Rebecca
Hey, Nat.

Natalie
Hey, Bec.

Rebecca
We are here today talking to Johnny Crowder. Hi, Johnny.

Natalie
I’m so excited about this. I just finished snapping a picture of his wall behind him. I wish everybody could see this — some of the most amazing selection of shoes that I plan on immediately sharing with my students tomorrow morning. Because that’s like every 17-year-old boy’s dream wall. And actually, I wouldn’t say 17-year-old boy, I would say every human who considers themselves a sneakerhead. It’s pretty amazing.

Rebecca
How many do you have, Johnny?

Johnny
First of all, I appreciate it, and second of all — behind me there are five rows of seven each. So that’s 35 pairs, which is mind-blowing for me because I grew up sharing sneakers with my brothers. I didn’t really have my own pair until high school. So it’s really cool to be able to look and be like, “What am I gonna wear today?” And not like, “I can’t believe my brother walked through a toilet with the shoes that I have to wear with him,” you know?

Rebecca
Where do you keep the other shoe? On your wall (we’ll post the picture) I just see — oh no, both are there. I think I see both, right? I thought it was just one shoe. I was like, “That’d be cool, if you had like a…”

Johnny
Like a big basket of all my other ones?

Natalie
Or some amazing closet that just has the leftover box, which I actually think a lot of people do. Because there are ways of making it so that you save the box and keep it really safe. But I like that, Bec.

Rebecca
Okay, that makes you way more normal.

Natalie
It also makes Rebecca not a sneakerhead.

Johnny
Dude, I don’t know if anybody with 35 pairs of shoes is normal. I think that ship has sailed.

Natalie
Hey, so Johnny, you reached out to us. Can you tell us a little bit about you, and what even sparked your curiosity in terms of speaking to two sisters who spend so much time thinking about reframing?

Johnny
Well, my whole thing is: the podcast world, and the media world is full of — this is gonna sound really cynical, I don’t mean it to sound as cynical as it’s gonna sound — but it’s full of a bunch of unhelpful stuff. Stuff that, it may be entertaining, it might be a good backdrop while you’re doing dishes or something, but 99% of podcasts aren’t materially making people’s lives better. I am a media consumer, so I do watch stuff that is arguably not making my life any better — like a sneaker review, I don’t know how that’s changing the way I interact with people, but I find it interesting. The thing that I loved about the show was the whole idea around — almost my entire life, I didn’t know that you could work out your brain, just like you could work out your body. I used to do bodybuilding in high school, and I knew that if I lift weights, my muscles can get bigger, and it will change the shape of my body. I was not aware at the time, until I started taking psychology courses and going to treatment, that if I did mental exercises, that it could change the shape of my brain and the way I process information. So that feeling of not being stuck, and knowing that you can change your brain, was incredibly liberating for me.

Rebecca
Which is kind of interesting — I do know that, I feel like that’s intuitive for how we grew up, that you can change your brain, but it’s very hard to absorb. I appreciated listening to your TED talk. It’s really challenging to absorb, even if you know it. So it’s interesting that you came from a place of saying, “I didn’t even know we could do that.” Did we grow up that way Nat, thinking we could change our brains?

Natalie
I don’t know if we could have put that into words, necessarily. But I mean, we both — well, you did way better in that first year psych course than I ever did. I accept that I don’t like memorizing stuff, that really was something that threw me with that course. It was a 2000 person course, who can sit and pay attention to that many voices around you when you’ve got this prof with the mic?

Rebecca
I rose to the challenge, I have to say.

Natalie
I did not rise to that, I’ll tell you.

Rebecca
Ok, but is it more modern, this idea of brain change? Where did you learn that? How many years ago did you start thinking that way, Johnny?

Johnny
I started treatment maybe 15 years ago. I actually didn’t even believe the idea — I was seeing a clinician, and she was helping me understand exposure therapy. One of the things that we were working on in therapy was OCD — for context, I had a lot of different issues, but one of them was related to germs, and I couldn’t touch people, so I didn’t hug people, shake hands, fist bump, high five, none of it. I just did not touch human beings for years. My therapist was explaining to me that — this will date me, are you ready? — if she held my iPod…

Natalie
That doesn’t date you, my friend!

