05: Kindness.org and Changing the World (w/ Jaclyn Lindsey)

Right. Here we are. Here we are. Thanks so much for coming on, Jacqueline.

I am honored to know you. We worked very close in proximity at our old office, our old name and creative headquarters. You had an office there, and we were able to see each other every other day.

It felt like, and I met your husband, who’s an artist, and got to meet him before you, but then we got in touch, and I’m really excited about what you, you have going on, and obviously, we’re going to dig into that. But kindness.org dot.

Where did that come from? You made it a thing. I made it a thing. Yes.

Thank you for having me. Where did kinastod.org come from? It’s like the combination of all the things in my life leading me to that moment where I took a total leap of faith, felt like I wanted to build something that allowed me to daily work toward a better, kinder, more compassionate world.

That’s amazing. Yeah, it’s very admirable, you know? Thank you. People, I think, often think about doing big, bold things like that or like, hey, there needs to be more kindness in the world.

But do they build an organization dedicated to that and then devote their life to it? Not so many. Yeah. I mean, I think it’s like anyone who has a passion, you can choose to pursue it, or it can feel too intimidating or scary to take that jump to do it.

And I would say, for me, I’m definitely wired to be able, or I guess I’m wired to know myself enough that if I’m gonna lay my head down at night, I have to feel like my day had purpose, and it did feel like purpose was tied to profession and what I was giving my time to each workday. So kindness was the one thing that made my heart beat, and it intimidated me and it scared me because there was no blueprint for it. I had to, you know, make my own.

And it’s been quite a journey. I bet. It’s exciting in a way, when you’re navigating new waters where you’re in control about, here’s this new territory, and I’m going to set the direction, and if you come up with a new idea or a new direction, you can go, oh, let’s explore that.

But I wanted to roll back a little. What did you do before kindness.org and what led you to stopping whatever you were doing and starting this? So I’ve always been in the nonprofit sector and very passionate about the improvement of that space to have impact in the world.

And early on, I thought my work in the nonprofit space would be more internal, operational, working toward operational efficiency and effectiveness. I had always been passionate about volunteering, and while I saw a lot of goodness in the nonprofit space, I also saw a lot of issues and gaps and things that concerned me. It was people that were so well intentioned and wanted to do a lot to build a better world.

But really early on in my career, I fell into fundraising, and that was a really incredible thing, to be at the table, helping people think about the role of generosity to change the world. So I was in fundraising for a very long time, working both domestically and on an international charity with a focus on the water crisis. And I learned, really, a lot of so many aspects of why people give, what motivates people to give, and became humbled to see that and be a part of their journey in giving.

So that’s what I was doing right before I took this leap to launchkindness.org dot. Okay, so it makes sense that you were kind of set up already in that trajectory in that world.

That’s exciting. Before we dive in too deep, I think it’s important to define some things, and I’m kind of interested in, before we dig into all the different things that you’re doing within kindness in your organization, can you define kindness? And I imagine it’s open to interpretation, but what’s your definition? What’s your organization’s definition of what kindness is? We define it as an action intended to benefit someone, typically at a cost. And we have a little fun with it, saying the
ABCs.

So the action intended to benefit someone at a cost. And it’s not to say that kindness always costs money. It’s that it costs us something.

It’s our time. It’s our intention, it’s our commitment to seeing that other person in front of us and choosing to act on what we’re seeing. And I would flip it back and ask you to define it as well, because I think the real power of our work has shown kindness is personal and intimate and understood by everyone, and yet we all experience it differently.

So I’d be curious how you would define kindness. Oh, boy. If the interviewee is allowed to interview.

No, you’re not. And this interview is now over. You broke the rules.

No, I’m happy to. This is fun. So there’s the golden rule.

Do unto others as you would do unto them, necessarily like that. Carl Sagan, one of my heroes, brought up the silver rule, and that, I think, is better. Don’t do unto others what you don’t want them to do to you? Because I could say, I believe this.

I want you to believe it, too. And I’m doing what I think is right based on what I believe. And I think being kind absolutely is an action.

But I also think it’s a restraint of putting your beliefs or intentions on what you think people should do on others in letting others be. And I think that’s kind because I agree with your definition 100%. So I wanted to also add to that that there’s the action of kindness, but also there’s a being kind of letting and letting others live their lives.

You know, you could point out, hey, you shouldn’t murder people. And that’s probably an okay thing to prescribe to someone. I mean, there’s, like, common things, but ultimately, you know, we all have our own trajectories, our own beliefs, our own wants and letting, as long as we’re not harming each other, I think that’s important, is not prescribing things to others.

And so the silver rule is a big one for me, and I think that’s. That’s kind. And then you nailed it on your action.

What was the b? To benefit benefit. And it absolutely is a cost, and definitely not monetarily. But if you’re being kind to someone, you know, I’m gonna give them five more minutes of my time, or I’m gonna volunteer, or, I don’t need this shirt anymore.

And so there’s that cost. I love the abcs. I think that’s gonna be really tangible for anyone listening.

That’s fantastic. Thank you. And I wanna.

