Building A Kinder Social Feed With Blessn Co-Founder Gerald Jones

If your morning scroll leaves you anxious and drained, you’re not imagining it—your feed is shaping your mood. Gerald Jones joins us to share how he and Kevin Clark transformed that daily dread into Blessn, a free social platform designed for uplifting content, real community, and values-first monetization. Their story starts with a rare 20-year friendship—born backstage at the Academy Awards—and winds through a one-day, shoestring PSA that beat corporate giants to win an Emmy. That same bias for action fuels Blessn’s simple promise: fewer shock clips and divisive takes, more creators who make you feel better when you close the app.

We dig into why doomscrolling exploded post-pandemic, how algorithms hook attention with outrage, and what it takes to build a kinder alternative without a traditional tech background. Gerald gets candid about getting burned by early developers, how they rebuilt with a trustworthy team, and the practical steps any founder can take to protect budget, timeline, and sanity. He also maps out Blessn’s unique monetization: creators can earn from day one by sending personalized “blessings”—short messages of encouragement or humor for birthdays, exams, games, and life moments—without chasing a million followers or bending their values.

You’ll meet the people redefining the feed on Blessn—NBA players, skateboarders, gospel singers, poets, students, and faith leaders—and hear why a safer space matters for parents, job-seekers, and anyone tired of content that might haunt them later. Can positivity actually scale? Gerald argues yes, and that when audiences prove “good sells,” media and advertisers will follow. Until then, Blessn offers a cleanse: a place to scroll, smile, and log off lighter.

Subscribe for more one-on-one conversations, share this episode with a friend who needs a better feed, and leave a review to tell us what uplifts you most.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Intro

Why Blessn Was Born

Show Info And Reviews

SPEAKER_02 0:17

Welcome back to one-on-one with Mr. U. Of course, I am your host, Mr. U. In Studio Wheels is the one of the co-founders of the Blessing app. Gerald Jones is in the house. Kevin Clark couldn't be with us today. But Gerald, good to have you here, sir. How are you, man? Oh, I'm good. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Same here, brother. Same here. If you guys are watching and listening for the very first time, upper right-hand corner of your screen, the QR code that will allow you the opportunity to check out all of our older interview shows and see if you like our profile and our format of doing things and drop your comments also in our DM on social media or in the Apple Podcasts. We can read a five-star review of our show, one-on-one with Mr. You and all of our podcast shows under our brand. So thanks again for your time and watching and listening. And we're here with Gerald Jones, co-founder of the Blessing App. I want to hear more about this. Man, I'm really excited about hearing this. I love the name, by the way, man. But how did you guys come up with the name of the thing? How just how this whole thing started?

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Oh man, you know, the whole thing started actually um from me doom scrolling. Um, I'm sitting in bed, I'm about to go to sleep, and I'm scrolling through the internet and and uh uh some of these other social media platforms, and what I realized is I was starting to feel anxious, I was starting to feel a little bit angry about what's going on in the world. So I go to bed angry, and uh I wake up the next morning and I'm like, man, we gotta do something about this. So I called my uh business partner Kevin. Um, we've been you know friends for over 20 years. I call him up and like, man, I got an idea. We need to do some faith scrolling over doom scrolling. So I pitched him the idea and said, Yo, this is what I think we should do. We should invest our time and money into this. And it was a three-year journey to get it from that concept all the way out to launching blessing. And um, it was man, it's been a fun journey, and and now I'm just excited here to be talking about you know everything we did to get it up and running.

SPEAKER_02 2:07

I love it, man. I'm I'm I'm so impressed when somebody says that they had a friendship that goes back over 20 years. I'm so impressed by that because for what in maybe just my stuff, maybe just my experience, but it feels like people are really flighty with the friendships, it's it's friendships that suit them, it's conditional, things like that. Tell me about I'm excited about all that you guys are doing, but I want to hear about your friendship that really matters to me, and I think our audience will appreciate it as well. You said over 20 years, tell me how you guys met, how'd you sustain a 20-year friendship living in the same area of the of the country? Talk to me how it kind of started and what it looks like now.

