“Empowering Parents and Challenging Teens: The Inspiring Story of ‘Shine Together’ Founder Jeff Zawadsky”

Welcome back to another episode of Party Talk where we empower leaders in youth drug prevention. Today, I’m chatting with Jeff Zawadsky. I’m gonna said Sadowski Jeff Watsky. And you’re gonna love this guy’s story. I already love talking with him because he’s got that Eastern accent. He’s a madman. And he’s stumbled upon something that he, I guess, not stumbled upon. He’s created something called “Shine Together”. That’s just a really helpful tool for parents of challenging teens, which I think is like every teenager is pretty challenging. So I’m excited to chat with you, Jeff, how’s your day going?

Jeff Zawadsky: Excellent. Thank you for having me. It’s a honor and a pleasure to be here.

Jake White: Yeah, of course. And yeah, if you want to fill in any gaps, just tell us a little bit about you and what you do.

Jeff Zawadsky: Sure, absolutely. Yeah. So that Jake Benson, I’m the founder and CEO of a company called “Shine Together”. And our mission really is to empower parents and give them the agency they need to help with struggling teens. And it’s really built entirely on life experience for myself and for everybody on our incredible team. I can tell prior to just sort of tell you a little bit the story of you know, my own story and how we got there, but I came out of the world of Kobe, either an entrepreneur or investor was loved and was great. And our family went through some trauma. The mother of my children, she had a massive stroke out of the blue, that, you know, obviously really changed all of our trajectories in life, in particular hers, and we spent years you know, working back from that, and she’s very healthy now. And everything really, you know, did an amazing job, perseverance to get through that. And there were some other residual effects that you know, cut out hit the family and my boys were pretty young when it happened their border Hasson too, and let’s say the older one economy ended up four and a half. And really just, you know, what that was brother looked after himself, did an amazing job for many, many years. But all that trauma was in there, sure. And, you know, eventually does come out in one form or another. And he went through a period, you know, he had been, despite all the challenges we had, he had been kind of straight A student, great athlete, you know, all the things that one would hope for, for your child. And then in the fall of seventh grade, almost overnight, that just kind of stopped. And again, you know, stop playing sports as one standing completes. Under the hood, he went up and lights without his eyes. And eventually, he woke up one day, and you know, we’re both hummelo sat down, like tell something was on his mind. So that was what’s happening, you kind of look down in Florida, if I should edit it. And, you know, I just sort of looked at him, I said, Well, let’s not do anything tonight. But you know, let’s start talking about this. So, of course, right, then, you know, immediately began our journey of, okay, we find the resources and the help and the support that we need to get through this. And what I found was an incredible, almost shocking lack of available resources, and support networks and ability to evaluate resources, find them speak with other parents find support, learn from others experience, connect with people in a day and age where, you know, you can pick up a phone and get 5000 data points on a coffee or a hamburger, or whatever it is. We’re just not talking about mental health, we don’t talk about it. And we can’t find resources. And you know, it’s very difficult Valley, extremely expensive, the whole structure is just insufficiently set up. So as we sort of went through our personal journey, I always had in the back of my mind that you know, somebody who’s tackled us and really helped take the song because of 10s of millions of American families dealing with it every day. So as we kind of came out my son’s incredible job and again, so much with with how much work he’s done and, and where he is now. He and I actually talked about and I said, Look, you know, this is, this is a important area, and I think we can, you know, build something that can make a difference. But, you know, in a lot of ways, it’s you and I owning our stories in a bit of a public fashion, you know, every last detail, but there’s an aspect of that. You got a lot more life heavy than I do. You know, are you comfortable with that? He just looked at me right away. It’s pop. Absolutely you have to do this. But yeah, and really just begin chatting together.

Jake White:  Wow. Okay. So that’s incredible. You must be so proud that he had that response to have like, yeah, not gonna protect my, you know, my image or what he might think about me. Where we need to help people with this.

