What's the maximum amount of time what give me some kind of parameters here yeah so i'll say first of all we don't have all the answers this is a journey that we're just beginning we're just okay you know we're taping this a week before we're publicly launching the business okay so i'll wait a couple weeks until we actually no no but but i'll say so but we've been working on for three years and we've seen in our result we've been working with this with thousands of families so far and i've been using it with my own family because i don't want to put something out there i don't know works 90 of people who go through our program and do at least 90 days of activities show a measurable increase in confidence.

Okay, first of all, how old are your kids?

And what's the age that this is really tailored for?

So here's how, let me just talk about how, here's how Legends works.

So it's targeted for families with kids aged seven to 11.

And we send families.

It's designed for families to do together, so parents and kids, and we send five minute activities or little micro documentaries in a way about a legendary person alongside of an interactive activity that are all based in research around an idea like visualization as a technique to teach self-efficacy.

It makes sense?

So

my kids are doing it right now.

Listen, I just finished saying, like, I'm like, I'm obsessed and love everything about this.

I think it's...

it's not only just brilliant.

I think it's necessary and needed.

And I don't know why anybody would not use this tool when it's available.

So it makes sense.

Yes, it makes sense to me.

But the way, so the question you asked was how often, how long?

And there's no, just like we talked about, there's no right answer when it comes to the healthcare system and personalization and everything else.

There's no real right answer, but you want to do it as much as you can.

It's probably like working out and eating right.

You know,

you really want to make it a part of a lifestyle, in my opinion.

And that, the hardest thing isn't deciding whether you want to do legends, in my opinion, in my opinion.

The hardest thing is making it a priority, which is why we try to make it really short.

We try to make it, you don't need to do it a lot.

But I do think, you know, we talked about before the research around just naming and saying people have problems isn't, you know, necessarily all that helpful.

And there's a lot of research coming out that says, you know, just naming a bunch of problems.

can create more problems, right?

Yeah.

But I was watching the Huberman podcast the other day where he's talking about physiology and what the next generation needs to learn it's it is important that you're able to

understand and be aware when you're facing a conflict or an issue so i think awareness is a big part of it and then tactically understanding what you're going to do like i'm going to take a breath i'm going to say this to myself is really really powerful and that is a a difficult that's easy to say and hard to do it's like eating right every day or getting eight hours of sleep or, you know, not thinking about anything during while you meditate.

So being able to catch how you feel and redirect yourself in a positive way is a piece of training that is hard for adults, so it seems impossible, but is actually very possible.

Plenty of athletes and top performers do it.

And it's a thing I think all kids should start.

There's no downside to being able to train positive mindset.

What I also want to say the thing that I think is really important for anything like this is the idea that you're building a habit, right?

And more than anything, it's that when you start doing something over and over again, that in itself, even if you don't do it every day, but you become used to and comfortable doing that thing where that in itself reminds you.

in itself right like oh you know because even though i may not you know eating well or like you you were saying earlier, exercising, it's the fact that like after a while, it becomes kind of part of your, your routine where you just become much more conscientious and conscious of it.

So if you have these negative talks or bad ideas or bad concepts or self-conceptually or self-efficacy or all any issue that you may have that maybe or not me or a child's having that may take them down the wrong path, it's a good like kind of reminder or like a rejig that, oh, wait I was I was I remember doing this or I saw that or I was taught that or I like you just get you're kind of give you you're giving their your child these really positive feedback or memories or ideas that these things are possible tools for them you know one of the things that so exactly it makes it makes a lot of sense but one of the unintended one of the things I didn't realize probably the most positive aspect I'd love to hear your take as a customer but when you do, when you, we think it's important for kids and parents to do this together because parents have such an incredible impact on outcomes for kids.

In fact, I saw the study out of Duke recently around resilience in college students and the role of a trusted adult is the trust having the presence of a trusted adult is one of the top indicators of how resilient a child is.

And it's the same thing happens when you think about

efficacy and learning.

And so we were like, okay, let's, it's not, this isn't an app that you give to your child because most kids at 7, 11, very, very few kids have their own phones and devices that they just do on their own.

Right.

So when it, but when a child and a parent sits down together, they're able to have a conversation together and they experience it together.

And we found that kids love it at that age because they don't get a lot of time to just be with their parents and we've turned the screen from a bad thing to a good thing like kids obviously love watching fun interesting videos about you know what could be taylor swift or you know love

so about a hero but they have a structured conversation with their parent where they're practicing something useful and they get the positive like association of that idea from someone that they really respect and care about.