The 20-Year Friendship

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Yeah, yeah. You know, I agree with you on that. I have a lot of people who you call friends, um, but for a true friend, it's very hard to find, man. So I mean, I've had people who are conditional friends, people who call you when they need something, or people who are there with you when things are up, and then are your work friends and stuff like that. Yeah, so I remember my dad told me you're only gonna have very few friends. This is when I was a little kid. He told me that you're only gonna have very few true friends if you have any. Um, so it's always been in my mind, like you know, that concept. So I met Kevin um backstage at the Academy Awards, and um, we weren't getting any award or doing anything. We were actually working at the show. So we met backstage, we were both in our 20s, we were just young cats back then. Uh, I was there because I got an internship with Debbie Allen, and then she got me into the Academy Awards. So um, so we met backstage. We both were chit-chatting, talking about our dreams and our future and what we want to see, you know, do in the future. Uh, so that's where it started. And then over the years, you know, both of us got, you know, like really ambitious. So we started doing some some filming, we made some music videos. Uh, we also did uh a business for uh people with developmental disabilities, and um, and all of these ups and downs, and all these hardships and all these failures that we've had on the way up to building blessing, you know, just strengthened our friendship. I mean, and we raised our kids together. I mean, I got kids, uh, yeah, he got a he got a daughter who's 10 years old, I got a 17-year-old, a 19-year-old, and a 20 25-year-old. So, I mean, uh, you know, a family man also, yeah, because they can see the perspective, and I mean it's just been a blessing, really, to have somebody who's you know, we see eye to eye and we always look out for the best of each other.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Oh, I love that, man. I love that. So when you guys, so you guys must live in the same area, if I'm understanding that right, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Yeah, yeah, we're out here in Los Angeles.

SPEAKER_02 4:44

Copy that, copy. Okay, so how do you how do you what do you have to intentionally do to maintain a friendship like that with your busy lifestyles? You guys differently uh are big picture thinkers, you can tell that from what you guys have been doing together with your business ventures. How do you how do you put because he's not here to answer this question? I'm gonna ask you on his behalf as well. What do you guys intentionally do to maintain a friendship that has lasted so long like this in a in a place like Los Angeles?

Shared Values And Community

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Yeah, well, you know, I think one of the things is after you've been friends for a while, you start seeing each other as family. Like his mom calls me her son. Um, my mom, you know, you know, that type of situation. So we actually became more like brothers. And then when you see somebody as your family, um, you only want the best for them. There's no jealousy, there's no, oh, he's getting more shine than me, he's getting more attention than me, or this or that. That usually um will end the friendship. Uh with with business and stuff like that, where somebody's getting seem to be getting more credit, and it's all in your your head. I mean, you hear about bands and groups breakup because of that type of thing. So I think as long as you see each other as partners and that you're on the same journey with the same goal, and it's not about shine, it's not about who's gonna get more credit, who's gonna get more attention. As long as you can push out the outside world, but people in your ear tell. I mean, I have people tell me in the past, uh, we were working on a music video for an artist, and he was like, Man, why are you why are you rolling with this dude, man? You're doing all the work, but they don't see stuff, they don't see you know, they see me doing one particular role and think that I'm the one who's in charge of everything, but they don't know the journey then and what we had to do behind the scenes to get where we're at. So there's gonna be people in your life who are gonna be haters, are gonna try to interfere with your plan. So if you find somebody who is truly your friend and truly wants to see you succeed, not only themselves succeed, they want the best for you in anything working out. We both encourage each other to work out. I'll check them every day. Like, man, did you go to the gym today? You know, or man, I'm getting on the treadmill. Man, did you get your miles in today? So, all of those things, if somebody's doing that for you, that's a true friend.

SPEAKER_02 7:01

Yeah, definitely. You guys get a lot of shared experiences. We talk about shared values. What that look like for you guys? What value do you guys share that's allowing you to have this kind of relationship?

