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17 Aug

Ep. 56 – Todd Schobel – Founder and CEO of STOPit

Todd Schobel – Founder and CEO of STOPit; Understanding the market of bullying and cyberbulling; annoymous tech for new generations to report incidents.

Segment 1: (Length :04:00) – General Updates; Introduction to Todd Schobel and his journey as a an entrepreneur; What takes place with Bullying and Cyber Bullying.

Todd’s finer points:

“Yeah. You know, it’s one of those, one of those moments in time. I’m, driving down the, the highway here one morning listening to the news. It was on, October 10th of 2012, which is a very significant day, and they were talking about a young child that had been cyberabused, cyberextorted, cyberbullied, you name it. I’m sure a lot of your listeners have probably heard of the story of Amanda Todd from Canada, as she endured about two years of abuse and, unfortunately, took her life on that day.”

“When I heard the story, I never heard about cyberbullying till that point. You know, I had young kids, very young, and it just caught my attention.”

“And then when I heard of her story, I just immediately pictured a young girl in the corner of a room wanting to tell people and share, but all those all those barriers, right?”

All kinds of craziness like that a 15-year-old or 16-year-old has to digest with all this information (cyberbullying) and try to deal with it, and it's just not right.

“Some of the stats are that one in 10, one in 15 adults know what’s going on when kids are in crisis online.”

“And what ends up happening is that a child takes their life or there’s a shooting at a school, or something like that, and they go into the social media account and look, and sure enough, the child that acted out or that took their life, show’s signs; it’s abhorrent what’s written online.”

“So I said to myself, ‘Okay. Let’s, uh, let’s not try to train the kids, the, the students, the young adults to do anything new. Let’s give them an app. Let’s remove all the friction out of the reporting process.'”

“So, the, the key thing here was, give them an app on a cell phone, that’s like an appendage for everybody now, but kids are all over it, and let them anonymously report in real time, instantaneously in seconds, a screen shot, a video, a photo, or just a text message, and hit a button within seconds when they feel inside their heart – this is really for the bystander effect,”

Segment 2: (Length :04:00) – Talking with Todd Schobel; The importance of taking action; Results

Todd’s finer points:

Don't be a bystander. Be an upstander.

“You see something, post it online. You don’t want to say anything or intervene; fear of retribution, but you know what? Your heart and your soul tells you this is wrong, this is bullshit. Okay? So in seconds you can screen capture something, hit it, and off it goes. Total anonymity.”

“No one ever knows anything, and now you’re presenting the school officials (if we’re talking school settings) immediately so they can receive the report in real time, and to a multitude of different people.”

“They all see it, and now they go, ‘Wow. I never knew that Mary was in such crisis. I just saw her walking down the hall and said hi.'”

Cyberbullying is, is outrageous. It's, it affects everyone, and it's a global epidemic.

“So as the program, as the platform started to take off, with my primary focus being saving kids.”

“We’ve stopped gang fights. We caught a heroine ring.”

“We all know it works, we all get it, but when you hear a story and know that you’re saving kids and saving that child and others who are being abused by someone, then it becomes real.”

“You know it’s happening and there’s more reports going all over where these people are being caught and cyberbullies are being stopped.”

I'm very proactive, in your face kind of person. I believe in results, not, I believe in deterrents. That's why it's called STOPit.

“So, when you give a tool and you put it in the school, and then we see data over time, where incidents and issues go down across the board, schools say, “You know what? Our culture’s changing. Kids feel better. They’re dating who they want, and they’re doing what they want instead of walking this straight line all the time afraid to do anything different or odd for fear they’re going to get wailed on online.”

Segment 3: (Length :04:00) – Going to market with STOPit; On innovating;

Todd’s finer points:

“So my goal was to reach 100 schools and provide efficacy of the product, refine the beta, get data, the whole nine yards; also prove that, you know what? That they’ll pay for it.”

“I wanted people to have the full power for the program up front.”

“It’s been alarming how much it costs to not only to develop a platform, right? But to, to continue to innovate, to be able to move left and right.”

“The Millennials and people in general, no one’s calling hotlines anymore.”

“No one uses the 800 numbers because of the fear they’re going to get called and, called out, and no one wants to use them. And then there’s long forms on websites where you’ve got to fill out all this information, then you get a code back, and then in order to communicate back and forth, you got to log back in, put in your code, all this friction, right? Well, it’s horse shit.”

“With STOPit Messenger, the folks that receive these reports can immediately click a button and conduct a two-way anonymous chat with the reporter. Full anonymity.”

“Part of our cool technology. So somebody, now, you want more information. Right? You can go right back and have a dialogue in a very familiar platform and texting platform.”

So what we do is we give everybody a voice.

Segment 4: (Length :03:00) – Hustler Thought of the Day:

Fighting means you could lose. Bullying means you can't. A bully wants to beat somebody; he doesn't want to fight somebody. - Andrew Vachss

GENERAL NOTES:

Todd Schobel – Founder & CEO of STOPit

  • Todd is the Founder and CEO of STOPit, a simple, fast and powerful solution to report inappropriate behaviors, deter unethical or illegal activity, and mitigate financial and reputational risks to schools and corporations. What some of you may also call, bullying.
  • He’s responsible for overall vision and strategy of the company. Todd is driven by his passionate commitment to end cyber abuse and harassment across the globe.
  • STOPit has been featured in CNN, Bloomberg, CBS, and several other media outlets.
  • Prior to founding STOPit, Todd served as the Founder and President of Phoenix Venture Group. At PVG he provided a variety of consulting services in the areas of business development, marketing, and direct sales. Todd helped clients secure relationships with Fortune 500 companies including Google, Johnson & Johnson, AIG, Viacom and Dun & Bradstreet.
  • Prior to Phoenix Venture Group, Todd served as President and Founder of Diamond Graphics, a commercial printing and creative services firm. Todd also served as President of Mail Management Services, a firm providing direct marketing, data management and forms processing services.

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Matt Gottesman

Matt Gottesman is a global digital strategist and technology advisor, creator and editor-in-chief of Hustle & Deal Flow™ - an online magazine dedicated to the world's entrepreneurs, creators and makers, a Social Media Influencer and a consultant on New Media and go-to-market strategies for investments in digital marketing, technology, websites, mobile applications, eCommerce, social media and content.

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