And I think it drives learning outcomes in a way that is really positive.

And it takes more learning back to the family, which is a really important thing that

we've gotten away from in the United States, where we outsource so much learning and so much of what your kid learns comes from someone who you don't spend any time with.

And driving more and more of that learning back home in a productive way is a extremely positive, at least from a research basis, it's extremely positive in learning outcomes.

I also, I understand that as a customer, what I think is also really

interesting and really important is spending those like, it's actually more like seven or eight minutes, not five minutes, but you learn a lot about where your child is at in their mentally, like how they think.

like what they think, what they gravitate to, like what are the first thoughts they're thinking?

Or you're watching their reactions to whatever it is.

So I think as a parent,

again, this is another reason why I really love, love it, is not only am I spending that quality time that's like one-on-one, but

I'm gaining a lot of really valuable information about how my child thinks, feels in that moment, because it is interactive.

It asks very, very direct, specific questions, not only to the kid, but to the parent too.

So it it says to your kid, like, what was the last thing that you did that made you feel really good or made you feel this way?

And you, when the kid answers the question, you're like, oh, it's like, it's sometimes very surprising what they come up with, right?

And so I'm saying it's very valuable information.

And then it turns it on the parent every time.

And I'm still to this day, by the way, I'm on day, like, I don't know what day, like 91, I don't know what the day is.

And it, you know, it poses the question for the parent.

And I'm always like baffled.

I'm always like, oh, like, I can only imagine how the kid feels because I'm always like thrown off, right?

But the kid is always.

But you know why that's important?

Sorry, not to interrupt you.

Go ahead.

No, but I was going to say, whatever I normally say, sometimes my kid will fill it in for me, be like, oh, I know, mom.

It's, it's, you know, it's this word that makes me that when you feel this way, you think this, or this is the event, or what, or if I'm saying it, it opens up a dialogue into why it was what it was.

So there's, like I said, why I love this is, and by the way, this is not a paid endorsement, an ad of any kind.

This is legitimately something that I believe is so

important for any parent.

By the way, even if you're not a parent, this could be great training for confidence for even if you're older to kind of just refresh all these very important things because don't forget children are small adults.

we're all the same person

that's what i was gonna say like oh yeah we're not you're not you don't really raise kids you raise adults yeah and the number one influence you know like statistically the the the largest percentage of how they get trained for their self-talk is how your parent talks to you so essentially parents are training the voice inside your head and and one of the classic ways to erode a child's confidence confidence in how they feel about themselves is to watch a parent treat themselves themselves poorly they you know you know the idea that kids don't do what you say they do what you do so in order for you to

help your child be a certain way you have to be a certain way.

No one wants to hear that.

It's the case because it's like hard work, but that's why you just go on the journey together.

And I think that's a net positive outcome, not for the kid, but for the whole family.

But that's how you get, drive the learning.

I 100% agree.

But can you give us some more facts?

Because I mean, just to that point, just not to belabor it, but that's why my kids are pretty active, right?

Because they see me very active.

So like my daughter's doing and my son, like they're like walking around the house doing push-ups, or they're like running around.

They've got a lot of energy because that's such a deeply important piece of like.

what I do, not just what I say, but what I do.

And kids are parrots.

They mimic.

Sorry, kids kids are parrots.

They mimic what they see.

So that's another thing, right?

Like, I just, I really believe like it does all start at the home.

And, you know, what else have you seen from your, all the research?

Yeah.

Are other things that people can do?

Forget about, you know, the training, self-confidence.

But to give kids more self-confidence, besides the obvious things, the things that I talk about, like obviously team sports.

And that's why I was saying earlier, I love like even for whatever the, for whatever reason, the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, it's like, it's still, it's still very much a feeling of community and team building and socializing.

Other than those types of things, show me and tell me other things that we can do to help our kids with our self-esteem and confidence.

So I'll give you a few things that I've seen.

And we have obviously hundreds of examples in this program of tactical research-based things that you can practice.

I'll give you one for the parent and one for the child or parent and child.

So there is this, there's this National Science Foundation piece of research around the voice in our heads.

And we have roughly 15 to 60,000 thoughts a day, which is a big range, but like tens of thousands of thoughts a day, of which on average, 80% are negative and 95% are repetitive, which is scary.

So who you are is what you're saying to yourself over and over and over again.

And a lot of it is really negative.