SPEAKER_00 7:13

Yeah, I think it's it's family, man. I got a big family. Um, I got a family all over the place. I got Texas, I got a lot of uh I got a uh other brothers, I got a sister. Everybody in my family, the way we were raised, is like, you know, the family. You know, we all we all support each other. Even when somebody's acting like a knucklehead, you gotta have their back. So I think he bringing him into my family, I think he just kind of felt that same relationship where it's like the family is the most important thing, and building up the family and then the community around us. So if you want your family to be successful, you need to help the community around your family. Um, so that's one of the things that brought us to blessing. We started realizing as fathers that uh social media was getting pretty um influential on some of these children where a lot of this negative stuff was coming on there, a lot of shock values, all these mean pranks and and uh just silly trends that were happening that are even some of this stuff where people were exposing themselves on the internet and stuff like that. So we knew we didn't want to create something that could help the community and help our own children, and that's why we created uh an app, blessings that's a social media that's uh more centered on uplifting people.

The Emmy-Winning PSA Story

SPEAKER_02 8:29

Yeah, I definitely want to get to that. Um, definitely get to March 2023, but I want to ask you about the Emmy Award. Can I understand you guys are Emmy Award winners, which is like really hard for some people to say, I've never been here before, but you guys want to emmy kind of break down break down how that happened, how you become uh Emmy Award winners? What happened there?

SPEAKER_00 8:48

Oh man, that you know that's a crazy story. So I'm sitting at home, I got my nephew visiting, my my niece and my nephew are visiting, and um and we're watching the news, and there was uh a news report about a school shooting. So that right there made me think we got to do something. Same thing happened. I called Kevin. I'm like, hey man, I'm thinking about this PSA. It just came into my mind. We need to do like an anti-school shooting violence PSA. So the very next day, I mean, we didn't put much thought into it. We got everything we needed that same day. We put it all together. I used my nephew and my niece since they were visiting. I used them as actors. We shot the whole PSA in one day and um edited. Took a couple of days to edit it and get all the sound and all the color and all that right. So it was just something that we did in one day. We used my house as one of the scenes, we used this local school down the street from my house uh at another scene and a cemetery that's a couple of blocks from my house for one of the scenes. So everything came together real quick on a shoestring budget, practically spending nothing out of pocket. Um, we had it broadcast out here, and you know, we entered it, you know, just as like, hey man, let's just see what happens. We entered into the uh Emmys and didn't think much of it. So we got the nomination. Um, at this time, Kevin didn't even want to go to the show. He was like, There's no chance, man. I'm not going down to that show. So anyway, I convinced him, let's go, man. Let's just go. We're never gonna be on this side of the red carpet. So we go down to the Emmys, and uh, this is separate from the big Emmys you see on TV. This is for this category and the smaller categories, it's a separate, it's a smaller show. Oh, okay. I was we just went down there. Luckily, our category was the very first category called, so we didn't have to stress on it too long. And uh, the very first name they called was was ours, and we were like, What man? What? So we were we were shocked because we were going up against like Honda of America, we were going against Yamaha, all these big corporations that did these PSAs, and it was just me and Kevin out here with our camera that we had at home and a couple of actors, you know, that were happening to stay with me that weekend. So we just shot it real quick and and got you know, got lucky, got blessed to to win this thing.

SPEAKER_02 11:08

That's amazing, man. So, do you have you been able to detect any uh changes because of the PSA that you guys did? Do you see anything that you would consider improvement or anything that encouraged you that this is you know something more folks should do? Did you see anything?

SPEAKER_00 11:25

You know, I I hope that it reached uh at least a few people. I mean, the message was clear, um, the message was honest. We know that there's a uh school violence is something big in this nation, and and I don't know if it's ever gonna stop, but I'm hoping if it at least reached a few kids to make them aware of what happened and what to do in these situations, then I I hope it made some change. But I mean that's that's all we can do. If if if you have an idea and you want and your message is is pure, I think you should put it out there, and you may never see the change, you may not see a change, but some kid may have watched it and changed his whole trajectory for your life.

