The Kindness Chronicles
We live in a world dominated by stories of divisiveness. The Kindness Chronicles hopes to give the world a dose of the "Minnesota Nice" it desperately needs. Hosted by Fox Sports North's Kevin Gorg, Steve Brown of Johnny Clueless fame and John Schwietz (a guy you've never heard of), the Kindness Chronicles delivers stories of kindness through the lens of Minnesotans who share their personal backstories and celebrate those who influenced them to become the people they are today.
The Kindness Chronicles
Ep. 195 Youth Frontiers with Joe Cavanaugh
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KCP crew visit with kindness and character icon, Joe is the founder and president of Youth Frontiers, an organization that has been providing unique character development programs in schools for decades.
KCP 195 - Joe Cavanaugh_v2
SPEAKER_03Welcome to the Kindness Chronicles, where once again we hope to inject the world with a dose of the Minnesota kindness that it desperately needs. Not Minnesota Nice. We're going to talk about that today.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03We're back in the uh the basement studio. It's nice and cozy down here. Beautiful day. KCP Studio, Matamidai, Minnesota. We got Steve Brown in the house. Jeff back there. Hi, Jeff. Hey everyone. KG is uh doing a wild game tonight, so he's not with us. We do have a special guest. And before we give the introduction, you know what? Let's start with the introduction, then I'll throw in my uh comments.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Jeff, go ahead here. So today on the Kindness Chronicles, we're talking about something every school, every workplace, and every community needs more of. Good character. Our guest Joe Kavanaugh has spent decades helping young people discover that courage, respect, and kindness aren't just nice ideas, they're choices we make every day. Joe is the founder of Youth Frontiers, an organization that served over 2 million students, helping them build stronger school communities through honesty, empathy, and connection. It all started with a simple belief. If we teach young people how to treat one another with dignity, we don't just change a classroom, we change a culture. So with that, please welcome to the Kindness Chronicles. Joe Kavanaugh.
SPEAKER_03Thank you.
SPEAKER_00It's a huge crowd.
SPEAKER_03It's a huge crowd. It's bigger than usual, actually. Squeeze them in. Before we start uh peppering Joe Kavanaugh with questions, I just have to a couple comments about Joe. I have been an admirer of Joe Kavanaugh and Youth Frontiers for many, many years. Um he would be, in my opinion, the godfather of kindness in at least the Twin Cities and maybe beyond. And I mean that sincerely. I was first introduced to Joe by uh a friend of ours, a friend of the podcast, Dr. Dave Walsh. Dave ran the uh he's one of the greats from the National Institute on Media in the Family. Uh, one of my dear friends, Duke Zurich, uh, who we've talked about Duke in the past. Duke served on the uh Youth Frontiers board for a number of years, until I think you booted him off because he was around for too long. But uh it's truly an honor to have you in studio. You drove all the way to Matamidi from I don't know from Victoria. We have uh uh the the Marcom Madison back here who doesn't want to be part of the podcast because I've only been there for two months. And but she's she's very fashion forward, and uh we're very excited about that. We, on the other hand, not fashion forward. Joe Kavanaugh, we don't need to be.
SPEAKER_00Because you guys are so good looking.
SPEAKER_03That's another is that. I disagree if I could.
SPEAKER_00And I I drove all the way from a small, small community uh called Edina. Oh good for you.
SPEAKER_03That's our standard response to you, Edina cake eater people. So this is the kindness chronicle. So we started with the next one. It's just an initiation Joe. Joe, welcome. So great to have you here.
SPEAKER_00It's a privilege and an honor to be here.
SPEAKER_03Well, we'll see how you feel by the end of this. But um I first of all, one of our uh uh our regular listeners, Marty Rathmaner, who's been a guest on the on the program. Uh Marty is a friend of yours, Marty and Joe.
SPEAKER_00And his amazing wife, Joe.
SPEAKER_03Well, she's the better half.
SPEAKER_00She's the better seven-eighths. She uh she worked with us at Youth Frontiers for many years, uh, in the late 90s and uh within the late 90s.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, she's terrific. You might re remember her from uh Channel 5 News. She was a weather, she was a meteorologist, Joe Bender. And she married Marty Rathmanor, and they are uh neighbors of ours and lovely people. So there is a little shout out to our friend Marty. Hi Marty, I'm sure I'll be hearing from you. It comes up often. I know we love the guy. I want to have that guy out here. We've got to talk to him here.
SPEAKER_00Well, Marty knows, but Joe, there were few people that I've worked with as amazing as Joe in front of a room of 250 ninth graders.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Her talent, her speaking ability, her.
SPEAKER_03It's a tough crowd.
SPEAKER_00Tough and impossible crowd, but she was able to hold them in the palm of her hands with her uh gift. It was amazing.
SPEAKER_03Well, let's start at the very beginning. How how did where did Youth Frontiers come from? Well, um Well, for starters, who are you? And uh are you from Minnesota?
SPEAKER_00Grew up in the Twin Cities.
SPEAKER_03I saw you may have gone to St. John's. I was uh I'm a proud alum of St. John's University. Okay, okay. Parents didn't love you enough to send you to St. Thomas. That's okay.
SPEAKER_00They wanted me to go there, but I just I couldn't I didn't get out of here.
SPEAKER_03You wanted to go to college, Phil. Understood.
SPEAKER_00I didn't. Um grew up in the Twin Cities. Uh I hopefully it won't be quite a while from today, but uh I'll die in the Twin Cities. It's my home.
SPEAKER_03Terrific.
SPEAKER_00Home is uh not only where the heart is, but it's where I've planted my feet and my family.
SPEAKER_03And E Dinah it worked out for you. And it did work.
SPEAKER_00We were welcomed back into E Dina. Um I've grown up here, I built relationships with amazing people. My mentors are all from here. Uh they helped guide me in life. I went as I after I went to St. John's University, was a human humanities philosophy student there, uh, taught me about meaning, community, purpose, values, character, which is what Youth Frontiers is about. I became a youth worker in the Twin Cities at a at a church, and uh uh that became my passion of working with young people. I started Youth Frontiers in 1987, almost 40 years ago. Um, it was me for about seven years. It was uh I'd say yes to everything just because I needed to put bread on the table. Sure. Um PBS caught wind of us in the early 90s. Okay, did an hour and a half special on our work, and um it just started to take off from there. When Columbine happened in '99, nineteen ninety-nine, that was really the the 9-11, if you want to think of it that way, for parents and for educators in schools.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And we had been in business for about uh 13 years and we were ready to respond.