Jeff Zawadsky :Absolutely. That ethic he immediately recognized that need and that, you know, just the whole opportunity to have an impact and I believe anyways, I just I think it’s incredible what he was able to do, because very early in life, he, you know, took some took some punches and work through it. And he’s just so much stronger and wiser I think for it. And as you pointed out, I think a big part of that also is realizing, you know, what the world thinks, and the judgments that go along with it, and everything else aren’t always most important things. It’s really about, you know, finding your own self. And a lot of times, you know, having the strength and conviction to stick with that, and also realize that, you know, a lot of what can give me a life as having our focus and helping others and moving forward on that fashion. So, we’ve been very blessed that way.

“Addressing the Critical Gap in Adolescent Mental Health Support: Shine Together’s Mission”

Jake White: Wow. And the way, so the way you described it in your story was that it was kind of like a light switch turning on and off when it was strong, straight A student involved on campus, playing sports. And then you as you said, hood went up in complete lights out of the I was, was, did he reveal to you like, what happened? Or like, if there was a change from Hey, I’ve been this resilient kid for so long. And all of a sudden, I’m, I’m gonna switch modes. Any insight on what that was?

Jeff Zawadsky: You know, it’s hard to do that in the moment. Right? Yeah. You know, but it’s back to blue, we’ve had a lot of conversations about it. And he’s incredibly thoughtful about it. You know, mine sort of backseat psychiatry on and a little bit, and it applies to myself, too, is we, as a family unit had been working so hard on, you know, their mother’s recovery, some other issues that transpired afterwards. Just everything in life being up ended, and of all the pillars of life being upended. And him looking after himself, when I was a little brother for a long time, and everything, too, we had finally gotten to a space where we were kind of stabilized yet, and there was space to let down your guard a little bit. And, you know, realize A) we’re all exhausted, you know, in every levels physically, emotionally, spiritually, whatever you name it. And B) geez, we went through a lot of stuff and let that come out, it’s gonna come out, I’m a big believer, and you know, the law of physics that every action has an equal opposite reaction, right? So when you go through these traumatic events, and let’s face it, basically every child is going to go through traumatic events, there has to be a space in the vehicle, or that, and I think the same goes true for family systems. I think the same with the parents. And it’s really hard to do at the moment. But that’s one of the things that we were trying to get at and happy to talk about in more specifics, because, you know, just to look generally at it right now, you know, we can look at the whole sort of mental health care system and behavioral addiction services, and say, Geez, you know, the system is not working is that we’re actually we’re getting exactly the outcomes we should expect from the system as it set up, which is, you know, we’re highly stigmatized about it, we don’t talk about addiction on combat, especially when it pertains to teens, you, we don’t necessarily take it until the fundamental needs and dynamics that can help sort of make it a healthier environment. We don’t have enough providers, be it like psychiatrists, therapists, counselors, you know, there’s so many wonderful new organizations coming online. It’s amazing, but still, we, you know, multiply it by 10. Yeah. So in a lot of ways, we really shouldn’t be surprised at, you know, the level of crises we’re seeing with addiction issues with behavioral issues and mental health issues across the board, but especially the adolescent. And I use the for word adolescent, because I was sort of our initial target experience. But to be honest, what we’re finding is these things cropping up a 10. While, you know, very young and frankly, are lasting, you know, 2528, those type of things. So, we sort of switched to young, adolescent and adult. But it’s, but it’s a big area. And I mean, to be honest, it affects almost every family in America, but like, you know, you can argue a critical need is 30% 40% of families that way. Yeah. Yeah. So well, it’s a big area, but it’s hard to pinpoint in that moment, you know, yeah. It’s like, it’s much easier to look back at reflect and say, Well, this was what was happening for us.