Pandemic To Doomscrolling

SPEAKER_02 12:04

Yeah, definitely, man. So let's talk about March 2023. Yes, when the when the the three-year journey started, I guess, uh for blessed man. Talk to us about how I understood a bit of what you said earlier in the show about why you guys started the Doom Scrolling, and it's that's something that uh we all have to try to battle against because doom scrolling is a real thing and it is a time suck. Uh and if you were happy when you started, you can be down in the dumps by the time you get done. So that's it's really it's very, very uh uh influential and contagious, if you will. But talk to us about blessed man, how does things started? What's it looking like now? What have you seen that has been encouraging for you guys to build this? Let's talk about it a little bit. Go ahead.

What Blessn Allows And Blocks

SPEAKER_00 12:49

All right. Well, I don't know if you remember, but back during the pandemic, everybody was at home. We were on social media a lot, you know, movies weren't being made. It was like, you know, everybody was on social media, and during those times, it was fun, it was uplifting, people were trying to encourage each other, everybody was like doing something fun because you know the world was basically shut down, everything around them. So those times were fun. And as we start to come out of the pandemic, you start to see darker and darker content start making it onto your feed. You start seeing people getting hit by cars, you start people getting attacked by animals, you start seeing people trying to promote their OnlyFans, you start seeing all kinds of stuff that wasn't there just a year or two before. So, and that kind of stuff is contagious. If you just stick on it for just like two a minute or so, just looking at it, like, what is this on my feed? Next thing you know, you're getting all of those for the rest of the day. And now your algorithm has changed, and now you're in a bad mood. You wake up in the morning, you go on Instagram, now you're in a bad mood, and uh, I just thought this got to be something different, man. I'm tired of you know scrolling, and they that's why they call it doom scrolling because you go into this you know tunnel of doom and gloom, and so uh that was the whole idea behind Blessing. We want to create a space where you can come and be uplifted. So if you want to start your day off with something fun, we got people on there skateboarding, we got we got uh NBA players on there, we got um singers and artists, and so all this fun stuff that used to be going on before the um the doom scrolling is now on blessing. So now you we're not gonna have any divisive content, we're not gonna have anybody being mean or anybody getting hurt or anybody trying to flash something that goes against your values. So that was the whole spirit and the intent behind blessing. So it like I said, it was it's a three-year journey. It's something that I mean, we we uh we put our own money and our own financing behind this thing because we believed in it so much, and it finally launched, and we're starting to see a lot of people embrace it, so which is a good feeling to see people on the app actually using it, what it was intended for.

SPEAKER_02 15:03

I love it. And how long has the app been uh uh functional?

Soft Launch And Early Growth

SPEAKER_00 15:08

How long has it been? We just launched, uh, we had a soft launch, uh like November 15th was a soft launch where we were just basically trying to get the bugs out. Not a lot of people were able to use it at that time or weren't even aware of it. So in December, it started to pick up. We started to see some people get on there and we started doing a little bit of advertising, still testing out the market. Um, and then like January, February is when it started to take off all of a sudden, and now we're into March, and like even this morning, I'm like, oh, we got new users. This is great. So it's starting to pick up. I mean, we knew it wasn't gonna happen overnight, it wasn't gonna be millions of users overnight. But one thing that we thought was important is that on Blessing, you can start as a contributor or an influencer on Blessing, you could start monetizing your account from day one. You don't gotta have a million users, you can start making money immediately on Blessing, and we've starting to see people get paid already, uh, just off the app because they're making such fun content.

Hard Lessons In App Development

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Okay, I want to come back to that one because I think a lot of folks are interested in in monetizing, especially in today's uh in today's world. I want to come back to that real quick. But tell me, take us behind the scenes because I don't know many app creators, uh, a couple here and there. Uh, but tell me what it's like to create your own app and have to kind of be uh almost a doorkeeper, keeping certain things out. What's that like for you guys to be able to do that? And and what kind of uh challenges have you seen in doing so so far?