SPEAKER_02It was like a wake-up call for for youth, issues with youth.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, especially in schools. And uh the timing was right because uh we had developed programming, we had developed um retreats, which I'll talk a little bit about. A retreat on kindness for elementary schools, a retreat on courage for middle schools, the perfect value for that age group.
SPEAKER_03Love that.
SPEAKER_00They didn't want to hear a seventh grader, didn't want to hear about kindness. Yeah. Here, come over here, I'll be kind to you. No, no, I let's talk about courage. Oh, let's talk about courage. The courage to be kind. Uh that's a different way of looking at it. Then when they hit high school, we focused on respect and the whole concept of respect, uh respecting yourself at that adolescent age. That's one of the looking in the mirror, it's one of the most difficult things for them to do is to respect themselves. Uh respecting others. Stop being a jerk. Uh standing up for respect. And that's what our respect retreats are about. How do we get the vast majority of kids in a school to stand up and say, no, this is not the way we want to be. This is not the way we want our school to be. And so we have these targeted retreats around targeted values. Uh, we use some of the developmental work of uh of um Adler and and some of the other psychologists to look at how to what is the best thing approach with different different student and age groups. And um that was that's been kind of our path.
SPEAKER_02As you were saying that, I was just thinking that there's some sophisticated psychological planning for that based on ages, and that's pretty much it's not just like, hey, we should talk to the kids.
SPEAKER_03This has been, you know, cultivated over many years. Yeah. Very good. You know, you mentioned your your mentors, the people that helped you. Who would you say are on the Mount Rushmore of your mentors?
SPEAKER_00On my 50th birthday, my wife said to me, What would you like? Do you want a big surprise party? Do you want to do you want to uh uh do you want to have a shindig? I said, No, you know what? I want my mentors to come over to our cottage for lunch. And uh so I sat around the lunch table and uh with these icons in my life and we talked. And a couple of them live around the country, and so they weren't able to make it in town. Um, but it was just uh one of the more special moments of my life.
SPEAKER_03How did you connect with these people?
SPEAKER_00Well, I'd stayed connected with them over the years.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Um but where did you can you mention a name for us to jump?
SPEAKER_00Sure. One uh one who is uh still living uh and still a mentor of mine is Dick McFarlane. He was the you know Dick?
SPEAKER_03I do.
SPEAKER_00Well RBC guy RBC guy, he was a CEO there.
SPEAKER_03Um He was on your board, wasn't he?
SPEAKER_00Uh his son was on our board Okay, but Dick has been uh a mentor throughout my life. Um each of these individuals had a I I there's a picture of all of them up on the wall. My wife put uh put uh put together a big frame with all the different photos of them, and each one of them I've assigned a value that they've taught me. Okay and so my father is on that uh wall. He passed away a number of years ago, but his was generosity. Uh Dick McFarlane's was uh was passion. There are a few people I've met more passionately.
SPEAKER_03He might check the generosity box as well.
SPEAKER_00He well, he does check the generosity box uh that very much so. But uh his one is just his passion for life. Sure. I just want to be that way. When he was 80, he came, he burst into our office once and he had a duster jacket on and a cowboy hat, and he said, I'm heading to heading to Colorado to ski. What are you young whipperstoppers doing? And you know, it's just that's that's Dick McFarland. So I've had a lot of amazing mentors. Uh the two most important ones today uh are actually my wife and my daughter. They're my uh You know what?
SPEAKER_03Ding ding ding. That's well done, Joe.
SPEAKER_00I I have to check that box so I can go.
SPEAKER_03Very smart and very smart.
SPEAKER_00They welcome me home with a good meal for dinner.
Character vs. Personality
SPEAKER_03No, but you know, it really is it's you know, if you are fortunate enough to to marry well and have kids that uh that pay attention to what's going on around them, it truly is a blessing. And you know, like my my mother always says about her grandchildren, not a dud in the bunch. And you know, but it takes work, you know, it takes work to to to mentor those people, and you're lucky that you had mentors that helped get you there. You got something back there, Joe?
SPEAKER_01I do. So, Joe, you started this back in the 80s. That was uh sort of my grad year was 88. Um, yeah, how have schools changed over the years that you've seen? Because I'll tell you, when I became familiar with just the concept of character, it was in a book by Stephen Covey. He did his thesis on the 200 years of American literature, success literature, and he noticed there was a contrast between the first 150 years, everything was about integrity, working on your internal character. And then he saw the last 50 years of his study, it was all about what he called the personality ethic, the quick fixes and things. And I can't help but notice when I get on YouTube or something, an ad will pop up and it's all about techniques. And don't say this, this isn't a power word. And I immediately think back to the personality ethic. And how have things changed that you've seen in the 80s? And maybe we can kind of segue into just your definition of character and why it's so important.
SPEAKER_00John O'Dorti, I should say Mr. O'Dorti. He was my uh English teacher in high school. Uh, he was larger than life. Anyone, people on the Where'd you go to high school? I went to Edyna High School. Yeah, of course. Don't do it, John. Don't do it. Do it again, do it again. But Mr. O'Dourti would grab you by the shoulder when you would be walking by in a day when you could that during the time when you could grab people by the shoulders. And he would say to me, Kavanaugh, I'm watching you. And he was watching me, he was watching everyone.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Uh because he cared.
SPEAKER_00He cared, but his passion was for character. And he was the teacher at a Pep fest that if we were doing a skit or something that was making fun of some group or some person, he was the teacher that would stand up in the bleachers in his booming voice and say, Cut it out. What are you doing? You're making fun of someone, and people would kind of snicker and laugh. But he stood for something. When we would walk out of his classroom, he would say, Be good. Who says that anymore?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And we say, we say, feel good. We want you to feel good, we want you to achieve, we want you to be the best. But to the Stephen Covey point, not many people say be good. And that has been a big big shift. And if I did something wrong in school, misbehaved in some way. And Mr. O'Dherty called home, my parents would be waiting at the front door, sending me back to school to apologize to whoever I did it. What happens today is the parents perhaps well-intentioned, I say perhaps now, not we're just assuming well-intentioned, but uh become the defender of the child versus the ally of the fellow adults in the community. And Mr. Odhertie or the teachers in our school, Mrs. Miss Irk, all you know, the all the different teachers, they were in cahoots and alignment with the parents and vice versa. But now it's almost a uh the parents become the defenders or the aggressors in support of their young people. And that's that's done great damage, I believe, to young people. It we have a parent academy that we've we've developed in the last couple of years.
SPEAKER_03Oh boy, is that a good idea.
