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Meeting Young People Where They’re At with Rob Morris · The Trauma Therapist

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  Speaker 1: Trauma Theverist podcast Plus listeners can listen to episodes early
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  Speaker 1: and ad free right now. Become a Plus listener by
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  Speaker 1: going to Apple Podcasts searching for the Trauma Theverist podcast
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  Speaker 1: and signing up today. Welcome to the Trauma Nevers Podcast,
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  Speaker 1: a show about the incredible people dedicated to helping those
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  Speaker 1: who experienced trauma. My name is got macpherson and my
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  Speaker 1: mission is to raise awareness of trauma and to inspire
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  Speaker 1: each of us to help those around us. All right,
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  Speaker 1: here we go, so five four, three, two and one,
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  Speaker 1: our folks, welcome back to the podcast. Very excited to
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  Speaker 1: happens to my guest today, Rob Morris. Rob, welcome, great
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  Speaker 1: to be here. Thank you, You're welcome. So. Rob is
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  Speaker 1: a co founder and CEO of Coco, whose mission is
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  Speaker 1: to combat the youth mental health crisis by meeting young
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  Speaker 1: people where they're at online. Rob's journey with Coco began
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  Speaker 1: during his graduate studies at MIT, a period marked by
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  Speaker 1: personal struggles with mental health. It was out of this
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  Speaker 1: challenging experience that the seeds of Cocoa were planted. Rob, again,
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  Speaker 1: thanks for being here before we could going share with
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  Speaker 1: our listeners where you're from originally and where you are currently. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: I grew up in the Bay Area, in Silicon Valley
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  Speaker 2: and kind of the heart beating heart of technology. Interestingly,
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  Speaker 2: I had nothing to do with it when I was
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  Speaker 2: a kid. I didn't want to be part of it
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  Speaker 2: at all. I was kind of a bookish person. Fast forward,
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  Speaker 2: you know, thirty years or so, and now I'm deep
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  Speaker 2: in the heart of technology. I'm right outside of San Francisco.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, awesome, So let's let's dive into this. I love
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  Speaker 1: what you guys are doing. Your story is what's the
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  Speaker 1: word incredible maybe, but amazing, really inspiring. How did this
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  Speaker 1: start for you?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, so, I've struggled with depression all my life. My
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  Speaker 2: first episode was when I was quite young, and I've
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  Speaker 2: had them every couple of years. I've been fortunate enough
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  Speaker 2: to have elevated mood periods. I'm on the bipolar spectrum.
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  Speaker 2: But all of this personal experience led me to pursue
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  Speaker 2: a career in psychology. So I did my undergraduate work
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  Speaker 2: in psychology at Princeton and then did some postgraduate work
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  Speaker 2: in Boston. My intention was then to go and do
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  Speaker 2: a PhD in clinical neuroscience, but every time I showed
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  Speaker 2: up to office hours with my advisors. I would always
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  Speaker 2: come bringing some weird gadget. I would bring something you
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  Speaker 2: could wear on your wrists that would detect your heartbeat
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  Speaker 2: or your skin conductance, all these things that kind of
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  Speaker 2: predated fitbit and those devices. And they said, okay, we're
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  Speaker 2: going to send you off to MIT. And that's where
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  Speaker 2: my career really got started.
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  Speaker 1: So okay, so initially because of what you were experiencing,
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  Speaker 1: your depression, you said, I want to learn more about
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  Speaker 1: this and get into psychology. Okay, And why were you
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  Speaker 1: showing up with these things on your wrisk and so forth,
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  Speaker 1: just for your own edification?
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  Speaker 2: And I think there was an engineer hiding inside me
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  Speaker 2: this whole time. I was never very math focused. I
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  Speaker 2: was always kind of looking for a literature degree. I
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  Speaker 2: majored in psychology. But I think there's a designer and
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  Speaker 2: an engineer that just needed to come out. And I
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  Speaker 2: really wanted to pursue interventions that actually help people. I
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  Speaker 2: was too impatient to spend six years studying some sub
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  Speaker 2: nuclei of the amygdala that would hopefully generate knowledge that
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  Speaker 2: could help inform clinical interventions years and years down the line.
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  Speaker 2: I wanted to build things that I could put in
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  Speaker 2: the hands of real people as quickly as possible.
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  Speaker 1: All right, let's go back just a little bit. So
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  Speaker 1: when did you first realize that something was going on?
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  Speaker 1: I e. Depression or anything else.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it started for me when I was really young.