So once you stop to understand that, that's your own construct is who you are.

And obviously then you can impact your child.

So we're taking something out of like HBR's research and studies for like, for leaders, for business leaders.

Like, what is the right ratio of positive to negative statements when you're trying to foster a strong sense of achievement in a person?

We're just applying business strategy, leveraging research.

They're saying

there's no like perfect way to be perfect on this, but on average, if you're going to say something negative to your child,

it's a good idea to be aware of how often you're saying negative versus positive things.

And for every negative thing you say, you should try to give five positive pieces of reinforcement.

Otherwise, you'll cycle into a place where they're just thinking about the negative thing, right?

And it's just a piece of awareness awareness for when you're a parent, you're talking to, you are training your child's voice in their head.

And it is important that you recognize that.

So when you're going to say something negative, which you have to all the time, it's important that you understand that you have an obligation, if you're considering this, to drive the number of positive things, which requires now awareness on you.

So you're saying for every negative thing you say, you need to have five positives to make it equal, like to balance it out to that is like there's there have been a lot of studies conducted on what is the optimal

number of positive to negative things in management relationships to create a sense of camaraderie and positivity because managers have to give negative feedback so it's not just for children right no no this is this is for everybody you're saying one so the ratio is one to five yeah it can be as high as 15 to one but like it can't be one to one because what happens is based on the the mindset research they're going to spin the negative thing way more times than the positive thing and when it comes to a child you're essentially setting them up to have another hurdle to overcome yeah in their mindset makes sense yeah it makes total sense in fact actually

i had this conversation i had a woman on my podcast who is her She had a book called Mind Your Manners, and she's got a Netflix show called the same thing named Sarah Jane Ho.

And in her book, and we talked about this on the podcast, we talked about for every bad impression you give someone, like if you have, if you give, if you're giving somebody a bad first impression, or it will take you eight positive impressions.

She says eight is a number to supersede that bad first impression.

So the number was one to eight.

So you're saying for like, that's like a, that's a, or above.

So there's a lot of, I love numbers like that.

I think it's very important.

Like I love statistics like that because it gives us a context to where we should be doing, shooting for exactly.

And then not a statistical tactic, but a very specific tactic that you can do that I actually did, that I learned from actually from Serena Williams from the research on that.

So a lot of people ask, and probably in your world as well, when it comes to

do affirmations work?

So I'm going to explain how, how and why affirmations work and a tactical thing you could do.

So there are five core ways to build self-efficacy.

So the first is, and Huberman talks about physiology, the ability to actually remain physically calm is the first thing you need in order to believe that you can actually, as a tool of self-efficacy.

If you can't remain calm, you have no real shot of controlling whether you can believe in, you know, you can actually do anything.

Then verbal persuasion is an important part of it.

So that's what an affirmation is.

Saying you can do this, like I got this.

That's a quite, quite relevant thing.

Visualization, being able to see it, right?

And then also a mastery experience, like you pointed out, evidence, can I actually do this, right?

And being, and then a vicarious experience, can I see someone else do it?

In this case, in an affirmation, Serena Williams changes all her passwords on her computer, in her phone.

to a positive affirmation.

So she has to reinforce positivity because in tournaments and difficult times, you can get really down on yourself.

And so you really need to train positive mindset.

And I think that's like the simplest hack that you can do that takes two minutes.

And you could just go in, change your phone, change your password.

You can take, turn off face ID and force yourself to say something.

But the key to a good self-affirmation, because you can't, I love that.

And it's, but the thing is, people are like, do self-affirmations work?

There's a ton of research that shows that affirmations work really well.

They can improve outcomes.

They can improve outcomes in school.

They can decrease stress levels.

I mean, there are dozens of studies if you just Google it in this area.

But all affirmations aren't made the same.

So people misunderstand an affirmation.

An affirmation is really a value that you believe about yourself.

I am hardworking.

I am really fortunate.

I'm a good parent.

These are all like very good affirmations.

What's a bad affirmation is

something

where you are, where it's performative.

Like, I'm the champion.

I am number one.

I am the best, because when you don't win, it destroys your sense of self.

So, those are terrible affirmations.

And another bad affirmation is something that you don't believe, because affirmations aren't a good way to convince yourself.

something like if you don't believe you're good at public speaking and you're like i'm a good public speaker it doesn't help you so so when you so when you realize that and that's actually one of the things i've i've found in legends it's not just like learning a tactic but learning the why behind the tactic for a child or for a parent can be powerful so you can say something like i am hardworking it helps build that sense of self over time and you put that in your head enough times and it works and that's not just the science i mean that is serena williams will tell you that's like one of the ways in which selena gomez a number of extremely high performers use this science-back technique regularly.