I’ve never heard of the silver rule, but I wanna really validate what you’ve just said, because that’s. That’s precisely the work we’re trying to do. To me, that restraint is you choosing to do something to benefit them versus yourself.

When you’re trying to prescribe something, typically it’s for yourself. You’re thinking you’re helping the other person, but it’s really your own narrative and your own belief, and you’re trying to project it onto somebody else, and you think you’re doing it for them, but it’s really saying, well, this is my thing, so I want it to be your thing. And I think the restraint is the choice of saying, is this beneficial to them? And how do you delineate that? It’s quite complicated, because, of course,
we all have our different passions and convictions, perspectives, but I really do think the complexity of it, that’s what most fascinates me.

Kindness and the work we’re doing is trying to rebrand it. It’s trying to take away the idea that kindness is soft, fluffy, weak, feminine, and instead give it a real container to live in, which is, it’s courageous, it’s complex. It can be really difficult to choose kindness.

What you’ve just said, is hard to do. And that’s the leveling up that I want the world to operate against. I love that.

I think there’s a lot of things in the kindness realm where it’s gotten a bad rap, or there’s this perspective on it where it’s like, oh, that’s a weakness. Like vulnerability in communication, or how you treat others like, being vulnerable. Um, is the way to open up, to.

To create healthy dialogue and things like that. But, you know, there’s been this, you know, like, you need to. You need to be solid, you need to be strong.

And I think being vulnerable is being strong. Being kind is the biggest strength in things like that. I think what you’re saying is fantastic, and I think it, it needs this rejuvenation, whatever it is, it’s.

It’s clear if you look at the world. Number one, I want to say there is absolutely kindness everywhere you look. And I think today it’s harder because we live in a society where what makes the news is a car crash or a murder or someone saying something ridiculous instead of profound or positive, because people are drawn to that excitement of negativity.

I don’t know what that pull is, and I’m sure that you guys have research that, and I want to get into that. But there is this interesting thing. But I want.

For the record, I know that there’s kindness out there. Based on my life experience and who I’ve met all over the world through my travels, that’s the majority. That’s the rule, not the exception.

It’s fixing the exceptions or the sneaky things where people might not know that this small action or inaction is actually causing this ripple effect. That’s a negative repercussion in the world. With that said, I did a little homework, and we’ve met before.

We had a great meeting when I first wanted to talk to you, and it really resonated with me. I’ve never forgotten that. On your website, it says, use science to build products, programs, and partnerships that empower people to transform behaviors and choose kindness.

I love the fact that you’re injecting science, that you’re using science, as, may I say, a backbone of how you’re projecting. Okay, what we’re saying and doing is backed up in research. So can you speak more to how do you hypothesize and theorize and prove whatever you’re doing within the kindness realm? Yes.

I love this. So it goes back a little bit to the origin of how we began and say that I wasn’t setting out to start a nonprofit, on the contrary, I think a lot of times people just insert a new business or a new nonprofit and you evaluate the landscape and you’re not really solving a problem, you’re just adding to the noise. And so there were so many kindness organizations that existed when I was starting to think about doing something on my own.

And I have a co founder and we really went on a six month, I call it like a learning journey or a learning tour, to evaluate the kindness space. And that led us to have the most remarkable conversations with scientists and researchers that were studying human behavior, pro social behaviors, cooperation, kindness, compassion, and how that shows up in the world. And time and again, the consistent messages, oh, the science tells us that this is one of the most essential things we have for survival,
for thriving, for the future of humanity.

Really big sweeping statements, but they were just doing the research. There was no application that we saw. And then a lot of the kindness organizations, albeit incredible intentions and beautiful missions, of course, we didn’t see the underpinning of data, and so we felt that we could really come at this solving the problem of not having that combo of science and solutions existing.

So we set out to study kindness, position ourselves as an authority on kindness, and we saw science as the route to help us do that. And the role it’s played since we began. Before we even launched, we did research to look at the link between kindness and well being.

And everything since then has been answering the biggest questions that we don’t know about kindness. One of the biggest being, how do you measure it? And so how do we put measurement toward kindness in a way that’s tangible, that makes it from fluffy to real, that gives people something to hold onto. And a lot of our work has shown the significance of kindness, the role it plays on our mental health, emotional health, physical health, how it shows up within companies, within children, and it’s an
endless pursuit to continue studying it.

And so, yeah, the role science is playing, that’s fantastic. It gives you a lot more oomph behind what you’re doing. Also, it’s so informative.

I personally big fan of science and using science and implementing the scientific method in what we do day to day with whatever interaction or pursuit we’re doing. You had mentioned measurables of how do we measure kindness? Can you speak a little bit about maybe one or two things on like, this is how we measure kindness? Sure. Yeah.

So, a big initiative that we’ve had on the research side of our business the past couple years has been first looking at every kind of action you can do for a kinder world or for a person or specifically, and is our way to measure it. So we put together what we’ve called kindbase. It’s the world’s first database of kind acts.

And then we surveyed 15,000 people across the US and the UK, all walks of life, all backgrounds, a very representative sample, and we asked them to rate these kind acts and tell us, if someone did this for you, how important is it to you? If someone smiles at you, holds a door open for you, if. If they do something really courageous for you, what matters? How would you measure it? And so we did this very official, rigorous research, and out of that, we now have a database that’s been rated by the
public as the things that are most cost effective, the things that are the most beneficial, the things that are the kindest. And we can now make recommendations to people in a much more precise way.