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  Speaker 2: I think my first episode was maybe nine or ten,
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  Speaker 2: And of course, at that age, I had no vocabulary
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  Speaker 2: for that. I just remembered an overwhelming and developing darkness
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  Speaker 2: covering me. I found it hard to speak or move.
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  Speaker 2: Things that I would normally enjoy weren't bringing me any happiness.
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  Speaker 2: So I kind of had that experience, but it took
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  Speaker 2: a while for me to present it as such to
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  Speaker 2: my parents and get help in a meaningful way.
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  Speaker 1: Were there others in your family who were experiencing similar things?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, depression runs through my family line for sure.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, so you tell your parents what's going on, what
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  Speaker 1: happens next?
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  Speaker 2: So I think it took about It took a while.
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  Speaker 2: I was in maybe middle school, early high school when
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  Speaker 2: we decided to do a more thorough neuro psych evaluation
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  Speaker 2: just to rule out all sorts of things. I think
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  Speaker 2: what's interesting is it took a long time for me
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  Speaker 2: to realize that I was more on the bipolar spectrum,
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  Speaker 2: so typical SSRIs which I was prescribed, weren't effective. Then
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  Speaker 2: the fact that made me pretty agitated, and because I
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  Speaker 2: never had a manic phase, I had elevated mood, periods
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  Speaker 2: of creativity, hyper productivity. I just felt like that was
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  Speaker 2: a kind of normal fluctuation and human experience. So it
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  Speaker 2: took a while before that that diagnosis to emerge for me,
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  Speaker 2: but once it did, it was very helpful.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, So were you seeing therapists at a point? Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: I started seeing therapists in college and I've pretty continually
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  Speaker 2: seen them since.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, So from also from what it sounds like
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  Speaker 1: you were, interest in what you were going to do
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  Speaker 1: professionally kind of shifted a little bit from maybe doing
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  Speaker 1: research to actually quote unquote helping people in a more
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  Speaker 1: what angible way, immediate way. How did that manifest for you?
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  Speaker 1: What did you start to do?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, So when I came to MIT, the first work
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  Speaker 2: I pursued was building assistive technologies for people on the
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  Speaker 2: autism spectrum, so it really focused on that population. I
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  Speaker 2: was looking at building tools to help individuals manage sound
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  Speaker 2: sensitivity in particular, which is often overlooked problem area for
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  Speaker 2: people on the spectrum. But meanwhile, I was still struggling
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  Speaker 2: tremendously with my own mental health. I was very fortunate
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  Speaker 2: to have university health services, but even then waitless were long,
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  Speaker 2: it was hard to find time to get appointments. So
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  Speaker 2: I did what any good MIT student would do, which
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  Speaker 2: is I started hacking together some solutions for myself and
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  Speaker 2: I started to build a digital self help platform that
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  Speaker 2: could kind of help me during those interim phases between
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  Speaker 2: seeing therapists.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, now, when you say you were struggling, what did
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  Speaker 1: that look like for you? What did that mean for you? Yeah?
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  Speaker 2: At MIT, it was quite hard for me because I
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  Speaker 2: joined with a psychology background, as we discussed, and I
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  Speaker 2: didn't have any formal training in math, or engineering or
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  Speaker 2: computer science. So I don't recommend going to MIT with
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  Speaker 2: that kind of prerequisite knowledge.
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  Speaker 1: Which people associate with MIT, right, Yeah, I think. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: I ended up in a lab that really needed this
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  Speaker 2: kind of dual expertise, a builder and someone with a
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  Speaker 2: deep fundamental research psychology training. So that's that's how I
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  Speaker 2: ended up there. And yeah, it was really hard. I
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  Speaker 2: had to teach myself how to code while sitting in
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  Speaker 2: a small, cramped office space with classmates who had been
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  Speaker 2: taking apart computers since they were six years old. So,
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  Speaker 2: you know, I even attended the undergrad classes to try
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  Speaker 2: and keep up, and those were incredibly difficult for me.
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  Speaker 2: So I had a lot of negative thoughts, distorted thoughts
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  Speaker 2: about not being well suited for MIT, failing, dropping out,
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  Speaker 2: not knowing what could happen, just kind of the typical
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  Speaker 2: catastrophic thinking pattern that can happen.
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  Speaker 1: Let me ask you something personal here, and of course
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  Speaker 1: you'll feel free to answer you whatever you want in
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  Speaker 1: whatever depth you feel comfortable. But was there a point
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  Speaker 1: at which you were suicidal at all?