You know how much I love that whole thing.

I know you've told me that before.

I'm obsessed with that.

I think it's so,

so

on the money.

So you have to say an affirmation that you actually believe is true.

So you got to, people have to sometimes dig deep and say, okay, what is it?

What's that one thing I really believe in myself?

Like that I'm, that really talks to me, that really is me.

And that has to be the affirmation versus something that is just arbitrary because otherwise it means nothing it's arbitrary and the other thing as you said earlier it can't just be these performative like i'm the best i'm a champion i'm amazing it has to there has to be like meat on the bone basically and that's how our you can see how the program then is structured

so you start by going what are things that you believe about yourself and why and then later on you have to go here's how you're going to go about setting yourself up to repeat those things and so that that's how we move through the progression of levels.

So good.

And I believe every child,

honestly, every person should have to go through those things because those are the skills of the future.

You know, I saw this thing.

You know who Jensen Wong is?

The, you know, NVIDIA.

It's like the most valuable company in the world now.

They make all.

And he said a couple of things that I thought were really important.

One is,

you know, he was like, they were like, oh, would you ever start NVIDIA again?

He was like, I would never start start a company because it's so hard.

You really, it's incredibly difficult and difficult.

It requires so much belief in yourself.

But he said, in the future, it does not matter to learning how to code is a mistake.

The things that we're teaching kids now are a mistake because like English will be the language.

You just will speak.

What matters is that you develop mastery in an area.

Because the people who are masters in an area, who have really done the hard work in being good in any area that they believe in, are the ones who are going to then create the programs of the future.

You don't need to learn how to code with AI.

So as we think about like what the future looks like, we want to empower kids with the ability to be their best self, not with trying to teach them arbitrary skills.

Our world is fundamentally changing.

So the skills are like critical thinking and reasoning and fitness and you know confidence all of those types of financial literacy those are the skills that are going to matter more and more and the skills like algebra you know algebra i think is used in less than five percent of jobs and is the number one reason that people drop out of school algebra yeah really yeah it's like one of the it's either algebra or calculus

by the way i brought i wouldn't i wouldn't be surprised because that was my achilles heel and it made my life so horrible i wanted to drop out of school because of it i'm not surprised it's a what one of the it's like one of those one of the major math programs that's a foundation of learning oh my god so true is rarely used if you think about it like is trigonometry what does trigonometry mean if we were sitting here talking about it you've people study that at school no one is using that we need to be using our time i think that the world of education is going to massively expand the skills that we're going to teach is going to massively expand and it's going to create more specialized, productive, stronger, confident individuals who are going to be able to realize greater things in the future.

And I think that is the future path for America.

I think that's how the American dream starts getting realized again, where people begin to go, oh.

If you're a creative and you're struggling in spite of, you know, you're successful in spite of school, you're going to go, why would I put my kid in this system?

Why wouldn't I be able to help them amplify the things that they're really good at and be able to be great in those areas?

Then use these new technologies to be able to expand upon them.

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So what is phase two?

If the Confidence app is phase one of your grand plan to overtake the world of education and how children are going to be taught, what is phase two?

I can see see what's going to happen.

And I just want to be, I'm very committed to being a part of making the change.

So I don't think any one person is going to come along and disrupt the space.

I think there's going to be a lot of players that come in.

So, you know, the education industry is a one and a half trillion dollar space today in America.

And I think it's too small because we think of it as like K through 12

and it's really a space where everyone needs to be learning all the time and they need to be learning many more things.

So it's for it needs to be for a broader range of ages and it needs to expand into a broader range of ages.

Yeah, I think like right now, if you think about it, just as us as adults,

it's not normal for adults to think that they need to constantly be learning.

For some adults, it is, but like.

Learning is really a lifelong thing and is really important in a time when everything is is changing.

We know jobs are going to look different.

Oh, I see what you mean.

You mean that

most people don't are not into personal growth or constantly?

Oh, I see.

You know, like college is wasted on the young.

Yeah.

You go back, you're like, this is what I learned now.

It's because we only think of it, we think of credentialing at a certain age, and then we're like, and then you're done.

Now you have a job.

But really, I think you're going to be learning for a longer period of time and you'll be learning a broader range of skills.