SPEAKER_00It's it's been one of the most powerful things that we have created. But one of the pieces in it, we have three components, uh, just very quickly. We need to raise strong, not fragile, responsible, not self-absorbed, narcissistic, selfish. And we need to raise young people that know they're precious, not perfect. Or you can say it, we need to love our kids, not worship them. And what we have done in the last 10, 15 years is flip that. We've created the most the data, if you believe in data, the data is overwhelming.
SPEAKER_03Overwhelming.
SPEAKER_00We've created the most fragile, selfish, obsessed with perfection generation in a thousand years. I just made that number up.
SPEAKER_03And ladies and gentlemen, that's exactly why we have Joe Kavanaugh on the program. You know, what's interesting, Joe, is is, and and I think the necessity of what your organization does and what your people do has really it's become more necessary as time has gone on. And I think that the the fact that you are able to get into schools, there are very few organizations that are welcomed into schools to present their program. The fact that you've built this brand and you've had the success that you've had, there aren't many people that that are able to have the access that you guys have. So that's something that's you know, hats off to you for starting it when you did, because if you were starting it right now, there's no way it would have happened.
SPEAKER_00It would let you in. So there was so there's you know, timing. Timing is everything. There's accidents that that shifts a lot in life. So we built it at a time when school you could walk into a school and schools were open up to trying things, and they and they were free enough to let's do this, let's do that. There wasn't the commitment or borderline obsession with academic performance. Yep, chasing the number. Chasing the numbers. Um and so we were able to develop these retreats but at the same time develop a reputation. So schools would invite us in, they would, and we were it was all word of mouth. It was not marketing. Uh it was all word of mouth. And the only person a principal trusts is not the brochure, not the the slick ad uh that they see whenever uh it's other principals. And so if a principal says, You gotta you gotta bring these people in, they're great, they don't they don't listen to me. I'm trying to sell something, uh, but they do listen to their their peers. And and word started to spread. The first year, 1987, we did seven retreats. Second year, we did 15. Third year, we did 30. Uh that first year, I was sitting at my desk, the phone rarely rang. It was often my mom saying, Hey, you want to come over? Come over for a free dinner. Sure. But it it was a slow growth. And it allowed us to make mistakes, it allowed us to learn from mistakes, it allowed us to polish things. Um, the first seven years, we said yes to everything. Uh, do you do overnight retreats? Yes. Why do we say yes to that? Do you do this? Yes, do you do this? Do you build skyscrapers? Yes. What's the sky?
SPEAKER_02What's a skyscraper, but we'll do it.
SPEAKER_00Um when this PBS special ran in 1994, the phone started ringing. We became experts overnight.
SPEAKER_03Wow.
SPEAKER_00The real reality is we knew nothing more the day before and the day after. And so that flashbulb, that exposure, that exposure forced us, challenged us to become experts. And so then we started to weave in uh some solid psychological underpinnings. We started to develop our retreats that were age appropriate.
Youth Frontiers Retreats
SPEAKER_03Uh and talk about the retreats. Uh, how do they work?
SPEAKER_00Well, the way I describe it uh is and this is an old phrase we prepare kids for the road. We do not prepare the road for kids. Yeah, that's there's a lot of good uh road workers out there.
SPEAKER_03Holy smokes. I'll stumble. Must be that Marcom person over there.
SPEAKER_00It is it's Madison over there. Um So there's a lot of good organizations out there that help create roads, but that's not us. We're about providing young people with the tools to walk the path of life, to give them sturdy shoes because in the path of life, and all of us could share our own stories, life is not easy. And it it really doesn't, you know, I grew up in a community of Dinah, but I I know people in that community that life isn't easy. No, they might have the cars and this and that and the and the jets and they fly all over. But life brings its own pain, life brings its own suffering, and and I don't want to go off on a tangent, like, but but young people need sturdy shoes and the tools to walk the path of life because Heraclitus once said 2,000 years ago, I like to quote Heraclitus because it's impressive that I can say the name. And in St. John's, yeah. I was a humanities philosopher. Yeah, throw that out there.
SPEAKER_03So I can say to people now, it's finally paying off.
SPEAKER_00It's paying off. I use the word, the name Heraclitus. Um said character is destiny. And character is a young person's destiny, it's it's all of our destiny, it's uh it's our community's destiny, it's our nation's destiny. Uh and what we try to do is get young people to see values. So if you're in fifth grade, you get a room of a hundred fifth graders together, and they're squirrely and they're uh they're cute and they're uh vulnerable and they're starting to deal with bullying, mean behavior. Uh and we're not isn't interesting. Schools used to call us to because of their anti bullying programs. I philosophically and psychologically do not believe in anti bullying conceptually. It's deficit based. What we do is we promote kindness. Now you do that, and bullying evaporates and goes away.
SPEAKER_03This job. Well, you you it's so good.
SPEAKER_02When you talk about you start a podcast about this.
SPEAKER_00Well, this is my audition to join you because I want this is more fun than why we're going to put the light on for you, man. I love this. These chairs are comfortable. So can I just yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03You know, we make fun, I make fun of eDyna. I make fun of St. Thomas Academy, St. Paul Academy. But in many respects, I would imagine that the pressures of being a kid in E Dinah and the expectation and the fact that you got people like me that are calling those people cake eaters, it's got to be an extra level of You went to Hillmory High School.
SPEAKER_02What are you talking about?
SPEAKER_03That's a nice, that's a good blue-collar private school for regular people. Oh, shut up. You went there too. Yeah. But uh you know, I I would imagine that in some of those communities, it's just it's a completely different level of uh of anxiety that must come with expectations of being an E Dinah kid or a St. Thomas Academy kid.
SPEAKER_00Well, it doesn't matter. Uh no, it this is a I have to think this one through.
SPEAKER_03We don't do that around here. We just talk.
SPEAKER_00There are different ways of experiencing pain. And some of it can come from lack, and some of it can come from gluttony. And both of them are deadly sins. And I grew up in Edyna, so it's my experience. I didn't grow up in a disadvantaged community, um uh a community that's experiencing poverty uh of of deep want, but there was a spiritual want. There was a a want uh in a different way, and it might have been more psychological in an effect, and there's a different type of pressure.
SPEAKER_03Sure.
SPEAKER_00So it's now you you talk to people in serious uh deprivation, and they'll say, Boy, give me that over. And I and I don't begrudge that or demean that or mean to say that that's not deeply uh effective because it is. Um but where my experience is seeing the wounds of deep pressure, deep expectation, um the the striving for perfection. And it's interesting. Adler, Adlerian psychology says in shoplifting, this might not be what he says, but the interpretation of some of his work, of entitlement comes from two wings, the very, very wealthy and the very, very poor. They come at to a target store or a Best Buy, and they contribute to shoplifting because either I get everything I want and I'm taking anything I want, or I don't get anything I want, so I'm gonna take what I want.