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  Speaker 2: I've had suicidal ideation for sure.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, so you're struggling, you're in these classes, and
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  Speaker 1: you said you began to develop something to help yourself.
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  Speaker 1: Talk more about that. What did that look like?
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  Speaker 2: Okay, So, as a novice computer programmer, there was one
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  Speaker 2: website that saved me. It was called stack overflow, and
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  Speaker 2: it's basically a website where you can go and you
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  Speaker 2: can describe any problem you're having with your code. So
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  Speaker 2: my code's not working, I can post on it, and magically,
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  Speaker 2: all these humans for free, will come and help me
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  Speaker 2: fix my code. It's kind of a beautiful era of
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  Speaker 2: the Internet where you can leverage collective intelligence and a
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  Speaker 2: really productive and non toxic way. As I was doing this, though,
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  Speaker 2: the problems weren't so much the bugs in my code,
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  Speaker 2: but rather the bugs in my thinking about how I
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  Speaker 2: was coding. So you know, I can't write this code,
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  Speaker 2: It's not working. I'm terrible.
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  Speaker 1: So I wanted to.
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  Speaker 2: Build a stack overflow for the mind, essentially a way
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  Speaker 2: to leverage source crowdsourced version, you know, a loosely designed
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  Speaker 2: crowdsource version of cognitive therapy. So you know, I've been
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  Speaker 2: doing all sorts of different therapeutic modalities for myself over
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  Speaker 2: the years. I think CBT was pretty big for me
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  Speaker 2: and that era. And what I found frustrating with doing
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  Speaker 2: thought records and those kinds of things was when my
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  Speaker 2: mind and my mood were stressed, my brain's ability to
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  Speaker 2: think flexibly and creatively was impaired, so it made it
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  Speaker 2: really difficult to think about how to reframe a negative situation.
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  Speaker 2: And I was building this platform where you know, strangers
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  Speaker 2: on the Internet would come through and look at whatever
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  Speaker 2: I was describing as a negative thought and they could
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  Speaker 2: help me find distortions in my thinking or reframe it.
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  Speaker 2: And they weren't trained therapists. I gave them just you know,
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  Speaker 2: one little task like, hey, is this something like all
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  Speaker 2: or nothing thinking? Here's how we define that, and you know,
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  Speaker 2: I'd have like ten people respond to me in different ways.
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  Speaker 2: I was super compelling. My classmates started using it and
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  Speaker 2: it started to blossom into a more fully fledged platform.
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  Speaker 2: But the thing that was really exciting was when people
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  Speaker 2: were helping me. I would often give them the option
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  Speaker 2: to give me feedback on you know, what I was
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  Speaker 2: asking them to do, and people would say, hey, doing
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  Speaker 2: this exercise actually helped me. Helping you was helping me,
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  Speaker 2: And so we re redesigned the platform so it was
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  Speaker 2: completely bidirectional. So while I'm getting help from a crowd,
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  Speaker 2: I was incentivizing myself to go help other people. And
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  Speaker 2: I found that that actually was more therapeutic, more beneficial,
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  Speaker 2: and you know, years later, we have empirical data and
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  Speaker 2: research papers to support that idea. So that's when it
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  Speaker 2: really gathered steam, when we started to find ways to
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  Speaker 2: leverage the power of helping others to help yourself.
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  Speaker 1: So help me understand what this platform looked like, was
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  Speaker 1: it like a journal type thing? You would go online
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  Speaker 1: and just type what was going on for you, and
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  Speaker 1: you would ask people, yo, this is what's happening. Can
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  Speaker 1: you help me or what? Yeah?
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  Speaker 2: Essentially essentially that it was frankly way over complicated at
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  Speaker 2: the start, since evolved into something quite a bit different,
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  Speaker 2: which we can talk about. But it was basically writing
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  Speaker 2: a small, a short thought record, so describing a situation
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  Speaker 2: and your negative thoughts that accompany it. And it was
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  Speaker 2: character account constrained, so you know, you can't write like
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  Speaker 2: a five paragraph essay which would overlet wellm anyone trying
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  Speaker 2: to respond to it. And then you get messages and
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  Speaker 2: the people who were responding were responding with a very
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  Speaker 2: simple task. They weren't kind of faced with this paragraph
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  Speaker 2: of text and asked to just do their best. We
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  Speaker 2: would have very specific tasks that they could work on
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  Speaker 2: for each each block of texts they were approaching.
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  Speaker 1: And you put it online. How what does that mean?