And I think, therefore, the size of the pie is truly trillions and trillions of dollars.

And this, and right now, technology is not at the core of any of it.

I think of one smart technologist that said a really good way of thinking about any industry is imagining what it would look like if it was

started in the age of technology.

Okay.

So here's what we've seen happen in other areas where there have been a monopoly or a government run institution that they begin to be like privatized, which is essentially what school is like today.

Let's take transportation.

Let's take cabs, right?

You could look at hotels and other spaces like this where a technology-driven disruptor comes in.

First thing that happens, Netflix, what happens is it's a small company.

There's an opportunity for the incumbent to change.

Oh, I see what you're saying.

So you're saying that this is the beginning of a massive overhaul

in a massive industry.

Just how like Netflix came in as a category to the United States.

By the way, do you remember when Netflix was a red box, like in the front of a super?

Well, it actually turns out

one of the Netflix co-founders started Redbox.

Yeah.

Wasn't that Reed or was it the other one?

I think it was a different.

Mark, I had them on my podcast.

Hold on a minute.

It wasn't.

I don't recognize it.

I can't remember this story, but yeah.

So Redbox was there, but obviously Blockbuster had an opportunity to buy Netflix and they're like, whatever.

And that was a famous example.

100%.

That story happens all the time.

And it happens the same way every

time we all watch the same movie.

And for some reason, we think it won't happen.

It happened when I was going to India.

I went to India.

People were like, very smart people were like, No one is going to buy things on the internet in India when I moved to India in 2010.

And

you moved to India in 2010?

Yeah.

And I to start an internet company because to start an e-commerce business.

You moved to India for it.

Yes.

I was in India.

It was after the fashion modeling thing.

It turns out made me like a minor celebrity in India.

Really?

And I thought I should, I'm from, I'm from the small town of North Carolina.

So we went to India to go see, to go see.

And it turned and everyone loved the fact that American brands had made this, had put this Indian seat guy as a fashion model.

And they didn't want brands from India, but all of the stuff that like we were, it was Kenneth Cole, all the products are made in India.

And so I thought, what if, what if you could just make great products in India that people could feel good about?

What does a brand really mean?

And we'll sell it online.

And that was in the time of like fab.com and Guilt Group.

And people were like, you don't understand.

No one buys clothes online.

in India.

That's not what they're going to, they're never going to buy clothes.

They're never going to shop online in India.

And

obviously that's not true everyone can see that if anything they would of course they'd want more things online just the infrastructure is bad there's some very solvable reasons that's a contrarian position based on first principles right which i took and it's clear that that's how it's going to work not because i'm a genius but because it's obvious it's common sense right to you no yeah but it's common sense when you think from first principles similarly Technology is going to massively change how people learn in a personalized way.

It's going to expand the things they're learning.

Of course, that's going to happen.

When people say that's not going to happen, they are definitely wrong.

I don't say that often, but they're definitely wrong.

What happens in these category-defining changes, we have this one investor I learned a lot of this from, Mike Maples from Floodgate, first investor in Twitter, Lyft, Okta.

He's seen this many times.

He's got the, there's a thing called the Midas list in investing.

So he's telling me about how they look at companies and how they see category defining changes.

There's usually like a technology-driven change, and there's some sort of societal change.

And those two things, when they overlap, there's this opportunity for big change.

So, for instance, transportation, you know, post

like the gig economy, Uber and Airbnb happened after the financial crisis when there weren't enough jobs and people were looking for ways to make money, a societal change, right?

And then for, you know, Lyft and Uber, what happened was, it's not like people didn't have that idea before.

The technological change was that everybody had a phone with a GPS embedded in it for free.

So you see how there's like a technological change that mapped to a larger change that made the time is now, right?

Yes.

So let's talk about that example all the way through.

So in that example, first of what people were like, who is going to get, and I remember thinking this, who is going to get into a stranger's car?

That's not a thing.

Right.

Who's going to let rent out stay in a stranger's house?

Not a thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the idea is dismissed outright.

Then it gets traction, but it operates outside of the system.

So it's not in the, it's just like an alternative thing.

And then what happens is it gets a little bit of traction.

People start paying attention and they go, let me tell you all the reasons that will never be a good business.

That's just not going to work.

These people don't know what they're doing.

They don't have the right experience.

Nobody's going to do this.

It's just a flash in the pan.

Then the thing keeps getting bigger, right?

Years later, the thing gets bigger and bigger.