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Oh well, this this is the hardest part because me and Kevin come from a background of film and entertainment. So when we got into the app making scene, we were newbies. So you got to be careful because when you're jumping into this, you gotta hire developers, and you don't know some of the lingo, you don't know who to trust. The first when we first started developing Blessing, we got we we got suckered. We lost money, we hired some developers who didn't complete the job. Then we were going back and forth for months on this thing. We've we've lost probably six months in going back with these developers who oh wow took the money and never completed the project. So you got to be careful with that because um if you have if you don't have experience in developing, you're gonna get some people who are gonna make you promises that they can't keep. So luckily we learned our lesson there, but it didn't discourage us. We kept going. We got a whole new development team, somebody who's you know, a whole team right now who's really good. And even even now to this day, we keep a sharp eye on every single dollar spent, like what's going on with the development and any improvements we can make. But we got a really strong team now that uh pushes us out. We got some new updates coming. I mean, this this team is somebody who started to become more like family too. If they see an improvement that they're like, hey, you know what I think we should do to to you know make it more user-friendly, they'll bring ideas to us, and so that trust has made it uh it's made blessing just easier to use and more user-friendly.

Monetization From Day One

SPEAKER_02 18:10

I love that, I love that. So I guess in short, when it comes to app development, it's is it normally you pay first before the work gets done, or is that or is there another way to do it? Is that the only way?

SPEAKER_00 18:23

Well, you know, so they'll give you a price. They'll say, let's say you've you hire some developers, you go out and you get some bids from different developers, and these developers will say, Oh, I could do this app for this amount of money. You're like, Cool, all right, give me half up front and half when we finish. So you give them the you know, you give them a portion of it up front just to get started, and they start building and they start doing stuff, and then they'll tell you, Oh, well, we ran into this issue that they created, and then they'll be like, We need to go fix this issue, so now you got to pay us this much. We're like, But you you did that, you broke it. So it was a lot of that. Like, wow, if you don't have somebody who you trust or somebody who's like has a really good record of delivering, you end up getting going with a bid that seems reasonable, but it's like somebody painting your house. You hire them to come paint your house, they give you a oh, yeah, I can do this for like three, you know, three thousand dollars. Next thing you know, it jumps up to six grand. You're like, Man, that's not what you told me in the the jump. So it's it's just like getting any bid, it's it's the you know, dangerous out there. So if anybody's thinking about developing an app or doing something this, I say you you go to like Reddit, you go to you know, look for reviews, you go to trust. I think it's trust.com. There's a lot of places you can go to try to find out does this person have a good track record of delivering and not jacking up the price halfway through the project.

SPEAKER_02 19:43

Wow, that's that sounds perilous, man.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_02 19:48

You were talking about uh monetize on the average really unique that you can monetize so early in the process. Are you able to explain a little bit about what that looks like for somebody who might be watching and listening who wants to join Blessing and kind of be a part of that mission? Can you explain that a little bit? The monetization part?

Using Blessn Versus Other Platforms

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Yeah, yeah. So we notice that uh a lot of influencers, a lot of times they're doing this not only because they have a message they want to do or they're just having fun, but they'd also like to make some money off of it. Um and we don't want anybody trying to make money going against their values, so they don't have to go flashing off some of their you know body parts in order to make some money. We want to create a space where you can still make money and still, you know, stay into your own values. And if if if that's something you want to do um to make money, that's fine. I'm not saying that's bad or good. I'm not any judgment on people, but if you want to make good, fun, clean content and also get paid, we create it where you can request a personalized message of faith. So let's say uh you're on there and and there's a creator on there who's really funny or really uplifting and and really has a good message, and you have like let's say your daughter or your son, they got an SATs coming up or they got a big test coming up, you can say, Hey, you send them a direct message saying, Hey, would you send my daughter a message of uh encouragement because she has a big test coming up? And that person can send them a month, a message, a funny message. Um, I got one from my nephew, he's a big uh Nets fan, so we have a Brooklyn Nets uh player on there.

SPEAKER_02 21:19

What's that? It's my hometown right there. Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

We got uh Michael Porter Jr. I got one from Michael Porter Jr. for my nephew. So I had him do a blessing for my nephew, like encourage him before a basketball game. So these little messages, you know, you set your own pricing. What do you want to uh charge for somebody to receive a personalized blessing from you? And uh, and that's as simple as that. Yeah, as long as you're making fun content, people are gonna come and say, Man, send my nephew a blessing or send my mom a happy birthday or a mother's day, something more personal than writing in on a card and sending it off to grandma or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

No, I love that, man. That's that that's that's pretty that's pretty awesome. I love that. So, what is so what is your social media? Activity look like now. You made blessing and you got your own thing now. Are you still in a place where you have to battle the doom scrolling? Or you are you less active on social media now because you have your own app?