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  Speaker 1: You put it online? How did people find this? Yeah?
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  Speaker 2: So that's an interesting story. It's always really hard to
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  Speaker 2: bootstrap platforms like this, Like how do you get a
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  Speaker 2: supply of people willing and interested in doing this. To start,
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  Speaker 2: I used a service on Amazon that allowed me to
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  Speaker 2: pay people for doing really small online jobs. A lot
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  Speaker 2: of that platform was used to help label images clean
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  Speaker 2: up data, so I was using in a very atypical way.
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  Speaker 2: So someone working on this Amazon platform would make some
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  Speaker 2: you know, spare spare money just doing random things like
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  Speaker 2: labeling images or cleaning up data, and then all of
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  Speaker 2: a sudden they see this task that's like, here's a
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  Speaker 2: here's a small uh post from a grad student who's
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  Speaker 2: saying like they're struggling with their relationship. Here's here's what
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  Speaker 2: we want you to do.
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  Speaker 1: There's something. I mean, one of the things that's so
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  Speaker 1: interesting to me about this rob is there's the obvious
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  Speaker 1: component of ingenuity and the technical aspect that's required here.
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  Speaker 1: But on the other side of that is is there's
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  Speaker 1: I mean, it takes a lot of courage to put
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  Speaker 1: yourself out there. How did you have any hesitation in that?
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  Speaker 1: Or really, yeah, I need freaking help this, I gotta
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  Speaker 1: do this.
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  Speaker 2: There's a little a little bit of both. I think
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  Speaker 2: what was really interesting was there wasn't just the nerves
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  Speaker 2: and anxiety related to putting myself out there and disclosing
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  Speaker 2: things for anonymous anonymous group of strangers to respond to
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  Speaker 2: and and all of that, But there was this other
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  Speaker 2: element of the quality and nature of the response is
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  Speaker 2: was relevant to what I was building. So if the
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  Speaker 2: output that came back wasn't working right, then I would
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  Speaker 2: and then I would have another wave of stress wash
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  Speaker 2: over me. So at some point a lot of my
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  Speaker 2: posts into the system. We're very meta. I would say,
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  Speaker 2: I'm trying to build this platform where people come and
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  Speaker 2: help each other think more hope about the world. But
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  Speaker 2: it's not working because this is this It's going to
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  Speaker 2: be a failure. I've wasted all this time. And so
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  Speaker 2: I'd used the very platform I was stressed out about
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  Speaker 2: to help manage the stress about building the platform.
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  Speaker 1: So how did this evolve? Let's bring us up to
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  Speaker 1: date in a sense.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, So eventually it evolved into a clinical trial. So
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  Speaker 2: we partnered with Northwestern and MIT, had a lot of
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  Speaker 2: support from advisors at Harvard and Stanford, and we ran
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  Speaker 2: a randomized controlled trial where we randomly assigned people to
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  Speaker 2: use this platform I had built, or to do a
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  Speaker 2: therapeutic expressive writing. So it was a really nicely designed
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  Speaker 2: study because everything looked the same the platform looked the same,
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  Speaker 2: the logo looked the same, except in one case you're
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  Speaker 2: just writing and journaling. In the other case, you're writing
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  Speaker 2: and journaling, but you have this crowdsourced cognitive re appraisal
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  Speaker 2: and this ability to help other people. So we're looking
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  Speaker 2: at the difference between those two after about three weeks
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  Speaker 2: of usage and looking and monitoring changes in depression symptoms
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  Speaker 2: over time, and we had a few other outcome measures.
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  Speaker 2: It's about ten years ago, so I don't remember all
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  Speaker 2: of them, but.
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  Speaker 1: We did that.
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  Speaker 2: We had about one hundred and sixty six people in
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  Speaker 2: that trial, and we found the platform outperformed the control
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  Speaker 2: or the active control task on all measures. And more interesting,
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  Speaker 2: we found people were really engaged. They loved this social
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  Speaker 2: way to engage with these kinds of coping skills and strategies.
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  Speaker 2: And we ended up having a couple people from that
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  Speaker 2: trial stay on the platform for several years later, still
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  Speaker 2: very very active in our community and using it. Since then,
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  Speaker 2: we've evolved the platform a fair bit, but it went
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  Speaker 2: from one hundred and sixty six people to now reaching
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  Speaker 2: over five million people.
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  Speaker 1: Well, so initially, where did you get the respondents? Who
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  Speaker 1: are they? Yeah?