People can come and they can say, well, I want to do something that’s difficult. And so we can serve up recommendations that challenge them to think about kindness in new ways. That’s one piece.

The second is we then took that database and built a new survey where we’re calling it your KQ, your kindness quotient. And the idea there, and this is soon to be released, people will be able to come and answer questions of what they’d be willing to do for somebody. And we can then tell them, well, this is is what your kindness quotient is.

And the quotient is the idea of showing how much you care about others. It’s helping, you know, do you care about people? 85% as much as yourself? 90%. And we can do it based on recipient.

So we’ve looked at it across friend, family, colleague and stranger so far, and we’re expanding that research to look at things like in group, out group. What about someone who’s different than you? When you see someone, this is the complexity of kindness. When you see someone who’s different than you, may it be socio economically, age, religion, race, your reactions stem from something, right? We’re unkind because of our own fears, our own belief systems, our constraints.

You know, the things that we’re like, I’m too busy, whatever it is. And so we don’t act on kindness. And all of that is what we’re interested in helping people overcome.

So by giving that tangible measurement, our hope is that people can feel it and touch it. Then guiding them to choose kindness in ways that challenge them and get them to think about it differently is where we’re taking it. That’s fantastic.

It’s almost a way to gamify it too. You know, like smile at someone, get a point. It’s like a treat.

First off, before I forget, is the data that you’ve. Is this inaccessible to people or your research? Is there somewhere where I or anybody can go and read these results? Yes. Yes.

We are actually in the middle of rolling out all of the research I just mentioned. We’re starting by submitting it for academic publication, which is always our first step. And then we do the lay version, which becomes like a blog post.

So if you visit our site, everything is housed there, although we are improving how you find it, how discoverable it is. Sure. Yeah.

You’ve got to optimize it in a way, or make it more tangible. Tangible is not the word digestible. Exactly, exactly.

Because I’ve read several research papers, I used to assign it to my students at the Art institute, where it’s like, I want you to be exposed to the format of what a research paper looks like because it’s important and there’s a reason for it, but it is a little intense. So it’s nice that you’re also taking the approach of, we’re going to put it into a nice blog that you can eat up. Yeah.

It goes back to the way we think of the science and solutions, because the science is big and complex. Our research hub is called Kind Lab. It’s led by an incredible psychologist, an evolutionary psychologist from the University of Oxford.

And it’s heady. So how do we make it accessible? And he is always thinking about not just the research we’re producing to the scientific community, but how applicable is it toward actually moving the needle for a kinder world. And we call our research hub kind lab.

So under our kind lab page you can find most of our outputs, research findings there. Awesome. And we’ll have links in the show notes to your website because that’s fantastic.

And I would imagine people are going to want to dive in deeper to this because it’s unique and it’s important. I wanted to mention that I go for runs through the park near my home and I always love. It’s sometimes the small things when you run past someone that you do not know at all.

And they give you a wave, or I give them a wave and they wave back and smile, or just even a smile without a wave. One day I counted out of how many people and for like, it was like several weeks, I counted how many people waved back. And one day it was like 90% of people waved back to me.

It was a morning and there’s a different crowd in the morning versus the night, which I noticed in just my brain calculations. I didn’t write this stuff down and do a formal research, but it always, no matter what, makes me feel better when someone waves back, smiles back. It’s an enormous difference of like, the vibe that I take through the next half mile of strides where it’s like, that was nice.

That’s nice interaction. We didn’t say a word. There’s something to that where the most simple things.

And so, you know, it’d be interesting to see how much the weight of a smile is versus I gave a bag of clothes to someone or I cooked a meal for a family, versus a smile, because I imagine smile is actually a decent weight for points or however you measure it in relation to other things, because powerful. Yes, you’re right. I mean, actually when we did it, we were surprised at how the simplest things had the biggest weight in people’s minds.

So you’re quite right in your own informal experiment that you did some of the ones coming to mind just telling someone they matter, saying, good morning. There’s a lot of micro behaviors that go a long way and there’s a lot of research to show the ripple effect, so it affects you. And one of my favorite things to share is that a kind act is the most effective way to boost the well being of you and another human simultaneously.

So in that moment, you felt it and they did too. So they went on their half mile the other direction also with a boost in pep in their step, quite literally. And that’s the power of kindness.

And that’s why I encourage everyone and anyone listening today. And however you think about kindness, it’s remembering every kind act makes a difference. Yeah, that’s enormous.

It’s, you know, sitting here, I’m like, duh. But. And not to undermine anything that you’re doing, but at the same time, this is super important, especially today when I think teams and rivalries, as sometimes competition can be healthy.

My wife and I talked about competition for about 45 minutes last night. It was really great conversation, but it goes way too far. I think in politics you see it where it’s really, you’re either on one side or another.

You can’t be in the middle or, you know, or people are just so staunch and they’re situated fasted to their beliefs without thinking, well, how does. How does this belief affect others in some way? Or, you know, it’s. It’s.

