But tell me about your vision.
My vision is that we are the generation of parents
who raise empathetic, compassionate, empowered
leaders by building them up instead of cutting them down,
who will be better equipped to navigate and change
so much of what ails us as human beings,
that they can hold compassion and courage together
at the same time.
And that's all rooted in their childhood.
Yeah, yeah.
And those two things together, passion and courage,
I don't think you hear that very often together,
because they're on two different ends of the spectrum in my opinion.
And I love that vision, because parenting
is completely different.
I'm going to go on every platform to say I'm 45 years old.
And the way that parenting is now, oh, I tell you,
it's like a flip of the coin.
And me being raised, and how I responded,
and how my parent responded, and now raising four others, oh,
it's a whole different ballgame.
So as I tell myself in my life, I want
to shift into understanding parenting
with the challenge of social media.
Yeah, thank you.
So we are in a new digital world.
It is.
And of course, Jai, one of our pillars
is that we're not here to tell anyone else how to parent.
We're here to empower you to make those decisions
and feel confident in them and hold boundaries
around the decisions and choices that you make,
yes, compassionately.
And the reality is that all of our children,
whether we give them devices or not,
are going to be influenced by what happens online.
And so I tend to, as a parent, think
about preparation versus trying to protect them from it,
because it is the reality.
There's nothing that's a better anchor against the ills
and risks and scary side of social media
than teaching our children who they are, arming them
with values, arming them with morality,
letting them use social media as a bridge for conversation
around what we stand for in our family
and what might be important to others
as a tool of distinction so that they have a self-identity,
ideally, that is unshakable, regardless of how many likes
their TikTok.
I don't even know if you get likes on TikTok,
but whatever it is, that they are not
pulled into that external locus of control,
which is social media.
Yes.
And that's good, how you state that you prepare them rather
than to protect them, because at any cost and at all costs,
someone, especially if they're going to school,
someone's raising our children, right?
Someone other than ourselves.
I'm so sorry.
They'll cut that out.
But it's crazy, because I tell people eight hours out the day,
I'm not the parent.
That's right.
I'm literally placing them in the hands,
whether it be a private school or a public school
or one with faith values.
It is somebody else, right?
So with that being said, the preparation
is awesome that you say that, because that's like, hey,
once you're out of my sight and out of my hands,
I want you to know who you are, because you
should value who you are.
There's so many things in that.
So how does Jai Institute help parents
to create that for their children?
So we train parenting coaches, and more appropriately,
parent coaches, because again, we don't
have a parenting methodology.
Coaching is vital for adult transformation
and learning new skills and learning nervous system
regulation, learning to be an effective communicator.
Many of us weren't modeled these skills as children,
not because our parents were trying to mess us up.
They were doing the best with what they could.
But these aren't things that, by and large, we learned.
And so the reason that we train parenting coaches instead
of, for example, having a parenting course online
is that the way that the human brain works
and how responsible our subconscious mind is,
kind of like our automatic processing system of how
we do anger, how we do conflict, how we navigate relationships,
what our attachment style is, these
can be controlled with willpower to a certain extent.
But that's only like two hours a day
that we can control those things.
And so coaching gives people a container
to try new things on, to practice,
to have accountability and support and empathy.
And so our thesis, proven by the results that we create,
is that coaches bear the best chance of actually making
lasting and meaningful change in adults
who have a lifetime of experience doing relationships
the way that they do relationships.
So our coaches go through our parent-centric training first.
They learn about all of these tools
that we have around nonviolent communication, attachment
style, emotional intelligence, and then
learn how to coach those skills in the families
that they serve.
I love that.
So how many is on your team?
Oh, my goodness.
I think we have about 16 people now.
Nice.
Congratulations to you, Enke.
Oh.
Hey, when you have something, and as I
mentioned before, I'm a little faith-based.
But once it's all got, it's all good.
So it sounds like it's going really good for you.
Congratulations.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm sure it's no shock to hear to your listeners.
But growing a business, and it's right up there
with growing children, it will take you on a journey.
Yes.
And I love that we can mix all of this,
because truth be told, there's journey in being a parent.
There's journey in entrepreneurship.
There's journey just in life in general.
And what you're telling us is I came up
with this little phrase, there's power in a parent.
Because we do have the power to raise our children
to be strong, courageous, understanding, loving.
Even with the social media and the technology,
I think that we still have that power.
And we can take it back.
Absolutely.
Yeah, one thing that's super crazy is,
I believe it was my mom.
My mom was saying she watched something.
And she was like, parents, because now I'm older,
and now I have younger ones.
She was like, parents didn't, we're not understanding.
And she's saying, I'm older.
She's like, we're not understanding
that we didn't have technology like that.
And now having that understanding
that our children have it, it never clicked until then.
Oh, they didn't grow up without an iPad.
They grew up with an iPad.