SPEAKER_00 22:13

What do you guys I spend a lot of time on blessing because I'm just checking to see what's new on there, you know, if it's working properly. I spend a lot of time on blessing, but um, we also still spend time on other social media platforms because we are promoting, and I don't expect anybody just to give up on social media on their other platforms and be like, I'm only sticking with blessing. If they do, great, I would love that. But I don't expect anybody to just dump everything and come to blessing. But when you need a cleanse, when you need to say, This is enough, this is too much. I need to, my algorithms are messed up, it's got me all messed up. Then you can pop on to blessing and you can start scrolling. You can see even uplifting content. So, me and myself, I spend a lot more time on blessing now than I do on my other social media platforms because I want to see what's going on. And plus, these guys on there are really fun. We got a lot of new content on there every day, so it's really fun to be there. But I still check in with the other crowd to see what's going on. I also check on my ads that are on like TikTok and Instagram and all these other platforms. So I'm still on there a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 23:18

I love that. So who are your uh I don't know if customers is the right word, but who are your people on blessing? What types of people are on blessing? I mean, with the the career with the uh the drama to the end, who who's actually on blessing?

Who’s On Blessn

SPEAKER_00 23:35

Oh man, we got a really good mix of people on there. Like I said, we got some NBA players on there, we got uh skateboarders on there, we got uh the young crowd, we got faith leaders, people who are trying to bring people to the faith. We got uh gospel singers, um, musicians, like uh country singer, we got rappers, poets. I mean, it's everybody. We got gymnasts on there, we got some athletes on there, like a woman who's doing track and field, students, a lot of students have been jumping on here. Um you can see them at their college, and there uh a girl who's on there. Um, I can't remember her name off the top of my head, but she's like preparing for this play. So she's taking us all through the steps of what she's doing to prepare for this play, like from the audition to I got the part, and then you know, her dance routine and everything that's leading up to this play. So it's it's a lot of young people who've been jumping on there, which was really what we intended. We wanted the young crowd to be on there so we can get them away from some of that doom and gloom so they see the world as an encouraging, you know, place and not just all this bad stuff that's happened out there in the world.

Can Positivity Scale

SPEAKER_02 24:40

I love that, man. That's we need more folks like you doing this kind of thing. I know that your goal and your mission uh that you and and Kevin share is to kind of shift the culture of social media. What for for you personally, what's your big, heavy, audacious goal? What do you want to accomplish? If it's not if it's not that same thing, it's something separate. What do you want to accomplish specifically? What's a big goal for you that you love to accomplish?

SPEAKER_00 25:07

Well, I think the the whole thing behind blessing is the intent. Our intent is to raise, you know, uh to bring the world into a more uplifting, friendly place. Because uh you've seen back in, I don't know if you you know your age, but I know in the 80s they used to say if it bleeds, it leads. And that's when you see on the news, if it was, you know, a car chase, they put it on the news, frontline news, everything was bad, everything was trauma, all that stuff was getting the headlines. So I think it's time for a change. And so our goal is to just start pushing people's heart into a different direction where they're not thinking the world is coming to an end, and they see that there are actually good people in the world, there's people who are just having fun, and just uh to not be so you know, put that wall up where you don't trust anybody in the world. So it's just it just shows that there's good people out there and people are just having a good time.

SPEAKER_02 26:01

I love it, and I think the idea makes total sense to me. I think it's definitely needed. Can you are you able to ask some tough questions like this? So forgive me, but do you uh can can you and and and kevin clearly see a way to make that happen? Because just presenting the alternative sometimes it's like okay, it's an alternative. People may not go off of their Instagram to come to Bless and they may enjoy that day. They're building uh a network there. What do you actively have to do, in your opinion, to make that that dream and that mission happen? Are you doing something out of the ordinary to kind of uh shift the culture, shift the mindset? Are you doing anything besides just being available?