SPEAKER_01Kind of an entitlement.
SPEAKER_00It's an uh in a strange way, it's the opposite of of each other, but they have the same uh same outcomes.
SPEAKER_03Same outcomes.
SPEAKER_00Even you look at the our toxic political extremes in our society, you have the far left and the far right, they are mirror images of each other. They're fundamentalists, they're filled with resentment, they are not about dialogue, they're about monologues, they're about conversion, not conversation. Um they are self-righteous, they know, they are certain of their truth, both sides, the extremes. I'm not talking, I'm talking about uh statistically, this comes from Helen Timer's stuff on tribes, I think. It's 8% on the far left, 5% on the far right, uh control 76% of all messaging out there. But they're at war with each other. And they have they use different ideologies, but they're just as pathologically um uh extreme. Nuts. But it's from a from a psychological standpoint, they will not talk. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_03So nuts isn't a psychological term that we should be using. It's uh it can be. It worked on a psych ward once upon a time. We used nuts. We used nuts, but that was just very quietly. Um we talked about Dr. Walsh, Dave Walsh. Yep. Um he had an organization called the National Institute on Media and the Family. And once again, there's an example of a guy that was so ahead of his time. I remember him talking about the things that he's seeing, for example, in South Korea that haven't made it to us yet. And he was talking about things like the iPhone and the technology that came with the iPhone and social media. Tell me about the role that social media has played in the I don't know, the evolution of your organization, because it's got to become something that's that's very different than when you started in the the late 80s.
SPEAKER_00So how have schools changed, how have our societies changed, how have kids changed? Uh the expert on this is Jonathan Haidt. So if I if you haven't read the book, if you're a parent uh or interested in young people, the the book, The Anxious Generation, will go far greater into detail and far greater in expertise than what I can share. Mine is more experiential, not academic. Um here's what I have seen. Um first it affects young men and young women very differently. Um with girls, it's the social media of uh the phrase compare and despair. You know, they're they're looking and they're comparing and uh it's unraveling their sense of who they are and their own identity as a human being, and it's uh they're becoming depressed. Uh girls that uh are on social media over five hours a day uh have a significantly greater uh incidence of depression and anxiety. The average girl is on 5.3 hours a day. So just do the math on that. Um with boys, it's more around it's so with girls, it's toxic. With boys, it's junk food, but it's becoming more toxic. So what I see with boys, it's uh gaming, it's um it's online pornography, it's it's things that are actually but it's unraveling their their spirit, their psyche, their morality. Their moral it's unraveling their morality.
SPEAKER_03It's a form of gluttony in another. It's a form of gluttony.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Um the damage on both is is significant. What it's doing, it's disconnecting kids. You know, it was the great the internet is the great connector. It's actually the great disconnector. Um loneliness has skyrocketed. 62% of all young people now describe themselves as seriously lonely, quote unquote. That was unheard of when I was in school. They were lonely kids, but not 62% describing themselves as seriously lonely. CDC has now uh found 32% of teenagers have are not just anxious, they have anxiety disorder. So these are is it causal, is it correlative, who cares? Uh it's doing great damage. Now, people like a Jonathan Haidt have a lot more that the understanding of this. I just see it in a room.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_00So an ex a real example, uh our respect retreat with ninth graders. We have 250 ninth graders walking in a room. They've been doing this for 39 years. Over two million kids doing this. A decade ago, maybe it's 15 years now, the kids would, 250 kids would come in the room, they're tackling each other, they're screaming, they're yelling, the music's blasting. Uh it's like pandemonium in this big gym or the big community center or the the large giant room we're in. So these 250 kids come in the room, it's a open. We have our sound systems there, and our three staff are up front waiting for them to start the whole day. It's a day-long retreat. Um, it takes about 10 to 12 minutes to get 250 kids to come up and sit down, and that's a that's a challenge in itself. Um and even then, they're just going back and forth, and and then we go into some pretty darn good stand-up humor from up front, and the kids are laughing, they're hi-fying each other, and we're trying to we're we try to get some of the ants in their pants, the energy to dissipate a bit. Um small groups. You just you can't keep them sitting down. They're just running around the room. Uh the games, the activities we do, it's it's pandemonium. You don't want people to get injured. They're running around so much. Uh during the presentations, so we're we this this is this this retreat. It's a retreat. A retreat is stepping back. It's it's it's a military term, really, of stepping back to get a better perspective of the battlefield. Well, we're doing this with kids. We're getting them to step out of their environment in the hallways and in the school to get a better perspective so they can enter back in, either kinder in elementary schools, more courageous with doing the right thing, or more respectful in high school.
SPEAKER_01Um you almost need to change their whole pattern and just to get them out of that.
SPEAKER_00You gotta get them to see differently. To the this is the interesting shift that we've seen, though. Uh a year ago, I was uh on a retreat and helping lead one. I still do even at my age occasionally I love doing it. These 250 kids come in the room. They're all on their phones. Uh-huh. They're silent. They're walking in silent, in silence, just on their phones.
SPEAKER_03Um completely disconnected from each other.
SPEAKER_00Completely disconnected. Uh and by the way, we don't allow cell phones on the retreat once they're good IT up. Really? Good idea. Oh, that's a good idea. Um We ask them, okay, it's time to come forward. They walk to the front like lemmings. Okay, can everyone please sit down? They silently sit down.
SPEAKER_02Weird.
SPEAKER_00And then we go into some of our same age group.
SPEAKER_02Same age group. Yeah. Wow.
SPEAKER_00Same school. This is a schools, whatever. And then we go into some of our humor. For 25 years, this stuff killed.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I'm serious. It was it was funny. And kids would be kind of rolling. No one's laughing. Oh no. No one's laughing. And you guys don't know this, and the listeners don't know this. I'm a f I can be really funny. But some of my stuff, some of my, yeah, some of my stuff was just like this stuff is killed, and there's not even a what is wrong with you people? Well, here's the thing: young people are afraid to laugh.
SPEAKER_03Oh boy. Really?
SPEAKER_00They don't want to, they don't want to look stupid.
SPEAKER_03Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_00And because someone might be filming it or someone might be posting it. Um and and humor now has shifted. We're, you know, comedians, Jerry Simply, a lot of these stars, they won't perform on colleges anymore.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Because one humor involves offense.