And then the people start paying attention, but they go, you know, it's not as big as we are.

They don't have what it takes to get it done.

So then they start going, when they get just big enough to be a real threat, they start going, you can't trust these people, right?

You can't trust these people.

They've got your data.

They're bad people.

So then these people have climbed up this hill like, you know, these founders have climbed up this hill.

And then they become demonized.

They're untrustworthy, not like the people that you've known.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

And then eventually they climb over that hill because customers want the product because it's a better alternative.

Yeah.

And eventually the system is forced to change.

You could look at the music industry, ride hailing, Airbnb, gig economy.

So let's now let's take a look at our industry, education.

You've got people saying, okay, that's not a thing.

People are not going to learn on their own.

There's a million reasons why that's not going to happen but the tech let's talk about the macro trend everybody has had to learn how to use technology because of covid which is like a life-changing once in a it's a once in a forever thing where everyone had to start by force using technology and it was bad it was not a good experience but everyone did it and some people were like oh this is i could learn stuff i could learn on youtube i can learn on things like out school i can learn on all these news types of tools early adopters right

At the same time, AI is just showing up to drive extreme amounts of personalization in how fast we can develop personalized content.

So these are two things that are going on.

We're just in the first stage right now.

So we're saying, okay, here's a way that you can teach kids.

People say right now about our own business, they're like, no one is going to do that.

That's just not a thing people are going to do.

We used to, we've gone, we go to the Boy Scouts.

It's fine.

I send my kid to karate and taekwondo.

That's where they're going to learn confidence confidence instead of like learning it as a direct result.

It'll continue to grow.

And then people will dismiss it because they're going to say, well, there's a bigger player.

Bigger players never,

never take the, they never take the bait and actually change.

Right.

And then it gets older.

And then some one day people will go, these guys have your data.

They can't be trusted.

We'll go from like the small businesses that are at the on the little engine that could.

We'll be the little engine entrepreneur parents parents who could, and then we'll turn into like these demons who you can't trust.

But you can trust us because we're the system.

You've always been with the system, right?

That is

people continue to get better and better results, ultimately creating a really large opportunity.

And that's when the system will start to change.

It only works by doing it outside.

That's how it works all the time.

It's what's going to happen in education.

It's a foregone conclusion, but only some people have the conviction to see it.

And so

we are

not the education.

We are one part of a broader set of movements where people who are thinking and paying a lot of attention are going, I am increasingly looking for choices outside the system that can give me skills that I need and that I want for my family that are not dictated to me, but I have the choice to learn them on my own.

And that perception will change.

And I think that will create opportunities.

So that's what's going to happen.

And I want to participate in that, not because I think it's a good business opportunity, although I think it is.

I want to do it because I need that change to happen in my kids' lifetime, not 10 years from now.

You know, my kids are 11 and nine and nine.

I need that to happen before they get to 18.

So I will be part of that early adopter set.

And I hope that other people are interested in participating in whatever way, shape, or form that might be.

Our kids are exactly the same age, Mr.

Spyth.

But I love that way you described it.

And that is such a, that's such a truism in what's happened in music.

Look at Spotify.

In life, in everything, like everything.

You know, when iTunes took over the record, you know, like it became, it made the record labels obsolete.

And now Spotify kind of made iTunes obsolete.

This is what happens.

Streaming video, like

blockbuster.

I mean, all of it

in every major industry or corner of life, there is something that ends up being the new way of doing it where the other thing becomes completely obsolete.

I think Nike should run schools.

I think Nike, I think you'll see it's possible that smart, giant private companies would begin to move into the education space.

Companies that could do it are Nike, because Nike is interesting because they believe everybody could be really good.

They take the thesis.

A lot of new education programs use the idea of coaches and guides versus teachers.

First of all, IMG runs a school.

IMG runs.

Right.

So, I mean,

it's not so far-fetched to think that Nike will run a school.

People would send their kids to a Nike school.

First of all, not only that, Nike is probably one of the biggest, probably, I think there's a relationship between, well, actually, maybe not, but Nike

has some kind of affiliation with IMG, or at least their athletes, at least the IMG.

I mean, I have a back of the envelope plan if I was Nike for what I would do to go about.

driving that path because you have an ultra high margin adjacency that's all about mindset and performance and bringing out the best in yourself.

And ultimately, Nike believes that everyone who has a body is an athlete.

Yeah.

Just like, you you know, we believe that

everyone who's born has a, has something that they're good at.