Jake White: Yeah. Oh, and for him to go through that to then say, yes, we need help with this having a guess what it was. So I’d love to chat more about what “Shine Together” is. And I remember when we first talked, talking about how what you had noticed was that there was this lack of resources. And so as a parent, you felt lost. You’re like, hey, I want to help my child. And I feel like I don’t know where to go. Or there might be, there might be 1000s of search results that pop up on Google. Exactly. Didn’t seem like there’s one that’s actually what you’re looking for. Can you tell me a little bit about what you’ve seen is the biggest need from the that are going to your platform and then how you help them.

Jeff Zawadsky: Yes, it on. So you’re exactly right. So you know, that night after that conversation, of course, once I make sure that safe bed, sleeping, whatever, what’s the first thing you do you know, you’re gonna go to your computer or your phone and start Googling resources. So I, for example, that first evening started looking for I live in the San Francisco Bay area, you know, psychiatrists, therapists, etc, that work with adolescent teens with suicidal ideation. It took me almost a week and a half to cobble together a list of 48. If that 48, the bare. I called all 48 over the coming days. And I think it was 37 of them, their answering machine, their voice message, which is how it usually works. Therapists call whoever matches in the callback 37 started their message with if you’re not a current patient, don’t bother leaving a message because I have a bill, about half remainder just haven’t had time to change the voice message yet. There was three that ended up being available. So that’s shocking in and of itself, then you get to the quality, like you get to the questions of is this even a good fit. But when you’re down to three, you almost don’t care? You’re sort of looking for somebody and there’s a negative selection issue, which is, well, why do you have so much time when everybody else is busy? Right? So all there’s a real cost to that, beyond just I can’t find anybody. Which is, you know, we rolled through a few therapists early on, that just weren’t the right fit. Not necessarily bad actors. But there was anything you got to have, you know, that’s an intimate relationship. You know, when you’re walking, talking about addiction issues, when you’re talking about behavioral issues, and trauma. And I think so much goes to trauma. In that lead poisoning the well for a while on, you know, Nick, he very appropriately said, “Look, I don’t want to do this anymore, because I go in, I have to tell the whole world story brings up all those emotions,” less stuff, we talked two or three times, and then we saw then move on. And it’s a painful process. So you know, it took us about hon probably a year and a half or so to get back to find the right team people eventually for all, not just him, and get to a place where we could actually do that therapeutic work. And so you took about a year and a half of you know, a child who would be 14, 16, whatever, the substantial portion of life, that’s a lot of time, that’s a lot of danger. Let’s lower it, you know, so it really delays a good outcome, and in some cases, threatens a positive outcome. And not a lot of time, that capacitator situation. So that was a great frustration. Certainly. And I think the even as I moved on, there’s a couple things. I really, maybe I’ll back up for one second. So one of the things I did as I was starting this is I just started talking to parents. And you know, I had found a couple on the way it’s very isolating experience. So I started talking to people along the way, but invariably, you start talking to somebody says, hey, you know, it’s okay, if this friend calls. So over about a six month period, I probably spoke to several 100 parents. And every journey was incredibly unique. But the pain points, if you will, on the way were always the same. And it was the lack meant that lack of information, the inability to find available resources, and really, essentially, the ability, even if you find resources, so you do a Google search, you’re looking for a local, you know, addiction program, you’re looking for a therapeutic wellness program, even if you find a website, whatever, there’s no capability or really evaluate it, there’s no reviews, there’s no firestarters, there’s no you know, here’s talked to some parents who have been through it or at it. And so you know, you’re left with making, like I said, sort of some of the most poor decisions just kind of blindly. And these programs can be hard to get into, that can be typically very expensive. And you don’t you just as a parent, you don’t have time, most folks don’t have the kind of savings of money to actually do it. And so you’re kind of making a blind bet with your child and your family’s health. And usually the first program or resource or therapist or whatever is not the right one. And for a lot of American families, most American families, you might have kind of spent your available resources on that. Because you had no other choice, you just had an ache of that to do something. And you only learn over time. So what we’re trying to do is really solve that. And we really just analyzed the journey that a family goes on, and what are the key pain points? And so the long answer to your question, but the short form is, there’s different needs at different times. And so upfront in the beginning of transition points. There’s an information directory aspect almost where you know, what are these resource resources, understand that are available, understanding the journey more and having a capability to reach out to other folks who have been their experience, you know, whatever, and find out evaluate, so you can figure out is this the best resource for my family? Okay. And then the second aspect of it is really computer care support piece. And one of the things, as I mentioned, it’s just so very isolating for parents. And everybody basically is in a silo, has a lot to do with stigma allow you a lot of issues, but basically in a silo reinventing the wheel every time with this. And to me that just when you sort of step back and look at it, you just kind of spacings digital age, how are we still doing this thing that’s affecting 10s of millions of American families? Whether it be kids or you know, alcohol, drugs, etc? Or more traditional mental health issues, if you will? Well, how could we be doing this? You know, there’s a platform for everything. So we really want to create a place that’s a safe space and empower parents and give them agency that way.