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  Speaker 2: I like any study done in Boston. It was universities
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  Speaker 2: in that area mostly, but we also posted on Craigslist,
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  Speaker 2: so I think we had a variety of ages, but
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  Speaker 2: it wasn't the target age that Coco eventually grew to
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: target over time. So it was more college aid students,
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  Speaker 2: some middle aged folks as well.
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  Speaker 1: And the instruction to them was what, gosh, well, just
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  Speaker 1: generally you're going to be reading X type of text,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: respond however you like or because as you're talking, in
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  Speaker 1: one sense, it almost sounded like a microcosm of social media.
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  Speaker 1: Sometimes people put themselves out there, but you know, we
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  Speaker 1: all know sometimes there's a lot of hate comes back, right,
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  Speaker 1: So you're not expressing that at all.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, were there were a lot of ways we managed
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  Speaker 2: all of those. We would train people kind of on
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  Speaker 2: the fly to do simple, simple jobs as I described,
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  Speaker 2: and then everything was moderated. So at that time we
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: had multiple humans reviewing every piece of text that was
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: created and before it was surfaced on the platform.
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  Speaker 1: So here we are twenty twenty four. You said, there's
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  Speaker 1: a huge amount of people now on the platform. Talk
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  Speaker 1: to us about COCA. What does it do? How do
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: people come who you're helping.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's evolved quite a bit. There's still this
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  Speaker 2: community moderated social support platform that functions pretty similar to
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  Speaker 2: what I built. But we also have what we call
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  Speaker 2: single session interventions. These are self guided short interventions that
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  Speaker 2: tea teach coping skills related to self harm, body image,
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  Speaker 2: that kind of thing. And we also have a crisis
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  Speaker 2: triage component, so anyone coming on, we simply ask you know,
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  Speaker 2: how are you doing, what are you struggling with? And
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  Speaker 2: we're able to identify people who are struggling with suicidal
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  Speaker 2: thoughts or self harm or disordered eating and route them
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  Speaker 2: to various resources. I think the thing that is most
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  Speaker 2: different is how we reach people, and this is the
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  Speaker 2: biggest innovation we pursued over the last you know, eight
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: years or so, and we continue to do now as
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: a nonprofit entity. So when I was scaling this and
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  Speaker 2: building it for more and more people, one of the
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  Speaker 2: things I would do is I would try to interview
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  Speaker 2: people and talk to as many people as possible. And
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  Speaker 2: the most convenient way for me to do that at
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  Speaker 2: the time was to simply go on platforms like Twitter
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  Speaker 2: and search I feel depressed or I'm depressed, or I
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  Speaker 2: can't get an appointment with my therapist, and I'd be
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: able to find people posting that and kind of ask them, hey,
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  Speaker 2: would you mind talking to me a little bit, so
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  Speaker 2: I'd try to see, you know, if we could design
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: this platform to help those individuals. But what was really
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  Speaker 2: clear to me was there's a huge opportunity to bring
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: digital interventions directly into platforms people use every day. So
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: rather than you know, hiding something in an app store,
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: which is really hard to find, can we find ways
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: to service these types of interventions directly to people on
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: the platforms and ideally at the moments they most need them.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: So over the years, we started partnering with some of
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: these platforms, and the way it looks today, if you
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: imagine a young person, maybe they're fifteen, and they go
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: on a social media platform and they search for let's say,
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: pro anorexia, they might see videos of young people starving
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: themselves sharing dangerous weight loss strategies. We're trying to flip
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: this around, so if you imagine that same person searching
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: for this, we help the platforms identify those videos that
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: harmful content, and we help suppress that so they don't
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: see it, and then we divert that person to our
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: resources online, so that same person, instead of going down
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: a rabbit hole and seeing more and more videos and
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: having something that started as a concern transition into a
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: crisis to a life saving a life threatening situation, can
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: we quickly redirect them to resources related to eating disorder
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: through that handoff.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: So let's say the cut that person, the young person
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: comes to COCO specifically, what are they going to do
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: when they go online? And you talked about the triage.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: Let's say they're not suicidal, so they're not going down there,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: but where do they go? I want to get a
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: clear picture of what it looks like when someone comes
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: to your site.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it really depends. So we do have a higher
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: risk bucket as we described, and we've done a lot
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: of innovation with research partners at Harvard and elsewhere to
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: really understand how can we get someone who is at
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: high risk to actually utilize lifelines and help services like that.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: So we spend a lot of time innovating in that regard.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: Then for the remaining population, it kind of depends. If
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: someone's struggling with disordered eating, we will certainly send them
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: to NIDA or other resources in the US, but we
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: also have self guided courses they can take that maybe
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: help them with body image, perception or other other kinds
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: of issues. And then another set of people can access
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: our peer support, which is essentially that very constrained, precision
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: based crowdsourced cognitive therapy, whatever you want to call it,
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: but it's a lot more simple now. It's really a
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: place where people can help each other feel more hopeful
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: about the.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: What does it look like? Specifically? So let's say they
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: go online and they are they prompted to stow people.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: What's going on? What does it look like?