SPEAKER_03It involves it involves just my favorite part of humor. Right.
SPEAKER_00Well, but it does. There's a there's a it's why the jester, you know, centuries ago was a requirement for the king because the jester would insult the king to to remind the king or queen back then it was mostly kings, to remind them that they were human and not God. And so there was a purpose for humor. And we've lost that. So kids aren't laughing anymore. And so that's why they're they're in the room, and and then when we talk to them in our in our presentations, whether it's on kindness or courage or respect, they listen. That's the other side of it. They're starved. Yeah. These kids are starved for messages that 20, 30 years ago you got in our society. You, you know, the Stephen Covey approach comment, but they got them at home. They got the the connection. The teachers would talk about this. The the faith communities would talk about this. The society in its in its water, it was part of the the environment, and it's not anymore. And instead of character, it's uh being a character or it's right.
SPEAKER_01It changed the definition of what character is and means now. It's now about being a character on a on a spot.
SPEAKER_02On a TikTok.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And YouTube. John. Give us a mug. I don't want to do that.
SPEAKER_00So this these young people are losing these critical things for connection, and then we wonder why anxiety is skyrocketing and depression is skyrocketing and why the suicide rate has doubled in the last 10 years. It's we are we are decimating a generation.
SPEAKER_02So what go ahead. I just have a just a quick uh note that kind of goes along with uh what you were saying that they're walking in and they're all on their phones. My daughter goes to the U of M. She's in her last year. Uh she says everyone on campus has headphones on. No one is talking on campus. On a college campus, full of people in their 20s, dating age, they're all they have earbuds in, and they're in the best times of their life. They're just walking from class to class. That is creepy, I think.
SPEAKER_03Well, I mean, and and there's no dating. You know, by the time I was 22, 23, I had hundreds of girlfriends.
SPEAKER_02I feel like we've gotten to a very dark place. We have to get some hope from talk more about the girlfriends.
SPEAKER_00Scott Galloway, I think, uses a statistic. I I might be misquoting this. 42% of young men between 18 and 24 have never approached a woman in their own. That might be the wrong way. Well, so here's the damage. What do people need is community and connection. And our retreats are are breaking down some of the message about the me, the narcissist, the selfishness, and saying the the we is as important as the me. Umbutu, the African term I am because we are. And so one of the things that we do on our retreats, the hopeful piece on this is it's about bringing them together, and we are part of a school. Um now the the end result of these retreats, we're still seeing the same power. But it takes a lot longer in the day to get there.
SPEAKER_02And but it is interesting that you're saying they are, once you get them, they're open and starving for this information.
SPEAKER_00They're starving for it. Yeah. Another positive sign is so there's uh a significant uptick right now with Gen Z in a return to spirituality and faith.
SPEAKER_02Yep, yeah. I mean you're seeing that too.
SPEAKER_00You're seeing that and and millennials don't get that. And a lot of these colleges have millennials in their marketing departments, and they don't understand that colleges need to be promoting not their athletics and their academics and that and and the flashy stuff. The fact that they're creating community and they're creating a sacred community of people that go deeper than just the uh the stuff that the the great meals and the dining halls. It's go deeper into meaning and and into purpose. And that's what that's what young people, those are the things you can stand on. And we've we've given kids for 15 years uh quicksand to stand on. And let's give them some rocks to stand on.
SPEAKER_03Um one of the things that I often joke about is you know, my I'm a Freemason, I'm a member of the the Masonic uh fraternity. And there is a belief that uh what you're describing is what could save Masonry because people are looking for places to connect with others, to belong, to a place to belong, a place to make friendships, a place to, and those just don't organically happen like they used to. People aren't, you know, you hear about liquor sales, you hear about liquor sales, like liquor sales are way down because people aren't going to the bar, and if they are going to the bar, they're afraid to to to I mean it's there's so much to it. They're drinking diet cooked. Thank you for bringing that up, Jeff. And I think I've had 30 of them today, but that's okay.
SPEAKER_02So, along with that, exactly what you're saying. I have 20-something kids and their friends hanging out at our house, and they they went off for St. Patrick's Day, and they have a really good group of friends. But I am seeing that there a bit of return to spirituality, also um uh a clear of attempt to avoid technology. They were talking about it like where they so there somebody has a brick where they can basically block out their time, it locks their phone if they want to unlock the phone, they have to go down to another floor to open it up to use it. So, um, and also uh some other people that I know that their kids are going to church, they've never really pushed it, and they're just starting to explore that. I think that's part of this whole thing where they're that generation, it's the Gen Z, uh, they're starting to go, there's gotta be something more than this.
SPEAKER_03I noticed at church, yeah. At church this past Sunday, the number of young families that were in there, like the number of babies that were crying, it was almost too much.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah.
SPEAKER_03But you know, uh Leno, by the way, was there. We got to get Leno back in the program. You know, Leno really a Catholic guy?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh John Fretty, one of my mentors. Yeah, he's John is up in my wallet.
SPEAKER_03Good buddies with him. Father John Fullitti, yes. Yeah, he has a bottom of the show. Father John, when I went to St. Thomas, which is that other never heard of school, it's oh, it's Division I school.
SPEAKER_00My father-in-law was the vice president there, Don Leiden. Really? Yeah, but he passed away in 82, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_03Um too young. Anyway, for Liddy. Father Friddy. Father Frliddy was so I mean, what a great guy.
SPEAKER_00One of my greatest Was he St. Olaf? Yeah, he was in St. Olaf.
SPEAKER_02That's where him and Leno met because Leno started working there as a the Catholic guy. I I Leno went to Hill Murray with us, who's a year younger than me, and we've stayed in touch. Leno's got a little kid. Yeah, he does. He went to St. John's as well. Yeah. He went to St.
SPEAKER_03John's?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Oh, look at how good it turned out. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So so where this is the this is what we're where you're talking about your connections. That doesn't happen naturally as much anymore. So if you describe our retreat, there's three things that our retreats do. Connection. One, two, connection, and three, human connection.
SPEAKER_03So so how do you do that?
SPEAKER_01Like during the retreat? Well, it's uh I'm looking at some of the b-roll here, and it looks like you know, there's some musicians at the beginning.