It’s. Big fan. Big fan of what you’re doing.

Thank you so much. Yeah, I’m kind of curious, through your research, through your experience, what is one of the most surprising facts or discoveries that you guys have made or that you’ve experienced through your journey so far? And maybe it’s a hard question to say one thing because you kind of just had mentioned, wow, the weight of something so small is actually so significant. But is there anything that else that stands out where it goes? We were studying this, and I can’t believe that this
was the result.

Oh, what a great question. You know, I think I’m doing this because I believe in all of it, and I wasn’t sure how much would prove itself out. And so, in a way, to your point, duh.

Like, I’m not surprised by so much of what we’re discovering. And yet the thing I’m constantly surprised by is just how much this matters and the more I see it translated to your point on politics, for example, we funded a small research grant. So one belief we have is we can’t have a monopoly on good research ideas.

There’s endless people that are very skilled. They’re experts in their own domain studying kindness from a different lens. And so we actually offer microgrants to those research teams to help us better understand kindness more quickly.

It accelerates our learning. It’s a really smart way to invest in people and to see good research out there. We have a really rigorous application process to get the grant.

And these are small grants, less than 5000. But the first one we ever did was looking at the role of kindness meditation within effective polarization, essentially. And we discovered that this team discovered, when people did loving kindness meditation, specifically towards people of the opposite political group, that they believed they were more compassionate toward them.

And it’s those reminders, I think it’s realizing this is real, it’s tangible, and it works. It works. It’s transformational.

It has the power to change lives. There’s endless stories I could tell you about people who were battling loneliness, depression, hate, fear, you know, and what a single kind acted to help them overcome something, their own belief systems, their own narratives. And so I think that’s what I’m always struck by is the never ending awe and beauty and power that this thing has.

And you’re right, it’s within all of us. The majority of us are good. There’s a few bad apples, is what we like to say.

Yeah, yeah. And they unfortunately get the coverage. Yes.

But, yeah, and I think even within those bad apples, they, you know, like, hurt people hurt people. They’ve been maybe in an experience or set up in a way or raised in a way where that it’s just an unfortunate situation. But even within that person, even within a person doing bad, there’s still good in there.

You just gotta overcome the badness through meditation, things like that. And I kind of wanted to ask, how do you break through people’s routines, the noise in the world, the speed at which people go throughout their day, the teams that they stick with, how are you breaking through the noise and, you know, telling people about this, making them act on this, or not making them, but encouraging them to, you know, take a step back to evaluate what are some of the methods that you use to break
through. Yeah.

So our mission officially is we educate and inspire people to choose kindness. Some people are the person who needs the research and the science, and so we’re there to serve up the educational materials, and some people are drawn to the human side, and so we’re there to serve up stories. You know, we love telling stories through videos.

We’ve had multiple viral videos. You know, we had a video that was considered Facebook’s most viewed charity video for years. It just, you know, it had exceeded 125 million views or something like that and was just a simple, you know, not simple, but like a short three minute video.

And so that breaks through the noise that gets people’s attention. And so the idea is, through the science and the stories, we can hopefully get people to stop and pause and think. And then when we’re serving up those solutions to help inspire the choice, we’re learning all the time.

We’re a very iterative, I would say, tech forward company. Everything’s engaged digitally. You can come to our site, and we’re always trying new ways to communicate.

We have different products and you can bring into different environments, and all of it’s a learning curve. So people are participatory. We have a group of citizen scientists, everyday people, about 500 volunteers around the world that sign up to help us learn what’s working.

You know, how do you use this in the world? What’s your feedback to this? How does kindness show up in these different environments? And it allows us to learn very quickly through a wide group of people. So, yeah, and we’re launching a podcast, too, to help showcase the power of kindness. It’s called why kindness? And again, it’s like breaking through the noise, you know, this world, but it’s getting people to hopefully just stop and engage in a moment where it gives them pause.

They think they have a new perspective, even if it’s just a shift, a slight shift. That’s what it looks like. Thank you for tuning in to episode five of the Naiman Creative show with Jacqueline Lindsay.

Do you like what you’re hearing? Have you been thinking about starting your own podcast for yourself, your business? Well, we here at Naiman Creative can help with our audio services, ranging from custom music scores, sound branding, to podcast production and so much more. We can elevate your business needs with our audio services. So feel free to reach out to us today, and we’ll be happy to help you get something started right away.

That’s fantastic. I. You read my mind because the next question I was going to ask is, are you guys working on building a podcast? Because if not, can we talk about that? Because it’s a great way. You’re in people’s ears.

You’re talking. I imagine you’ll have some guests. You’ll talk about your research.

Exactly. I can’t wait for that. Why kindness? It’s called why kindness.

It actually launches in a week, and we have an incredible first season lineup of people, really, really notable, prolific people that are so generous to talk about why kindness. And it is the depth of it, Josh, it’s not the soft stuff. The stories that are coming out are real and raw and difficult, but necessary to showcase the power of why kindness matters so much in our world.

That’s huge. I think that the format of podcasts is very, very powerful, just like we’re doing right now. We’re digging in, digging in.