They grew up with all these things.
And so talking to you now and having that understanding
and what it would feel like to hear someone coach a parent
on trying to be more gentle and understanding,
I love that your coaches are going through coaching
to coach that.
Leaders go first.
And as someone who's worked in the transformational space
for a very long time, I have a very high integrity bar.
And it's very important to me as a person
to put my head down on the pillow every night
and know that I can deliver on the promises that I've
made to our community.
And so I believe that's the same for our coaches.
People that are attracted to this kind of mission
are going to be heart centered, are
going to be high integrity.
They care deeply about what's happening with children
and parents all over the world.
And so having our coaches have that experience
of transformation for themselves emboldens them to then go out
into their schools, to their pediatricians,
to their communities and say, I can help.
I love that.
I can just hear the passion in your voice.
And it's interesting.
How long have you been in business?
Oh, gosh.
18 years.
My son just turned 20.
Actually, today, it's his 20th birthday today.
Yay.
And I worked in finance.
And I had two under two.
And I just thought, this is not what I want to be.
I don't want to be coming home to the nanny who
took them to the beach.
This is not what I had in mind.
And so I hung up my first little shingle
when they were just really little.
And here we are.
Time.
No way.
That is exciting.
Happy birthday to you, son.
Thank you.
20 is what's good.
I know.
It's like I'm down to one teenager.
Woo.
Right.
And that's crazy, which is very interesting because that's
the business.
That's your life.
But it's also your life.
So I'm trying to find the word.
But how do you juggle the two?
That's better sometimes than others.
I have two kids who are in college now.
So now I'm kind of like, what does one do with oneself?
It's a little destabilizing, frankly.
I think when they were younger, it was important for me
to learn to have a really firm boundary for myself.
They would call me out.
When I was trying to be present with them
and I'd be sideways on my phone, we came up
with a secret password for that where they could say marshmallow.
And I would put the phone down.
It's hard.
And sometimes I did better than others in the early years.
I kind of wish I knew then what I know now.
And I was probably too focused on growing the business
because it does go so fast.
So it ebbs and flows.
And sometimes the needs of the kids
are going to be stronger than the needs of the business.
And vice versa.
And I think for entrepreneurial parents,
my best advice would be to let that be OK.
Because the beating ourselves up about it
isn't going to help anything.
Yes.
And that is the main reason why I asked.
Because I'm telling you, with all the experience as a parent,
like a real live parent-parent, and then coaching others
to do the parenting coaching, that piece right there
was probably, I'm being opinionated,
but that was the most powerful thing probably of this episode
is that you're going to ebbs and flows.
And your children are going to get that piece of you that's
like, OK.
But as you guys heard, Keeva said, make up a word.
And then that way, and that's pretty cool too.
Because even when you're out and about, and they're at the park,
and they're on the slide, and you hear, marshmallow.
Yeah.
So much of what we're giving parents the ability to do
is to work in collaboration with children
to create solutions together.
So if you think about the way a lot of us were parented,
it was power over.
Do as I say, because I said so.
I'm the adult. I put a roof over your head.
You owe me your good behavior.
And a lot of what we're seeing today is power under parenting.
My child's needs and feelings are the most important.
And that's not useful when we're thinking
about raising actual human adults who
know how to take personal responsibility and do things
even when they're hard, even when they don't want to.
And so what we're really working toward
is something we call power with, where everyone
in a relationship, whether it's parent, child, or otherwise,
has the right to have their feelings and needs matter.
And that in an effective communication style,
we can work together to find solutions where, by and large,
everyone's feelings and needs are met.
Now, that doesn't mean everyone's
going to be happy all the time.
And they shouldn't be.
Because we need to, or we could choose to,
learn to model what healthy conflict looks like,
what compromise looks like, what out-of-the-box thinking looks
like.
And that's life changing for a child.
They will not.
Their standards when you raise it, like, my kids
blow me away with their standards
for their relationships.
I'm frankly jealous.
I'm telling you, me too.
Me too, because again, they've grown up differently, right?
Of course, not with us.
But then we're the parents.
And then you watch them.
They're doing things so different.
And I love it.
And I often wonder why I connect with my 29-year-old a lot.
Because I'm like, yes, yes, yes.
Healthy conflict, because I will say this.
When you say that, and I hear that often, healthy and conflict
never was in the same sense or word.
It didn't have a hyphen or anything.
Those two things were completely different.
Because conflict is rage and anger, at least
the way that I was raised.
Yeah, for a lot of us.
For a lot of us.
And so we fear conflict.
I'll speak for my own journey.
I used to think I was a people pleaser.
No, I was like an Olympic champion conflict avoider.
Like I would just sit in a pot of boiling hot water
rather than risk losing love through conflict,
because that's what it meant for me.