SPEAKER_00Fabulous musicians. It's uh use this term, it's an old dated term. MTV meets Aristotle. It's interactive, it's we speak kid. Our retreat staff are some of the most uh amazing prof youth professionals I've ever experienced and seen. Uh they're in front of 200 kids for a day. Um we have music, we have uh we have interactive activities and games, we have small groups, we have uh music again, we have interactive games, we have a small group, it's all this movie, and then we have powerful presentations on values. And it's then it stops, and then we have another small group, and it's so they don't have time to be bored. Yeah, everything is about 17 minutes long, and so they don't have to don't worry, you don't like small groups, don't worry, in 17 minutes it's done. You don't like uh the music, don't worry. In 17 minutes, you hear a talk. You don't like the talk, don't worry. In 17 minutes, it's lunch. Don't you don't like lunch, 17 minutes, that's over too.
SPEAKER_02I have a thought on this too. I imagine it's powerful, just like uh, you know, these kids are watching screens, so they're seeing produced video all the time. Now it's a person in front of them. Just like if you want to maybe compare going to see a film and going to theater, when you go to a theater, that experience is so powerful because it's a person in front of you. It's not, I mean, there's lights and all that stuff, but there's something different about a kid listening to someone talking. And if they've if they're very smart and very good at what they do, they're engaging, that goes deeper than a screen where they could just flip it and keep moving and you know.
SPEAKER_00Um the way I describe our return. Treats, I could say it this way, they go deep and you need to be in human connection for it to go deep. People have said, why don't you bring in multimedia stuff? There's so many opportunities. It's like, uh-uh, we're summer camp in six hours on a school day in a big room. And we also talk to kids about truth and meaning and values. And they young people Why don't they just roll their eyes?
SPEAKER_02Why don't they go, ugh because they're they're starved for it.
SPEAKER_00And they they have been s fed such pablum. Young people have been fed such lies. Uh and some of the stuff is well intentioned, but it actually does the opposite. So we're talking. It's like sugar cereal. Yeah. And that's not a lie, but it's not good for you. And it's actually, it doesn't really feed the soul. Our retreats are really sacred experiences. If anyone ever wants to come watch one, you are more than welcome to uh be invited.
SPEAKER_01These kids are on the microphone in front of a candle, and it you know, it they're sharing what what's happening there.
SPEAKER_00So the we end the retreat after this entire day of the Who's that guy?
SPEAKER_01What's his name? Todd Moss. Okay.
SPEAKER_03He's the looks familiar.
SPEAKER_00He's yeah, there's Dahlia right there. She's these are some amazing people. Um so we do this entire day of all this interactive work, and then comes the closing, which we call a campfire. And we get 250 kids, and it can be fifth graders, it can on kindness retreats, it can be seventh graders on courage, ninth graders on respect, sitting in a circle, quietly sitting in a circle. We dim the lights, and I said ninth graders in quiet, seventh grade that's a 250 of them. We put a microphone in the middle and we ask them to share individually what they took from the day or what they learned from the day. And it's powerful. One of the most uh one that just is uh one that sears in my mind was it was an eighth grade courage retreat in a suburb of the Twin Cities, and uh we put the microphone down in the middle and asked them to to share. I was observing the retreat, watching our amazing staff on this particular day, and it was on courage, and uh we put the microphone down, and you wait for a moment or two and the first eighth grader that got up walked to the middle of the room, and school, you can you don't have to work with kids every day of my whole life to know who gets made fun of. Uh, this kid gets made fun of. You can just tell. And um he says, My name is Jeff in the mic. And he says, I just want everyone to leave me alone. Please just leave me alone. All I ask from everyone is just to leave me alone. Okay, he's not asking for kids to be kind to him.
SPEAKER_02This is a courage retreat.
SPEAKER_00This is a courage retreat. He's not asking kids to be his friend and invite them to slumber parties. He's just asking to be left alone because of the way he's a little survive. Because of the way he's tormented. And yeah, he's not being bullied. He's being tormented every day. Wow. And we see this stuff. Talk about courage.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00The kid that gets made fun of, asking, telling, begging his classmates, please. So we see this stuff. So other kids got up to share other things. About 10 to 15 kids later, the coolest kid in the school gets up, and you don't again have to work with kids every day to know who the coolest kid is. This kid has his hat kind of at an angle and he's kind of swaggering, swaggering, swagger up the front. He's smoking a cigarette, and I'm just kidding, he's not. That was a joke. It was a non-smoking school. It was so cool that it looked like a school. It looked like most schools are non-smoking schools, right? Really? Are they now?
SPEAKER_03I think I've heard that it's there's something bad about smoking. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Actually, the sad thing is there's an uptick now and and vaping and something that's a little different. But he picks up the microphone and he turns and looks right to Jeff, this kid. And he says, Jeff, I'm the meanest kid in the school to you. Wow. And I want to tell you I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_03Oh my God.
SPEAKER_00And then he says, and I want to tell you, on this day, it stops. And he puts the microphone down. Okay. The coolest kid in the school being big enough to be small enough to say, Wow. I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00Well, then you get into that spot.
SPEAKER_03That's amazing.
SPEAKER_02Then get it together, Steve.
SPEAKER_00It it's powerful. Sacred.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And then about ten other kids get up, all guys, doesn't have to be guys. Because have you heard of the Mean Girl Syndrome? But they all, these 10 guys apologize to Jeff. Now I'm watching this and we see this stuff all the time. Do you really? Yeah, we see it all the time.
SPEAKER_02It's a playground dynamic about it.
SPEAKER_00But what I didn't oxytocin. So here's the thing what I didn't see, what I've never seen happen next. You see, while I was observing our amazing staff and these young, these eighth graders, 200 eighth graders, in this powerful closing campfire. We call it the campfire. There was a woman against the wall about five feet from me that throughout this whole time was silently sobbing. And I thought it was one of Jeff's teachers. It was his mom.
SPEAKER_03Oh boy. She do it in there.
SPEAKER_00His mom thought that this day would be even more tormenting. Oh my gosh. And had to be there to support to rescue, to get his kid out, to get her kid out if it went south. And when she found out who I was, because I I I just was talking to her, are you one of the teachers here? She goes, I'm Jeff's, I'm that Jeff's mom. And I was like, she goes, she hugs me and she says, You will never know what this day did for me. You know, so we're like, okay, a kid's getting bullied, it affects that kid, and it affects other kids. Uh-uh. It affects the community. When when anyone is disrespected or tormented, the whole community suffers. And that is something that I don't think people I think they intellectually get it, but I don't think we as a society uh deeply understand it in our core. And with this breakdown in our society of character. And you know, the left points at one thing and the right points at the other, but it's a it's a whole societal issue.
SPEAKER_02Uh we're gonna have this for adults too, Jim.