And there’s not necessarily a rule book where it’s like, I can ask. You said nothing’s really off limits here, and so we can dive into whatever we feel and actually start to scratch what’s truly important. I think that’s enormous.

Exactly. You’re already on top of it. I don’t need to say anything.

Are you going to be the host of that? I’m the host. Oh, fantastic. That’s cool.

You got a little snippet earlier when I tried to flip the script and ask you what kindness means. You’re practicing. I’m glad I passed.

You did. You did great. It’d be fun to be fully interviewed on this, but people get enough of me.

So it’s all good. We’ve been talking about kindness, doing, you know, act, acting to others. But I wanted to talk about and ask you if some of your research, some of your happenings, or what you’re doing in your organization, are there initiatives to reflect on oneself? So being kind to yourself is a good thing and you need to be kinder to yourself.

Is that something you’ve explored or you’re exploring? Yeah, it’s been baby steps, and it’s actually on our strategic roadmap for this upcoming year. And it’s a really interesting topic because we, again, going back to the role of self kindness, we want to try to understand not only how it feeds into our own narrative of ourself, but how that then shapes how we’re showing up in the world. So, of course, I believe in putting your oxygen mask on first.

You have to fill your cup before you can pour out all of those things. Yes, but I want to go beyond that. I want to understand why is why and how is self kindness essential for how we’re then showing up in the world as a better human and a better person.

And I only have use cases that are personal. It’s like, for me, I know my hot yogas and getting my monthly pedicure or getting out on my paddle board or whatever the things are that are my outlets. I know, yes.

That shapes how I’m showing up as a mom, as an entrepreneur, as a citizen of this world. But what is it for everyone? We’re all wired differently, of course, you know, and so, yeah, it is on the roadmap. So more to come.

Watch this space, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. We’ll be staying on the pulse and I would hope, you know, to have you or maybe one of the scientists on your team, you know, in the kind lab on. That would be cool to like, dive in.

Let’s do it. Yeah. So they’re gonna be part.

Part two. Great. Love it.

Yeah, I, you know, kindness is love in a way. And, you know, when you. I can’t remember.

Throughout my life, I’ve learned that, you know, in order to love others, you also need to love yourself because that assists in the full spectrum of love to one another. And so I would imagine that that’s with kindness, too. But I was kind of curious on the inward side of things as well as the outward side.

So that’s great. That’s on your roadmap. Yeah.

Again, it doesn’t surprise me. You’re on top of it. You guys have thought of everything.

You know, everything’s going so well. I do like to talk about people’s setbacks. What’s a, you know, what’s a failure that you’ve, that you’ve run into or a major setback where you’re like, wow, I didn’t see that coming.

Or that’s a hurdle. And how did you overcome that? How did that make you stronger from that? You know, because ultimately, as entrepreneurs, you, failure is part of the process. You can’t avoid it.

It’s how you overcome that, how you learn from that. Is there anything that sticks out? Yeah, this really small thing. I think I was the only one affected by it.

A global pandemic. Oh, yeah, you probably were. Yeah.

I was, like, alone in that. No, not to make a joke at all. On the contrary.

Yeah. In all seriousness, that tested me in ways it’s really difficult to express. It was a very, very, very trying year for the organization.

I was pregnant. We moved our life from new york here to st. Petersburg.

It was full survival mode. We didn’t know if the organization would be able to make it out of such a trying time, largely related to sustainability and what was going on in our world and country in that moment. And yet I felt there was such an urgency for kindness.

We had just developed our first applied product, which was a social, emotional learning curriculum that we were rolling out to schools. And then we launched it two weeks before the shutdown in March 2020. Perfect timing.

Perfect timing. It was, like, wild. And we all looked at each other, very small, tiny but mighty team.

And I said, listen, I have a plan, and I will give my whole heart everything I have to keep this thing going, but I just need you to know it would mean extending Runway, and it would be really testing all parts of how we’re operating with very little. And they said, yes. They said, this matters.

So it was my head of kind lab, my head of kind lab, and my head of learn kind. She had written the curriculum. She was responsible to roll it all out.

And there was a lot of difficult transition that happened within our team. It was just a painful time. And everyone said, we’re in it with you.

My board showed up, my husband showed up, my family showed up, and people rallied, and we persevered. I never want to relive that year, but I can credit that year for shaping me and making me stronger, teaching me a new form of resilience I had no idea existed, and I’m absolutely better because of it. And yet it was an incredibly, incredibly painful and difficult and trying time in my life.

Yeah, well, not luckily, but in a way, because, to speak to your joke, we weren’t alone. As lonely as that time was, because we literally had to separate from each other. The thing was that we were all going through this wild time together, right.

I thought that was gonna bring the world together a little more than it seemed to have, but I’m still hopeful. Number two is I’m very glad that you kept pursuing, because specifically regarding the pandemic and what comes with more primal things coming out where now it’s more survival mode. Kindness to one another, to yourself are essential.

More essential in those trying times, if you will. Exactly. That’s what’s needed.

And so I’m glad that you pursued. I’m sure that you’re stronger on the other end. And, you know, for me, that led to a particular career change for me.