Jake White: Okay, so would it be fair to say, kind of like what you build? Is your almost the the Yelp or Google reviews of these? Yeah, these providers, and if someone comes to you and has questions, not only will they know, like, oh, I can get the answers with this “Shine Together”, not warm and tools, but I can also connect with other people who are dealing with the same thing. So there’s Yes, two elements.

“Revolutionizing Adolescent Mental Health Support: How Shine Together Expands Capacity and Care”

Jeff Zawadsky:  Through the two elements. The first part is the information and you sort of the Yelp or TripAdvisor or whatever those types of examples where you could find resources, evaluate them, when you sell piece on tree, you have, we haven’t, so we have, we were stuck. So we’re starting with the higher acuity pieces. And our goal is to, you know, really expand on more properly. So hopefully, like you could find all the therapists in the country on our site eventually. Right now, we’re starting with programs. And so every accredited program, whether it’s a residential treatment center, whether it’s a therapy, boarding school, a big wilderness program, they’re all on every accredited one in the country. And you can go and you can find, you know, their website, you can find write up about it, you have parent reviews, you have all that stuff. And we’re we’re we’re kind of going out and co-central grains, where we, you know, we’re adding local programs and things like that, as we go along, you know, parents, like basically submit it to us, and we evaluate and make sure it’s actually, you know, a real program, all that sort of stuff. So, we’ll be adding out, you know, kind of vetted user generated content to make sure that we can cover, you don’t have as many resources available, they’re all categorized, searchable, you know, if you want it within 50 miles, you want it on this type of treatment protocol, or this type of diagnosis, all that sort of stuff. So finally, there’s one singular place we can go and just literally find thing that would have been available, right? So then once you do that, when I say go Google it for two days, and let me know what you have. Right, that’s one piece of it. And that solves a critical pain points for basically everybody in the system. I think the big piece of it, that, you know, I think place where we have the most impact over time, is actually on the pier counterpart. And there was a in that, again, is sort of built on, on our everybody in the company, you know, in the organization, from our board advisors to all of us, you know, are full time and you people are helping out. We’ve all been through the journey in one form or fashion. And Ben substantiate back that, which is I think makes a difference. But a big part of it is like one of our goals, too, was expand the scope of care. And how do you do that? That’s really hard. You can’t wave a magic wand and suddenly have a bunch of alcohol counselors, a bunch for therapists also, that’s a long term problem. We’re creating assistant nonprofit to try and help with that over time. But what I saw in speaking with the hundreds of parents that I spoke with, is there’s this incredible desire by any parent that’s been through it to pay for, it’s because nobody wants other parents have to go through what they did, just to try and help their child and their family. There’s no, there’s no vehicle for that, really, other than if you’re gonna go back to school for a few years, and, you know, become a therapist or a psychiatrist or something like that, which is great. But that’s not for everybody. So really, our notion was if we can create a safe platform for parents to connect, that the single best resource for parents is other parents who’ve been through it, or on the journey themselves. So there’s two pieces that we’re starting with that one is and this has already started, we create small we know a lot of research into other areas and, and support networks and things like that. And one of the things that we’re doing is we’ve create groups of a parents who are on on the journey to that become sort of your intimate sharing group you may know it’s almost like an Al Anon in a way like you may know nothing else about their life, but it becomes an intimate insurance for Kool Aid seems to be a great magic number in that, you know, it’s large enough that you get very respected. It’s large enough to just be but you don’t always have to speak up always just pay. And it’s also large enough that you know, they have their own little section on the platform, that’s video that’s chat, that’s voice, all that stuff where, you know, you can set you set it up. So you know, if you have a critical situation, you need to work there, maybe it’s just you need to vent because you’ve had an incident or something, you need to recenter. So you can get back, because there’s a lot of frustrations, and that’s right, that you can reach out to the other members and get feedback, all that stuff that becomes in a mid support circle, that really can help you with every step of the way. And then the piece that we’re working on, you know, with a goal to expand care make it more affordable, is we’re creating a curriculum right now together with some of the top universities in the country where parents will be able to be trained parent coaches, accredited parent coaches, and they’ll be able to increase the vehicle where they can kind of pay it forward where you know, they can offer their services on our platform, and other parents at much more affordable rates than traditional ways could find specific care, and support. So we’re really trying to create a whole new category of, you know, not therapists go next level down, but it, it opens up for, you know, tackling the day to day issues, I think it’s a really powerful way.