SPEAKER_00Well, we've we've started, you know, we we in the pandemic, the pandemic, we went from 900 retreats a year, about eight, nine, ten a day. Our teams are driving all around the Midwest. We have an office in Omaha, an office in Milwaukee, it's headquarters here. Um we went from 900 to four for two years, four retreats. Because what? We do large group gatherings, strike one, super spreaders. We do them in schools, strike two. Uh we're 0-2 in the count. Um we decided to re-in to invent new things. So we invented this parent academy. We invented programs for Gen Z and youth groups and and colleges and you know, onboarding uh in businesses and corporations with uh 22, 23-year-olds. Uh we've created our Geometry of a Leader program for community leaders in the faith community, nonprofit, business, corporate, healthcare, education community. So we're doing this work now with adults. Um I'm gonna be lead, I le I lead them in uh personally with a couple of our other older staff. And um we focus again on character. We talk about how do we humanize our environment, being present to human beings in a dehumanized world where you're just looking at your phone, like on the college campuses. We focus on humility as leaders, maybe the greatest leadership trait needed today, meaning I need others, I don't see it all, I don't have a monopoly on the truth, I am not God, I'm human, humility, and then courage, the courage to pursue the vision, despite the cost. And leaders, we need to step up and lead for the sake of our children, for the sake of the next generation. And one of my biggest concerns is the cowardice of leaders today in our in our society. And who suffers? Not us, not the not us in this room. We're we're doing fine, thank you very much. I go home to my my house and get a meal any done. But you know, who's suffering? The kids.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And if we don't get our character act in order, uh it's a bad trajectory.
SPEAKER_03So I always am curious about the economics of an organization. You know, I I I went through your your website and beautiful website, beautiful website, beautiful production for all the all the all the video productions.
SPEAKER_01A lot of staff youthfrontiers.org will put it up on the screen. But it's a great site.
SPEAKER_03How does this get paid for?
SPEAKER_00So we're a nonprofit. Um we've created a business nonprofit model. So very early, uh I was thinking people would flood in 1987. Flood to support this new idea. My mom and dad gave a little bit of money, a few of my mentors gave a little money. I was like, that's it. This isn't gonna pay for anything. Uh, I started to create it as a business. So I charged a fee. I learned after two years you don't negotiate fees because we won't tell anyone if you give up a discount. Hey, Joe gave us a discount if you ask him. Um, so it was like we're a we're a business. We charged a fee. It was about a fixed, yeah. We have expenses. Um as we grew, our expenses grew. We're about a five million dollars uh company, uh nonprofit, uh, which ironically I surprised. I looked, I was doing some research on that. Uh, we're in the about in the top five percent of nonprofits in the country. That's business-wise. People think of the YMCA, Big Brothers, Big Sisters, Um Um, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, the Scouts uh Make a Wish. But most nonprofits are very small. Yep. Um, 50% or under$100,000. Yep. Um, very few, 80% are under a million. There are very few that are over$2 million. Um, so it's the business model is we charge a fee, but we don't charge what it costs. So unbelievably generous donors support us. And so about 80% of our fundraisage, we have to raise about$2.5 million a year. And then where revenues are um I'm not a finance guy, so our finance government is a very good idea. Joe, you are so wrong in that. But let's just say we're about to just throw numbers out.
SPEAKER_03That's what I like to do.
SPEAKER_00Half of our revenue is from donors, half is from the fees that we charge. Okay.
SPEAKER_03And can I ask the the donors uh lots of corporate support or is it mostly individuals?
SPEAKER_00Um eighty percent uh uh individuals were very relational based.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00So we have about an 80% 80% rebook with schools. So once we get into a school, it's rare that they now if the principal leaves and a new principal comes in, they might we have to rebuild the relationship. Um if the school uh is combining. So but typically once we get into a school, we're it's which is it's we get brought back.
SPEAKER_03Which is remarkable because budgets get tight.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, budgets get tight.
SPEAKER_03But the schools recognize the importance of what you're doing, which again is very rare. Yeah. You know, they're constantly cutting, cutting, cutting, and the fact that schools will continue to put an emphasis or make this a priority. I'd like to hear if you feel really good.
SPEAKER_02You meant you told a great story about Jeff and and uh and his mom. I imagine you have schools that rebook you because the teachers probably see a significant shift in kids. Is there a a difference in behavior and you know all the stupid stuff that kids get into?
SPEAKER_00I imagine so about 15 years ago, we worked with the University of Minnesota, the Kerry Center, to do some actual research on what's the longitudinal impact.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um and I should be able to rattle off the data, but uh the increase in acts of courage, the decrease in um uh bullying, the uh the kids at the end of our retreat make a commitment to either kindness, if it's fifth grade, courage, active courage, if it's seventh grade, middle school, a commitment to respect if it's high school. And they then the the where they were researching how you know how much how how uh how much do you continue with that? Uh we've studied it for about 30 days later. Um, and there was some pretty interesting significance on that. I don't think that's necessarily the reason why schools bring us back. I think it's typically they see the power of 200 kids in a room apologizing.
SPEAKER_03You can't how do you how do you you know measure that yeah when there's never I mean there's never that opportunity in regular school. No, I mean you guys set that up. Yeah, the tone, the tone doesn't exist in the real world.
SPEAKER_00The other thing is like we don't allow cell phones in the room. So we don't we can't underestimate the damage that phones have done. And uh last year uh we sent uh a plea to superintendents and principals to get the phones out of the schools. Yeah. And the response is, well, we decided we're getting it out of the classrooms. Oh, so the most important socialization time, the hallways in the lunchroom, you're keeping you're allowing them. Let's show some courage, and we know the data. Right. Uh we know what is the right thing to do. And there are schools that are doing it. Hill murder does it.
SPEAKER_02It's gonna go that way. You know it.
SPEAKER_00We chose a school. My wife and I, when my daughter was uh in seventh grade, I was, you know, I walk in schools a lot. One of the schools I was walking in, every it was it's visitation, all girls Catholic school. Every girl that walked past me in the school looked me in the eye and said hi. And I was like, this is weird. We're going here. This is weird.
SPEAKER_03It's gonna be 30 grand a year, but we're going here.
SPEAKER_00But I popped my head into the head of the school and I said, uh at the time it was Dr. Nichols, Don Nichols. I said, I gotta tell you, we love working with your school. It's one of the schools, one of the hundreds and hundreds of schools we work with. Most of our schools are public schools, interesting enough, but um neither here nor there.
SPEAKER_03No, but I think that's we don't I that's more than here than that.
SPEAKER_00Well, because you know what? Because um a lot of private schools, Catholic schools, uh faith-based schools, they do retreat stuff.
SPEAKER_02Character stuff. Character stuff.