And then here I am within my own company during a pandemic. I don’t know what I was thinking, but here we are, and it works. It’s interesting.

Thanks. It’s interesting that, you know, low points are followed by these high points. You know, it’s everything in waves, so.

But I’m really glad to hear that. I want to go back to. You had mentioned schools and curriculum.

Can you speak more about that? Because obviously, for me, I believe that everything starts with education in the home, but also at school and how children are spending most of their day, children and adults. What are you doing in the education space? Yeah, this is definitely my personal passion project. You know, my personal story and passion for kindness came out of feeling my own impact of lack of kindness growing up through bullying, and the bullying I went through was pre social media, and it
was a world where it was just expected, you know, you didn’t really have a lot of outlets or support when you were being bullied.

It was just kind of what was going on back then. Some of the stuff I went through now I think of if my own child was going through that, oh, forget it, it’d be world war three kind of thing, you know? And yet I didn’t really have the tools. I didn’t know how to navigate it, and it deeply, deeply affected me.

It transformed my belief about myself and how I looked at myself. And so my belief about it being the most important thing we have is because I’ve seen when we don’t have kindness, what it can do. And I’ve long wanted to think about one of our solutions being something that could affect kids, that could show up in the classroom, and that could hopefully play a role in equipping kids with the tools they need to navigate a very complex world.

So true to the way we think about things, we never build unless we’re solving a problem. Our solutions are always about filling a gap, a need, serving up something that is truly useful and meaningful. There is a lot of kindness curricula out there, there’s a lot of character building tools out there.

So again, we wanted to be thoughtful and make sure we weren’t adding to the noise of anything. And we began with asking educators, the users, we asked parents, we asked kids, what are you needing? What are the gaps? What are the pain points? With teaching kids kindness in the classroom space? It’s under the umbrella of social emotional learning. That’s what it’s couched under.

But for us, it’s the same. It’s kindness. We see kindness as a meta value.

Things like empathy, compassion, forgiveness, justice, fairness, those are all extensions of kindness. They are nested underneath, and kindness acts as the umbrella over all of it. And at the end of that user research, we found several pain points.

Teachers said, there’s great curricula, but it’s expensive. There’s curricula that doesn’t reflect the diverse makeup of my classroom, and so it’s hard for my students to relate. There is curricula that lacks flexibility and doesnt allow me to actually introduce it.

It prescribes kindness, it doesnt let my children, my students experience it, and it doesnt take home life into account. So we went away and we had a really tall order. How do we build something that attempts to address one to all of those issues that teachers were facing? And out of it, we developed learn kind.

It’s a kindergarten through 8th grade curriculum. It’s a scaffolded approach, so it’s very modular, and it is giving kids the ability to become a student scientist. So it’s leveraging inquiry based learning, which is like the root of teaching stem.

And as five year olds and up, kids are going in, not being prescribed kindness, not being told, oh, you ought to be kind, but instead saying, what do you think about kindness? What do you think feel when you do kindness? What do you feel when you engage with it? And they get their student scientist journals, they learn first about the self, they learn about their well being, they learn about emotional regulation, and then it develops from there. They learn empathy, empathy for others, empathy for
those who are different. They learn about connection and the role of relationships, they learn how to choose kindness and the act of it, and then they conduct an experiment at the end.

And three years in, we just closed our third school year, we’ve served 225,000 students. We’re active in 49 states. We’ve reached more than 50 countries, and we’re on an ambitious plan to serve 5 million children over the next five years.

We’re soft clapping over here. That’s impressive. Three years.

Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.

That’s amazing. So important because, like, where. Where do these things start? You know, where.

Where can most impact be? You know, adults can change. It’s a harder journey, and it’s important to, you know, to educate adults, but really, the children are the future. As cliche as that is, that is a fact.

And so if you get them in the right direction, I love how also you’re having them explore it. They’re being scientists about this. They’re making the discoveries which, like, literally those discoveries, those connections, those.

Those. It’s a deeper understanding when they discover, ah, this is what it means to be kind, or this is the impact, rather than just, like, don’t do that. Right.

Be kind. You know, it’s. It’s a.

It’s deeper than that. So I think that’s really effective. Again, doesn’t surprise me that you guys are going about it in a correct manner, you know, or an efficient way.

Have you received plenty of positive feedback? Incredible feedback. The best being, we just closed out a randomized control trial to evaluate the efficacy of the curriculum. And that’s the really silver or the gold standard.

Excuse me? Like the silver seal that you can get to validate how effective something is. So kindlab came in and did this very rigorous randomized control trial of our teachers implementing the curriculum and then not implementing the curriculum. And we compared the data of the students.

We looked at the impact on well being, on prosocial behaviors and episodes of depression, anxiety, hypertension. And what we can say is, when learn kind is introduced into the classroom in an obvious way, it does make kids kinder. We can now say that, but it makes them happier.

They are choosing more prosocial behaviors, like, they’re more giving and caring and generous. And teachers saw a reduction in episodes of depression and anxiety that their students were bringing into the classroom before the curriculum was introduced. So we now can stand on it and say, we’re ready to blow the lid off this thing because we know it actually works and it drives meaningful, measurable change in the lives of students.