Jake White: Wow, that’s, that’s so impressive, because then you’re, you’re allowing more people to get help without going to that that full degree program. And it’s like, maybe you don’t need that right now, what you need is you don’t need the in there all the time. Yeah. And then of course, if it is beyond their scope, then they could refer you to one of the people, that it’s on your platform. So you’re taking the load off of the therapists who might be like, Hey, you don’t actually mean to be here? And that giving that spot up to somebody who does need it, and you’re just needed overall capacity of the whole, the whole system? And..

Jeff Zawadsky: Exactly, and the incredible scarce, you know, scarcity of the resource of highly trained professionals, right. It’s the most expensive and the highest cost and scarce resource in the system, basically, you know, yeah, right now, folks actually end up spending a lot of time in their in therapy sessions, at whatever level or counseling sessions and that type of stuff, working through kind of day to day issues that actually could be treated or addressed in a lower cost, lower intensity environment. And that frees up the, you know, the the more expensive, more higher value, if you will, in some way, resource to actually do therapeutic work. And you can tackle the day to day issues. I mean, you know, it can be hard as example, when we were dealing with things like you know, so you set up, you set a curfew at 9pm, right? They come home at 907. You know, what do you do, you kind of bring down the hell run because you know, by the Word, you know, geez, they’re making enough or post 907 turns with 920. Turns that even though that was done, those kinds of things, you can get in those kinds of things those dad just use as example or, you know, she says belt, violas breath or something, right? Those kinds of things can actually be tackled in the form like that really well, right. And so some parents maybe have a lot of experience so that they can specialize on those issues, or they can specialize in transferring from, you know, home from a program, whatever it is. But a lot of those issues you can tackle in a later therapeutic session, you know, setting basically like a parent to parent place, and it frees up the expensive, really expensive and scarce resources for the real therapy, you know, the real work.

“Empowering Families, Breaking Stigmas, and Boosting Mental Health”

Jake White: Okay, I’ve got two questions left for you. One is, is there? Shoot, let me think about this. So as I want to, I want to make sure I understand how people can use it. So if it was walking with, there’s probably some counselors listing school principals, there’s even signs that they’re connected in the community and their sole focus is how do we prevent drug use and improve mental health? Yes, they’re often referring people or people will correct them. And they’re like, the connectors? Yes. How they use your platform, the best abilities? Or can they give you new resources? Like, how do you want them interacting with shiny app, so