Parenting In A Digital Age

SPEAKER_00 26:44

Yeah, you know, I I think people will start to embrace it and more people start coming over to blessing. And then once people start seeing, even the big corporations start seeing, wow, you know, not just sex sales, but positive sales, faith sales, you know, um, being a good person sales. Right now, everybody's like sex sales or or doom and gloom sales or violence sales, those things make money now. Once people start seeing, oh, well, you could still be profitable and be a good person. Once they start seeing that, everybody's gonna start changing their own algorithms. So you're gonna see movies that are more uplifting, you're gonna see TV shows that are more uplifting, the news is gonna be more uplifting. So it just takes one little step for somebody to show that this is a way to be positive and still be valuable, then everybody else is gonna start following suit. Because there was somebody who was the first person to say, hey, you know, when we show a car crash on TV, man, we get more viewers. So now if we start changing that to, hey, if you do something fun and uplifting, you're starting to get a lot of viewers over here on Blessing. Other people are gonna start saying, Well, we need to change our algorithm. Maybe this stuff doesn't sell anymore. So it just takes that one little step to start pushing it in the right direction.

SPEAKER_02 28:01

I love that. As a parent, a parent of young people, it seems to me because I have that's about my age earlier. I got three adult daughters, but I have six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. It seemed to be challenging to parent in this digital age. Tell me how you're doing that, knowing that you have an alternative, but you know, you're still dad. Yeah, and nothing, you're not not the uh the founder of blessing to your dad. How how is parenting challenging for you in this digital age when you see all things that are going on and the reason why you even built blessing in the first place? You talk you ship about those challenges. What what are you seeing? What are you navigating?

A Safe Space For Creators

SPEAKER_00 28:45

Yeah, man, I worry about that all the time, and not just for my kids, my mom. My mom's 69 years old. She calls me all the time is talking about, oh my god, did you see what was on this or that? And I'm like, mom, get off of social media, stop it. And I mean, even myself and and people I know my age, we still struggle with social media. We struggle with what's going on in the world, competing with people on their looks, or we don't feel like we're up to the snuff because we're not in a private jet, or we don't have all these nice cars and all these nice things. So young people are still trying to navigate the world, and they're seeing people on these, you know, living this lifestyle that seems unattainable, and they start getting depressed, they start feeling like they're not enough. And there's my son, who's 25 years old, working on his master's degree. I went to visit him with uh LSU, and he was telling me he felt like he was falling behind because he saw somebody who uh he wants to be a writer, somebody who was writing on a TV show and was making all this money who was his age. And I'm like, that's that is very rare. That is like very rare. You got to get over that. So I think when you go to something like Blessing, you have an alternative uh for the young people to start seeing. It's you're not competing on blessing. Nobody's on there pretending to be on a private jet. Nobody's on there trying to be something they're not. Everybody on there is coming with a pure heart to just have fun and uplift each other. So you're gonna find uplifting messages. I mean, mental health is is you know a big issue right now. So I think with blessing, it's kind of like a cleanse, a little mental health cleanse. You can go over there and get away from that idea that you have to be this perfect person and just have fun.

SPEAKER_02 30:31

I love it. Aside from being a multi-podcast host, I'm a high performance coach, I'm a minister, the community leader. Is there a place for me on blessing? Oh, absolutely. Am I a fit?

Free To Use And Easy To Try

SPEAKER_00 30:44

You're the perfect fit. That's exactly who we're looking for. We're looking for community leaders, we're looking for youth, you know, organizations, we're looking for uh faith leaders, anybody who has a positive message who wants to just do better in the world and just to have fun on social media again without having to scroll past somebody uh getting hurt or getting beat up on the street. I I hate that when I when I'm scrolling through social media and I see some some kids running to a uh a grocery store snatching stuff and running, and they think it's funny. I'm like, we gotta that's not the message I want to send to my kids, and that's not a message you want to send to your kids and your grandkids that this is funny, you know, doing it on camera. So you're gonna go to blessing, you can post stuff that's not gonna haunt you in 10 years when you're trying to get a job, and they post this. It's a big deal, man. You know, that kind of stuff that you got to talk to your kids about. What you put out there online is out there forever. That's a good point. If you've done a blessing, you're gonna be able to post safely because any content will get flagged that it's not appropriate, we get rid of it, so it's not gonna be out there to haunt you. You put on some good content, and when somebody looks you up in 10, 15, 20 years from now, where you're trying to get the job, they're gonna be like, This guy's been good since day one. This guy's been, you know, a solid person since day one.