Sure, that’s enormous. And you have actual data now to look and say, here, there’s tangible evidence of this. I think that’s going to propel you to a next level.

You think about PE class or different things that have been integrated into education. I really feel like this could be something where most schools are like, oh, yeah, and we have this, this thing, of course, this, you know, kind learn, kind is a part of this curriculum. And that’s a selling point of, of schools.

That’s a, that’s an enormous thing. How cool. Thank you, big fans.

Thank you. We’ve reached a moment in the podcast. Okay.

The rapid fire. Ah, yes, love the rapid fire. Rapid fire.

So I ask mostly the same questions to every guest. Great. Because it’s always so fun to see the overlap and also the varying perspectives.

Great. And so without further ado, let’s dive in. Let’s do it.

Okay, are you ready? I think so, yeah. I feel really good. I think you’re gonna win this one.

All right, cool. So first question, what is your biggest source of inspiration? My family, my children. Absolutely.

Every day I wake up inspired by them. Every day that was without hesitation, that wasn’t edited, zeroed out. Zeroed out.

I feel that especially having a one year old, I felt it hard before, and now it’s like, that is a pillar in my life. So that’s fantastic. Very meaningful.

Do you have a favorite book? Oh, goodness, that’s a hard one. I know. Favorite book.

Gosh, like what category? I love reading so much. What would I say is a favorite book that I give people I love? Just mercy. Let’s go with that one.

Just mercy. Just mercy. Story of Bryan Stevenson.

He’s behind the equal justice initiative, and I don’t want to say too much about it, just get it and read it. But it’s his journey to advocate for people that have been wrongly convicted. Ah, wonderful.

Yeah, that’s huge. That sounds like it would be an interesting read. An intense read.

Very intense, but again, very necessary. I think they made a movie about it as well. But I do read the book, of course, because movies, it’s hard to do books justice.

Oh, 100%. One of my favorite books is contact by Carl Sagan. And I watched the movie.

I’m like, you guys, you missed such a big portion. It’s not like it’s a bad movie, but you missed what, you know, huge portion of what he was going for in that song. A movie’s an hour and a half long or whatever.

Cool. Just mercy. All right, we’ll also have that in the show notes.

Perfect resources in there. Do you have a favorite musical artist or album? For a long time I would have said Pink Floyd, dark side of the moon, and that’s got a lot of meaning to me. I’m also a huge fan of cigarettes.

Oh, man. Now we’re speaking the same language. It’s.

You can throw that on and you’re. You’re. You’re feeling.

Look, I have goosebumps just thinking about a song because it just popped in my head. My goodness. Yeah, the parentheses album, that’s the one I tell people to go to.

Perfect. All right, man. I’m gonna listen to them later today.

How do you define success? Waking up every day and staying true to who you are. Love it. Yeah, love it.

You’re good at rapid fire. Some people are not. We had a lawyer on, and he won the longest rapid fire.

I think you can know why he’s a good guy, though. Episode two with Doug Jackson. What is your favorite business tool? Mmm.

The tool of respecting people’s time. Wow. Love it.

That’s huge. So a calendar. No, I’m just kidding.

Calendar. I think it’s, like, informs everything. Like team culture, meeting culture, you know, who’s at the table.

Is it necessary? So I use the filter of everyone always asking the question, like, is this a good use of time? Because time’s our most valuable commodity. Every minute you take from someone is a minute they’re getting taken from something else. So it’s just always being conscious of how you use people’s time.

So it’s an internal tool. But I think the minute you can own that, do it, and do it well, it transforms your business 100%. Yeah, you’re doing good.

Thanks. You’re doing very well. Thanks.

I got one more for you. Okay, let’s do it. So outside of the day to day in your organization and outside of kindness, obviously you’re out there being kind, but what’s your favorite thing to do? Mmm.

I do love just adventuring around with my family. We love traveling the world, you know, seeing new sites, being immersed in new cultures, trying new foods. So that’s, like, always something we’re doing.

And then I kind of hit on it earlier, but I love paddle boarding. I love being on the water. I love being close to nature.

So those are definitely my outlets. Is that why you moved from New York to Florida? 100%, 1000%? Yeah, it was like, half the year. It was freezing.

We lived in a small apartment. I was like, we’re committed to culture. We’re raising our kids in a city.

But then you walk to St. Pete and you’re just like, oh, this is it all. It’s sunny and beautiful and has the beaches and the art and the people and we’ve never looked back. Yeah, agreed.

We were very happy with this move. I love Indiana. I love the people there, the cold stuff.

And there is something very special about this area. St. Pete specifically. I just happened to land here, but it’s a great spot, and here I am.

And the people in this room, my goodness, how grateful I am. I want to wrap things up to be respectful of your time, our audience’s time, Jordan’s time, my time. But I think I like to talk to people about some things.

Also, at the end, aside from the rapid fire being common, I want to kind of get your insight or your thoughts on to what kindness.org looks like in 510 years. Obviously, your podcast is going to be number one on the charts.

But, you know, and obviously, I would imagine you want to get the curriculum for education, learn kind into more schools. But can you speak more about that? Yeah. So my vision with this has always been to be the number one resource for activating kindness in the world.