And as I've developed this ability to really sit
in conflict and to stay open and to hear what the other person is
saying, and to have the courage, like oh my god,
is it going to come out?
And to have the courage to say what I actually
am feeling and thinking, even if I think the other person isn't
going to agree with me.
The miracle on the other side of that
is that it deepened my relationships.
It created more trust, more connection, more intimacy.
And so these ideas that we have about black and white,
it's like no, it's the both and.
Yes, yes, yes.
And the crazy part about that too is even if it doesn't deepen,
even if it doesn't get better per se,
we have that choice to say am I going to accept it,
or am I going to be OK with letting it flow
and letting it go?
Because anything that doesn't allow healthy conflict
or healthy conversations to happen that end in a not so good
way, maybe it's not for that.
And maybe there's some times we need to sit in it, reflect,
and say, hey, is this meaningful to us?
Which is, and going back to parenting, the same thing.
Healthy conversations, healthy conflict.
And that can, I won't call it balance,
but that can set a tone to having a conversation that's
either hard for us as parents or to the children that says,
say what you're going to say, but also make sure you
choose your words wisely.
I deeply appreciate that you just brought that up.
When we grow, when we mature, when
we start to live into a new reality of who
we are as leaders, because whether you're a parent,
whether you're a business owner, you are a leader.
People, children, or otherwise are
going to be influenced by your thoughts, actions, and deeds.
And not everyone is going to be able to meet you
in that place.
I've really worked to allow people's journeys
to be their own.
I can't make another person act responsibly or treat me
with kindness.
And so the reality is that there are people
that we will move on from.
But I think it's worth it.
In the end, it's like our monkey mind that's saying, danger,
danger, but freedom lives over here.
Yes, yes, yes.
And that freedom doesn't have to make
you feel that lump in your throat of fear
to actually say what you feel, because maybe that's not
the person or the position.
And I say all of this because I'm actually teaching my kids,
hey, what's the kind of conversations that you're having?
Oh, you're not friends anymore?
And they're like, no.
It's like, OK, well, let's talk about that.
And then I'm like, hey, well, let it flow and let it go
if it has to.
Don't force it.
And I think that that's also the thing about you teaching
and your team teaching how to parent is also,
I think you're really parenting the parent.
That's exactly what we are doing.
It's like we're teaching adults how
to embrace the full scope, the messiness, the beauty,
the joy, the heartbreak, the grief, the pride.
All of that is humaning.
And we, with our small human brains,
tend to think, oh, I only want the good stuff.
I only want my kids to have the good stuff.
But that's not real.
That's not how life goes.
And so it's kind of like the same thing as what
we said about social media.
I want to prepare my children to navigate heartbreak,
not to avoid it.
I want to prepare my children to handle failure, not to avoid it.
And when I mess up, I want them to see
that I get to make mistakes, too.
And I'm going to make it right.
And I'm going to take responsibility.
And that allows them to say, OK, I can mess up,
but I'm still worthy.
I'm still deserving of love and respect and kindness
and compassion.
And so this is what I see as so revolutionary about what we do,
because at the end of the day, what we're trying to do
is raise better human beings, whether they're 2 or 72.
Yes, because, I mean, as we know, 2025 came so fast.
I'm telling you, I was like, what?
And then I'm like, wait.
I still remember January 1, 2024,
which meant that I was present.
And if I remember January, I remember March.
And it helped me to, I'm actually getting goosebumps,
because when you're present, after having
these coachings and this understanding within yourself,
and then the attempt to raise your children well,
but just also knowing that life is so short,
but so worth the living, hey, no matter how fast the year goes
by, we still have an opportunity,
if we're blessed, to have that opportunity to make changes,
be better people.
And so with you and your team, parenting the parent
to parent the child, I think that it's
the best domino effect ever.
Dominoes.
I agree.
I mean, it's just, it's very humbling.
It's very awe-inspiring.
Every Monday morning, I have a practice
of reading our Google reviews.
Because being a CEO of a business that's gotten way
bigger than I ever thought, it's hard.
It can be really scary, and it can be,
I can feel like I'm not equipped.
I don't understand KPIs enough or whatever story
I'm telling myself.
And then I go read those reviews, and I'm like, Kiva,
you may not quit.
No, you get to rise to the occasion,
because the work is so important.
And it just fuels me and my desire
to be the best leader that I can be.
Absolutely.
And I don't want to take up too much more of your time,
but I have one last question, and I'm going to hit you with it.
What's your why?
It's little girl Kiva who didn't get these things
and ended up adopting defense mechanisms and coping
strategies that caused a lot of harm, not just to myself,
but other people.
And so in my other office, I have a Polaroid of me
when I was about six years old, which
is when my life kind of started to go
in a really intense and kind of scary direction,
and I keep her with me all the time.
I just want to do better for her and for Miles
and Charlotte, my own kids, and give other people
the opportunity to do the same.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.