SPEAKER_00It's part of the military. And public schools are leaning into it more, and so we are a great fit into but they don't have retreat directors in their school. Sure. So who are you gonna bring? Call in Ghostbusters. That's us, you frontiers. Old movie. And um, so we come in and we do the stuff that maybe the teachers don't have the time to the teachers are so stressed, and we come in, don't worry, we got everything covered. Yeah. And except for lunch. And uh the so that's where the impact. So I said to the head of the school, I said, I gotta tell you, Dr. Nichols, every single kid that walked past me in the hallway looked me in the eye and smiled or said hi. And she looks up from her desk, she goes, We don't allow cell phones in this school. And I was like, Whoa, wow. So my daughter looked at the school, and we're on the other side of town from that, and she came back and she goes, I want to go here.
SPEAKER_03Wow for her.
SPEAKER_00Because she saw the she's sees the interaction with people and the connection. And so two things. We uh oh, principals will usually say, you know what, my biggest obstacle is not the kids, it's the parents. The parents have got to reach their kid in an emergency. Helicopters, yeah. Well, it's it's our parent academy, we're talking now, but it's snowplow parenting. Yeah, yeah. Helicopter parenting was 10 years ago. That's old. Remember, that's right. If your kid fell down, we picked them up. Now we don't even let them fall down.
SPEAKER_02Bumpers. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And and the damage done is even greater on kids. But so get the phones out of the schools, not just out of the classrooms, out of the schools. The second thing, my wife says don't go on the rant, but uh in our parents' academy. I go on the rant in the parent academy. Yeah, get the phones out of the kids' bedrooms. I'm telling parents, and I'm I'm in my 60s, so I don't care if parents like me. Um, but I do care if what they're doing makes a difference in kids' lives. If you're a parent and you allow an internet connected device, a cell phone, with everything we know now. I'm not gonna look back 10 years because we didn't know. But now, with everything we know, you let a phone in the bedroom, you are an irresponsible parent. Yeah. Period. And they stare at me and I go, and I mean it. Uh that's a David Walsh. Uh he he was he knew this way before his time. You know, we got a his book on say no. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_02And uh the bowling guy?
SPEAKER_00No, say no. David's David Walsh, yeah. So get the phonetic schools and the bedrooms.
SPEAKER_01And the Silicon Valley CEOs don't let their kids they they know. I wonder why. Exactly. They know. They know. So that's a great uh piece of advice. That was uh gonna be a question I wanted to ask. What what what would you share with our listeners? And you already covered that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a pr that's pretty blunt. Uh ask the principals to get it out of this, get them out of the schools. It will give them the cover and then uh get them out of your the kids' bedrooms. You know, that there's other places in the house that can use them. My daughter's my daughter's gotten, she's 20 years old now, she's gotten rid of all social media, doesn't do any social media. And people are like, well, and she was home for school last weekend, and we were we were kind of dictatorial about no phones in the bedrooms because we knew better. We were older parents. I was 48, Jane was 44 when we became uh parents, and I also saw the damage done because I was old and I am in the biz. And I was kind of like uh the the you know the Silicon Valley people they they know. Um and so Tess could sit at the top of the stairs and be on her phone, but once she crossed the threshold of her doorway, the other night she's 20, she was sitting on the top of the stairs talking uh uh habit.
SPEAKER_02Habitat we had our kids unplug, you know, and you know, get drop their phones every every night for a while, and then we also had no technology Tuesdays that we tried to do because that means we had to do the same, and it worked for a while, it was more about keeping awareness. Yeah, we didn't do the best all the time, but we we tried. You know, we had things that we like, we drew a line in the sand, like we gotta try, everybody. We gotta try.
SPEAKER_00You're not gonna do a perfect thing.
SPEAKER_02They saw that it wasn't a good thing for all of us, and we all tried. But let me tell you what we did.
SPEAKER_03We bribed our children. Oh, we had no screen summer, and if they got through the summer, the only thing that they could watch was the news. So, and I'm not kidding you. Uh, they we we we offered them a thousand dollars if they could get through the summer with no screens, and they did. And then the next summer they're like, let's do it again. Yeah, but what's really funny, what's really funny is Ben, the the the middle child, became such an expert on current events. We were at a birthday party and he started talking about Kosovo or something like that. And it's like, what are you talking about? So I I gotta tell you, we would love to have you in here more often. This is of kidding. We've had 194 shows. He's a source guy. You're a source guy. Yeah, he's sincerely doing this way longer than we've thought about it. You're 68 years old.
SPEAKER_00No, 67. Don't age you look fantastic. I only look I look 65. You're not a you only look 65, 66 and a half. No, I'm 67. You started having kids at 48. That's amazing. I we Jayna, we parented like grandparents. So, and what was the but I mean? When we were thirty grandparents, we only felt like our daughter when she was like seven, she said, I wish you guys were younger. And I go, So do we. But uh um at 30, everything mattered. Everything mattered as a parent. At 48, hard. Anything matters. But what matters really matters. That's a grandparent thinking. Yeah. Yeah. And um that's what kind of the way we raised Tess. Uh there are three things that matter, Tess.
SPEAKER_03What what is what does her future look like? What does she want to do?
SPEAKER_00She is a uh uh economic theology double major. Oh boy. So she has this yin and yang. Um she has a passion uh for the Spanish language, and she wants she wants to work maybe internationally with a nonprofit in a Spanish speaking country. What does that mean? So my wife, my wife and daughter speak Spanish fluently, and they use it when they don't want me to understand what they're saying. For sure. Smart. They spoke more so they speak at most dinners in Spanish, so I don't understand anything they're saying.
SPEAKER_03Well, I just want to thank you for the for the time. Madison, thank you for your participation tonight. Uh did a terrific job. Do a quick Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00If you're a parent, connect us with your kids' school.
SPEAKER_03You bet.
SPEAKER_00We'd love to work with the schools. We're we're coming back in a tear after the pandemic and the need is greater than ever. Um if you ever want to come to one of our parent academies, check out our website.
SPEAKER_01Um You have a leadership luncheon coming up.
SPEAKER_00Leadership luncheon in May, you're welcome. All that is on our website. Uh if anyone knows uh that's listening, a person named Mackenzie Bezos, please tell them to look us up.
SPEAKER_03She's giving it away, man.
SPEAKER_00Uh and most importantly, the most important thing I can say uh to anyone listening to this, for our children's sake, let us all as adults live lives, lives of character. That's the most important thing I can say.
SPEAKER_03The old version of character, not the new version of character. Inside. Absolutely. Off we go inside.