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so if they go down that branch, we ask them,
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: you know, hey, what are you struggling with? And it's
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: it's character can't constrained. We use various AI technologies to
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: help understand. You know, is this a high risk situation?
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: Are they talking about something civic or is this kind
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: of everyday depression, anxiety, school stress, that kind of thing.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: If it's the latter, after they make a post, assuming
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: that it passes all our moderation checks, they'll get a
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: message that says, okay, you know, the community is taking
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: a look. While you wait, why don't you try helping
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: other people? And they go down that flow. And what's
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: beautiful about that is most people go on to help
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: multiple other people. So if you have one person coming
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: in and asking for help, they go in to help
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: two or three other people. We now have this beautiful
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: situation where our network is balanced. I don't know if
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: any other crisis line or peer support line where there's
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: not a problem with supply, we never have that problem.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: If we get ten thousand people in an hour, all
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: of our performance metrics go up, the time to response
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: gets faster, outcomes get better. So it's really all that
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: whole part of our platform is all hinged around this
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: idea of empowering people to help each other.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: We talk a little bit about the work you're doing
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: to reach it's no way, I say kids, who are
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: your target audience?
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: In a sense we are thirteen and up and the
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: average age is fifteen point seven last time we checked.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: We collect no personal data whatsoever. People are basically a
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: random user ID on our platform. We don't know where
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: they are in the world. We don't have IP address, username, email,
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: so we do have to ask them these questions, and
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: we usually do that in the context of a research study.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: So our platform might say, hey, do you want to
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: participate in a study with Northwestern, they go off the
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: platform and that's when we can get that kind of
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: demographic information related to age, gender, sexual identity, race, ethnicity,
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: all those variables.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: And just I know we're kind of winding down here,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: but how are you getting these kids? I mean more specifically,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: I mean this kind of that age is kind of notorious.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: We're not wanting to talk, but obviously this is this
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: is anonymous, But how are you reaching those kids?
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, It's always been amazing to me how engaged kids
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: are on this platform. We have the direct, undivided attention
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: of young people, which is like the most rare element
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: in the universe, and they're getting help, they want to
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: engage in this type of content. Of course, we spend
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: a lot of time doing user research and talking to
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: young people to adapt and refine our services so they
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: meet them on their level. But ever since I started
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: doing this, I've I've always been surprised at how willing
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: young people are to start exploring and these types of
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: services online.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: So they are they are you reaching them through ads?
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Are you reaching them just online through specific avenues or what?
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: It really depends. It's different for every platform, but we
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: try to reach them on platforms like Discord and TikTok
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: and Tumbler, and we're partnered with Giffee of all Things too.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: If you're searching for different gifts will come up, and
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: it kind of depends on if they're looking for content
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: that suggests they might need some mental health support. We
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: also get generous funding from the platforms themselves, which allow
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: us to serve ads. We are nonprofits, so everything is
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: free and we don't have any business models that you know,
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: incentivize us to retain people or collect information or data,
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: so we're able to get these really nice partnerships with
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: the platforms as well.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Awesome, awesome, all right, Rob, Uh, the website or the
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: name of what you're doing is coco. What's the best
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: way for people to learn more about that?
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, our website is ww dot cococars dot org. Okay,
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: and there's a try now button you can try our
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: services there. And uh, we're really excited to be partnering
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: with the Cocoa Gorilla Foundation pretty soon here. Our name
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: was not inspired by the gorilla directly, but keep keep
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: an eye out for that for some great, wonderful gorilla
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: themed ven It's.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: Awesome awesome, Rob, super inspiring man. I'm really looking forward
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: to getting this out there. Therapists obviously listening to this,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: people in the mental health space, and I think this
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: is a really something that they can offer to their
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: clients and up.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I definitely, I definitely know therapists who use it.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: I think they're also opportunities to weave this into different
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: therapeutic experiences.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Well, look, thanks for joining me. I love to have
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: you back later date to appreciate it.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, my pleasure.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: All right, man, thank you