It's a very obvious, Google could be in the school business.

YouTube,

over half of kids in Gen Alpha and Gen Z go to YouTube as their first source of learning.

Not only that, do you know now when we were kids, it used to be when they say, what do you want to be when you grow up?

And it was like, oh, a doctor, a teacher, a dancer.

Now people are like, I want to be a YouTube influencer.

It's a number one thing that people want to be.

It's the number one thing that kids want or young people want to do now when they grow up is being a YouTube influencer or Instagram influencer.

That's the number one thing.

But I don't think that's why they should run it.

No, I don't think that's why they should run it, but I think that's like, it should, it's a clear indication of where this, where we're going in life is what I'm saying.

Yeah.

And I think that that's going to continue to change.

So I think that you're going to see the potential for smart, innovative companies to develop new life skilling programs that are direct to consumer.

I don't know if that's going to happen because some of those companies are so big that that's not their space.

And the people who are being disrupted, we're asking to change are schools.

I can tell you what I do know for sure is that schools aren't going to change in this way in time for our kids because they're not even designed to do this.

They're designed to teach one set of things, the Common Core, to kids one way.

Well, I'll also say one other thing that

is difficult about the img schools right i mean yeah do they take scholarships yeah there's some scholarships given out but usually it's people who have like some type of

you know exceptional ability in either tennis or golf or basketball or what like a sport And by the way, they're expensive.

These are private schools.

Most people in the world can't afford $50,000 a year for school.

It's a private school.

So,

and when you go into the school system there, at the end of the day, because I have a very close friend's kid who's there, they're still doing the same curriculum that you would get at a different school.

You're still doing math, English,

all the other things, but you're also playing a lot of sports.

You also are doing a lot of mindset activities.

You're doing a lot of exercising.

So, they do like, they do incorporate a lot of things, but at the core level, you're still learning what other schools are still learning.

But the problem really becomes down to

price.

It becomes, you're making it for only the elite of the elite can actually go to these schools.

That's why I'm saying, look, what does technology do?

What does it do?

It makes your experiences easier, faster, or cheaper.

That's what, that's really, if you think about a technology project,

it does one or hopefully all of those things.

So our program, for example, is 10 bucks a month, right?

The function that you're solving for, that's a curricular program.

It's a thing.

It's a piece of content that you're developing.

The costs of schools are high and people need almost like a daycare function for their kids.

I wouldn't be surprised if you begin to see micro schools associated with offices.

That's another pretty straightforward prediction I see happening in the evolution where people go in and they go, we're going to build a micro school here that's private that uses digital tools.

to reduce down the costs of the number of staff that needs to be involved.

And I bet you could cut efficacy.

I bet you could cut costs in half of schools, and you could drive efficacy up 2x

through using technology more effectively.

And honestly, there are schools that do this right now.

There are schools in Austin is a great example of a place where there are over 200 micro schools in Austin doing some really innovative things.

They can do 2X, 3X learning using digital tools.

And I think you'll begin to see more and more of those types of programs proliferating around the country.

And it's the beginning of what I think will be change that will benefit people, not just at the top of the pyramid.

What really happens is you benefit people who don't have access.

You'll find them being early adopters.

You know, I've seen that like a lot of people I talk to, they say, oh, like alternative education is for only for the elite and homeschool is only for people who think about fringe tendencies.

But I've talked to people.

I talked to my.

My Amazon delivery driver and I had a conversation the other day.

And I was asking him what he was going to do for the Super Bowl.

And he goes, I'm not watching the Super Bowl.

He goes, I'm, I don't really care.

I'm working on an education app for my kid.

Couldn't believe this.

He has, he taught, he said, the system failed me and it's going to fail my kids.

He's from a small town outside of Oakland.

He spent half his time growing up in this, in a pretty rough part of California and half time in Jamaica.

And he said, it's going to fail me.

It failed me.

It's going to fail my kids.

So I'm just going to learn how to teach my kids.

He taught his son algebra when he's four years old.

His son has 85,000 followers on Instagram.

And he's like, I'm not stupid, even though everyone says that treat me like I'm supposed to be.

And you see people from all walks of life who are like, I could just,

if the system won't serve them, they will find ways and find tools to get there on their own.

And it is a really diverse group of people that are looking for this.

We just don't hear those stories enough.

So one of the things I want to do is, you know, raise those stories up because I think that when people see that they have opportunities opportunities and they have choice, going back to what I think about where the world is going to go, and they're armed with tools where they can develop confidence in their own abilities, you'll see the American dream begin to be realized more and more.