Jeff Zawadsky: Couple of things on that front, I mean, obviously, this can be a place where they can refer parents to right now. In fact, maybe well, we’ll create a little code. So folks who are watching here, they can get it for free for for the next hour, we’re really about kind of the resource out there now. And maybe that’s something we can follow up on. And you can, you know, post it in the in the link to this, but so you’re certainly referring parents over to that as a resource. We have a lot of information on, you know, on addiction on alcohol and all sorts of stuff over the already. That’s one one, you know, sort of obviously, the second thing is we’d love to work with principals with counselors with you know, folks like that, and actually have a big part of what we’re doing is creating content and and, and curating content and like yourself and have it on platform available and it’s also on platform so Trouble. So you can look for I want to see resources on teens alcohol, I want to see reduce resources on, you know, whatever it is. So we’re, you know, for example, we have a crew of a group of law school counselors come on in a couple of weeks and do kind of a roundtable like this, on how best to interact with your school counselor to get the most out of it to understand what’s happening, how they can help guide you to resources, things that can do things like she had to how to make that relationship more successful. A lot of folks, a lot of parents don’t necessarily know how to, you know, what resources are available, and how much, you know, help a school counselor be and what they can’t do. So that’s another piece, particularly, you know, for critical providers, counselors, things like that, if folks are interested in you know, participating in that, and just also using it as a resource of looking and see other curated content there. That’s a big piece of it.

Jake White: Okay, awesome. Well, this has been really cool. I, I feel amazing. Yeah, at the beginning, I knew a little bit about shining together. And I knew a lot about your story. And now I can see that just the tremendous value that this is going to be, and you’ve already created, like this national list, that’s going to be super helpful, helpful to parents that are going through this, but also thinking about our partners, like schools and these drugs, this community is like, this could actually be helpful to a lot of different stakeholders. And I’ll point towards the same thing, and we can do so much more together. And I love absolutely building capacity for everything. That’s, that’s really exciting to get. That’s really because

Jeff Zawadsky: That was one of our main goals was, you know, how do we help tackle stigma? I mean, you know, and that has with addiction, all sorts of issues. And even from the child’s perspective, like, you know, it’s really hard to not try, and sometimes it was really hard, you know, to not fall into using drugs. It’s really hard. And, you know, at this point, I mean, I kind of say, Stay McHale, so we got to kill stigma. That’s one goal. The second goal was to increase capacity. And the third was willing to give parents and families agency to go along father responsibilities. So We’re tremendously excited. And it’s been great to be here with you. So thank you.

Jake White: Great, well, let’s let’s do this. If you want to close us out with any advice, you know, a short piece of advice that do to a parent who is has a struggling teen, and then give us a way to stay in touch with you.

Jeff Zawadsky: bsolutely. So I guess by my two big, like, things that I would, I would have loved to have heard earlier on the journey is, it is a journey. And it’s all journey for the whole family, not just for the time. And that’s one important piece, I think, to internalize. And the second piece I would say to parents is take care of yourself. And you do bad, make sure like no airplane, put your oxygen mask on first, your child’s ability to heal to deal with addiction issues to deal with whatever they’re dealing with, will really only be able to flourish. And, you know, materialize if you are also taking care of yourself, which is against our parental instincts. We want to get everything we can to help our children. And sometimes we say I was worried you know, I’m going to forget about myself and just give it give it a boost from critical situation, you could do that. But the single best thing you can do is create the space an example I behavior of taking care of yourself and be healthy. You know, making all the right decisions. And that will be empowering to your child. And we’re signing together.com and you can reach me at jeff@tiny.com

Jake White: It’s so powerful. Thank you Jeff. This was awesome. For everything. He’s so much. Oh, of course. Yeah. And yes, and for everyone listening, if you found this helpful, please leave a review on the podcast, go to shine together.com and check it out. And if you think of someone who we need to chat with because it would be a good resource on the show, just go to Jake at five eighteen.com Send me an email and keep enjoying the show every Monday get empowered and keep doing the great life saving work that you’re doing.