And so it’s a long play. Over the next five years, our goal is to grow what we call our community out through change makers, people who are taking our tools and then bringing it into the different environments where they live and work. And so we hope to have a million people in that community over the next five years.

We hope to have 5 million kids that we’ve reached through our curriculum over the next five years. And I wanted to all contribute to kinder companies, communities and classrooms. So we see ourselves as the provider, but the people are the conduit.

They’re the amplifiers, they’re the implementers. At the end of the day, we can’t make you be kind. You have to choose it.

Of course, going back to the beginning, and there’s people that act as the champions. The teacher who says, I want kindness in my classroom, we want to tap into that. We want them to be the ones then amplifying it to their 2025 students.

The head of people, you know, the chief human resource officer, the CEO who says, I want kindness in my company. We want them to come to us and we can help support them with the tools they need. So our goal is to grow that audience and really become the gold standard for how people live and work.

And they come to us to provide or to provide them with the tools they need to do it. I think you’re well on your way to doing that. That’s clear.

Thank you. So I think you’re going to surpass those goals, that’s for sure. Thanks.

But also very ambitious. It’s not like, you’re doing small things. You have the research aspect to it to back you up.

You have Kindlab. That’s an enormous move for your organization. It’s an enormous step in what I think is a proper direction and actually activating it with roots and meaning behind it.

I think it’s just awesome to dive into this with you. Thank you. And I know that people will resonate with this.

As someone involved in kindness and business and entrepreneurship and planning for the future, whatever it may be, what’s some of the best advice that you’d want to give someone listening? Something that maybe you would have loved to hear early on. I think fear is a hard thing to eliminate. So whatever you’re fearful of or intimidated by, know that you can still get through it and overcome it.

I think a lot of times that is what stops us from taking leaps. So I would encourage anyone anywhere to know that if you’re feeling something, if you feel that prick in your heart or your mind or spirit, that there’s something out there for you to just be willing to take a leap, no matter how scary it might feel. I would say care well for everyone.

You know, whoever’s in your life, be it an intern, a volunteer, every person matters, so treat people with dignity and respect. And I think the more business leaders do that, the better business model it is. So you should do it.

If you need it to feel like it’s improving your bottom line, so be it. But at the end of the day, I promise you, it’s the best thing you can do as a leader, is to care well for every person equally. And I would say prioritize mental health.

There it is. Yeah. Number one, about the treating others in a leadership position with kindness and respect.

If you care about them, they care back. So you’re actually not being selfish, but that is also serving you and your ambitions or your organization. Because if you put the care into them, they’re going to more likely care about the thing that’s keeping this train moving because they don’t want to lose that.

Hey, I love going to work because I’m respected. I love the energy. And so they’re more incentivized to make sure to work hard to make sure that that thing keeps going.

And also, you’re just having a better day. You’re having a better time in general, so you can’t go wrong again. Sometimes it’s like, of course, of course.

And number two, with the fear thing and overcoming your fear, not letting that get in the way. I think when you’re doing hard things or you’re thinking about doing something big, you can, like you said, you can’t eliminate fear, but also like, becoming a friend with fear, you know, like using that fear, because if you’re not a little uncomfortable or afraid of what you’re pursuing, it’s easy. And maybe a lot of people are doing it.

So maybe that’s an indicator that you need to push to something new. Otherwise you might be doing the same thing. And I’m not sure if I’m explaining that well, but fear is, in a way, a good sign, in my opinion.

I agree. You can use it as a strength, pay attention to it. Yeah.

And, I mean, it’s gonna be there anyway, so might as well hold its hand. Exactly. I love that.

Well, lastly, I wanted to, you know, I think with, with your organization and this initiative in general, I think it’s good to maybe get out. What can people do to help? To help what you guys are doing, help support you? What are some things that they can go out after listening to this and do? If you visit our site, you can join an incredible global community across more than 100 countries of people that are choosing to do this and not saying they’re choosing it easily. It’s like a commitment to
choose it.

So would invite anyone who’s resonating to come participate with us in this work. It’s big and wide and needed. And then when you go out on your day, think about one small act of kindness you can commit to do and do it.

So that’s everybody’s homework. Report back. Report back.

Everybody has to comment. If you listen to this, you have to comment. Say, this is what I did today.

And then for every day from now on, you have to leave a comment saying what you did. That’s kind, but I love that at least you keep it bite sized. Do one thing a day.

Hey, it’s nice to always see you. I hope you’re having a good day. Or smile at somebody, give someone a wave.

It’s funny. My daughter waves at everybody. Now.

She’s just, hi, dear. It brings joy to, literally, I’ve seen, like, two people where they don’t wave back, but majority of people, they’re like, oh, hi. And it makes them feel better.

You can see it. Absolutely. It goes a long way.

Yeah. And I hope this podcast, this discussion goes a long way. I have no doubt a huge fan of what you’re doing.

Thank you so much, Josh. Thank you. Really appreciate you taking your time.

Oh, my pleasure to be here. This was wonderful. That’s awesome.

Yeah. Thanks. More to come.

Okay. Take care. Bye.