SPEAKER_01 31:59

I love that, man. I love that. Is there is there a charge for blessing? Is it free to use? Explain.

SPEAKER_00 32:04

Oh, it's it's 100% free. You jump on there just like any other social media platform, you can even use blessing without even logging in. If you want to log in and start posting, you can do that. But if you went on blessing today and you just want to start scrolling and seeing what kind of content is on there, costs nothing. You don't have to put your information in, you just go on there and start scrolling. And if you like what you see and you want to comment on people's posts, or you want to start logging, uh liking people's posts, then you can you know create your own account and you can post, you know, post your own content. But just for joining, just for checking it out, cost nothing. The whole thing is free.

Legacy, Purpose, And Unity

SPEAKER_02 32:38

This is a beautiful app, man. I I'm excited about this. I'm gonna join Blessed In today. I hope our hope our listeners do as well that are watching live or on replay. I hope they do the same thing I'm joining today. This is very important. I love this man. At the end of the day, man, how do you want to be remembered? I know you can't speak for Kevin, but maybe you can try. At the end of the day, how do you want to be remembered today? Or at the end of the day, excuse me.

SPEAKER_00 33:00

You know, I think about that a lot. I I went to my grandmother's uh 99th birthday uh just last month in February, and um, they had a booklet of all of her accomplishments that she's done for the past 99 years. And um, I was thinking about myself, like what kind of legacy do I want to leave, or what's my book gonna look like if I make it to 99 years old? And um, the main thing is is just to be a good person. I want people to remember me as somebody who believed in and believed in himself, somebody who wasn't afraid to you know go out and and take a risk. And that's a message I want my kids to see and other generations, you know, younger people to see is just believe in yourself. I mean, this is life, it's just supposed to be fun. So that's it. Just simple, have fun.

SPEAKER_02 33:49

No, I love it. I love that. Is there a is there a problem that outside of being a co-founder of blessing, is there a problem that personally or professionally you want to solve?

SPEAKER_00 34:00

Um, I think no, I think the the main thing is is just to create a safe space for people. I mean, there's so many people out there creating um opposition or creating division, and now everybody's fighting with each other. So I think that the only thing I want to solve is to start bringing people together instead of dividing people.

Final Invite And Encouragement

SPEAKER_02 34:21

I love that, man. Thank you for your time in doing this, man. This is uh a fantastic conversation. I'm so grateful that I got a chance to meet you and hear about blessing and then hear about somebody who's trying to do something for in the in the world that means something that matters, not just now, but for generations. That's what blessing is, man. So I want to just give you the last 120 seconds of the show. You can talk about where people can find blessing. And if you'd like to, you can also share some encouragement with our listeners and our viewers today. Go for it, Jerry.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

All right. Well, if you want to download blessing, you can find it on the app store on Google Play or on uh Apple App Store. And it's spelled B L B L E S S N. That's B-L-E-S-S-N for Blessing. Uh, it's free to use, it's fun. Come check it out, doesn't cost you anything to check it out. And uh, any words of encouragement? I'm gonna tell you something that was told to me when I was like five years old. And it says if you believe it and you can conceive it, you can achieve it. So go out there and believe in your dreams and and just try.

SPEAKER_02 35:23

I love it. Co-founder of the blessing app, you can find on the app store, and I believe Google Play Store as well. That's right, yes. You Android users, yeah. No shame. I'm just saying. That's Gerald Jones, his partners Kevin Clark and the founders of the Blessing App. Gerald, thanks for being here. We appreciate it so much. Have a fantastic day, and thank you for doing all that you do, man, for the for the next generation, man. It's a blessing. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 35:50

Oh, thank you. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 35:52

My pleasure. That's Gerald. I'm Mr. U. We're all have a great day. Thanks again for watching.