Wow.

So the Amazon driver was telling you this, that he was creating an education app.

Why don't you guys partner together?

I'm talking to him on Thursday.

I'm actually going to do this with him when I get back on Thursday, because I don't believe that it's an accident that we started talking.

And I don't believe that I'm special.

I believe these opportunities exist everywhere that we look.

We just don't believe those things anymore.

But that is the root of.

America and what the world that we live in.

Do you see what I'm saying?

Yeah, what's the root of the whole thing?

What made you even talk, like ask him the question in the first place?

You know what?

He said, you know who he told me because I did talk to him the other day before, and I was like, we need to go back and record all of this so I can help share your story.

He said, I don't even like to drive, and this job hurts.

It's like really hard on me.

And he goes, but asking for money when you're, when you're like me, and if it doesn't work out, people are going to think I stole their money.

So I'm going to earn the money myself.

And he goes, if I have to do this job, I might as well talk to people while I'm doing it.

So he talked to me and i said

and i made my kids listen i go that is quite the life skill my friend because you just opened up an opportunity for us that first of all that is what i love about this entire story because yeah a he's uh taking the initiative doing it himself self-efficacy but more than that you know you got to like throw it out there you got to put yourself in those situations you never know who you never know unless you ask what's the worst that can happen it's like being bold he was yeah it's like being bold what's the worst that can happen you never know unless you put it out there.

But we don't talk to our neighbors anymore.

We don't.

We don't talk to people would say, you don't talk to your Amazon driver.

Why not?

Why wouldn't you talk to your Amazon driver?

In fact, turns out, even though we're from different places, we look different, we're exactly the same.

We're literally working on an education app for kids, and we're going to hang out on Thursday.

And most people would be like, you can't do that.

And the question is.

Of course you're supposed to do that.

It's a framing thing.

And I think that the more we do that, the more opportunity emerges in our communities.

And that, I believe, is like an important part for us.

Oh my God, I love that so much.

You're going to go out with the Amazon driver.

Like of all the people that he struck up conversation with is the person who literally is trying to revamp education as we speak.

But think about how we met, right?

I didn't know you before you started using the program.

And then I was like, oh, the things that you say on the podcast are very in line with the things that I believe, right?

And so we're able to have this conversation.

No, I agree.

Not because it's like a business transaction, it's because we're two parents who care about what happens to our kids in the future.

I happen to have one way of doing it.

You happen to have another way.

We could put those things together and start thinking about how we can collectively start making change for our collective families.

I love that, Sonny.

It's a great way to end this podcast.

And also, again,

people,

you end up being friends with or work with people that you have common interests to.

And so the commonality there.

And you never know who you're going to have common interests with, but those are the people you end up gravitating to.

Wow.

I love that Amazon story.

Can you let me know what happens on Thursday?

After Thursday?

That's so good.

Sonny, I love that you came on this podcast.

You guys, the app or the platform doesn't, I don't care what the word is.

It's called Build Legends.

It is extraordinary.

And I want to be able to give people some way of trying a demo out.

Could we give it away to somebody, like give it a code or anything?

Yeah, yeah.

So we can set up a code.

We'll set up a code.

If you have kids, I highly recommend you guys attempting, giving it a try.

Try it for a week, two weeks, three weeks, and see for yourself how extraordinary it is.

By the way, like I said earlier in this episode, it doesn't even matter if you have kids, try it for yourself.

If you need to boost in confidence, self-esteem, and just to see out of curiosity how it works, you should try it yourself.

It is,

this is, this is the wave of the future.

I love what you're doing.

I love how your brain works.

I love how thoughtful you are of how you perceive and move through the world, doing extraordinary things for the future.

And I'm very honored that you came on the podcast.

I'm honored that I work with you, that I know you.

And I'm just excited to see what else, like, how it evolves.

So that's, that is all I have to say.

Would you like to finish with anything?

Thanks for having me.

I'm excited.

No, I'm excited to see how it goes.

I think that the feeling's mutual.

I think that there are a lot of people who collectively are working on how we can make the world a better place.

And I think that a lot of times we use that in a really simplistic way, but one of the best things to do is to start at home.

We can't.

wait for a system to change or someone else to solve our problems.

Could not agree with you more.

Thank you, Sunny, for being here.

Bye, everybody.

Have a great day or evening or whenever you're listening to this.

Bye.