Johnny
Dude! I haven’t seen an actual — those thick iPod that looks like Gameboys — that was probably 2006, 2007 or something. So the goal, the first three months, we just talked about what we would do. And I was afraid the whole time, so we never actually did anything, I was freaked out. And then she was explaining to me that one day soon, I will hold your iPod for three seconds, then I’ll put it on the table for three minutes, and then you’ll have to hold the iPod for three seconds. And it’ll be kind of like you touched my hand, indirectly. The idea made me cry. I was so overwhelmed. She was explaining, as you become more normalized with this, we can make the time shorter. Then eventually, we’ll get to a point where I can hand you the iPod after being in my hand — straight into your hand. And eventually we can touch hands, because your brain starts changing to accept that information. I was like, “I can’t change my brain, it is the way it is.” So I was not receptive to that idea at first.

Natalie
But it was in there enough. It was planted, the seed was planted, so over time it could grow.

Johnny
Well, this poor woman had to plant it every single week for months before I would even try.

Natalie
Well, that was her job, so good!

Rebecca
Would she get frustrated? Or was she the master of patience about the whole thing? I would expect a therapist to be patient, but they’re human too.

Johnny
Dude, I tried so many different therapists, and she was the first one to actually be patient enough to be like, “We don’t have to do it today. We can do it next time.” And I took full advantage, right? So I’m putting it off as far as I can. Like, “Let’s wait until after New Year’s.” Then, “Well, let’s wait until March,” or whatever. But she was just a good listener, and I think she went out of her way to make me not feel crazy. That was really valuable to me.

Natalie
We’ve talked about that, actually. That’s an interesting one. We’ve talked about even the danger of some language, like ‘crazy,’ what that does and how damaging language can be when we not only put it out into the world, but claim it — and how powerfully it can hold on to us. So in your TEDx talk, you did use the word ‘reframe,’ which was so cool. When I was listening to it, and I’m taking notes and kind of preparing, I was like, “He used our word!” — which means that obviously, we’re not the only ones out here thinking through an idea that feels very us, feels very Natalie and Rebecca. So it was kind of a celebration that you were doing that too. But you also said that you have found that a lot of positive affirmations, which can often be attached to reframing, are kind of cheesy. We agree, because we’ve joked on this show about a specific little board that Rebecca has up in her kitchen at her farm and it says something about, like, the beach being our happy place. Isn’t that the one Bec?

Rebecca
Yeah, “Sandbanks is our happy place.” Could you handle that affirmation in your house, Johnny? Something like that, does that rank in the cheese?

Johnny
Maybe. Actually, I’m not sure if you’ve read through the comments on my TED talk, but they’re pretty funny. This one person commented like, “This is pretty cheesy, but it’s totally relevant,” — like, talking about the talk. And then someone else posted, “It is cheesy, but it’s a good cheese.” And then I posted something underneath it from the Cope Notes account that was like, “Yeah, it’s more like a nice Havarti or something.” Joking about how, even if something is cheesy, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not true. It just means it’s not worded in a way that feels raw and validating to you. For me, using something like “Dude,” or like, “That really sucks,” or like, “That must be brutal” — those types of phrases, for me specifically, make me feel more understood than like, “I understand you must be going through a difficult season.” You know? I need someone to be like, “That sounds brutal.” And I’m like, “Yeah, it is.”

Natalie
Because you relate. Yeah.

Rebecca
How do you feel about the phrase (I know people say this right now), “I’m holding space”? This came up in another episode, and then I went away and was like, “Why can’t I just use that phrase?” This idea of holding space for something, or someone, does that bug you guys? Or you like it, or you use it?

Johnny
It’s tough, because I know that certain things work for some people and not for other people. Self-care is tricky — for me, self-care might look like watching a walkthrough of a Lamborghini or something, where they’re walking through all the specs, and like horsepower and torque and stuff. For me, that feels restorative. But for someone else, they might want to do goat yoga or something that restores them. So with phrases like that, I can see how someone would be like, “Thank you for holding that space for me, I feel so honoured.” Actually, I have a friend who’s literally a guru, and he calls it ‘woowoo language.’ And he leans into it, because there’s parts of it that are really relevant to him. But he’s like, “I understand how it can be heard as woowoo or heady type of language.” So if we can all stay somewhat conscious of how not everybody speaks the exact same language, but is looking for the same thing, then it makes phrases like that not feel as alienating

Natalie
Yeah, or cringy.

Rebecca
Yeah, that’s a good way to say it.

Natalie
With your company, with Cope Notes — I mean, do you call it a company? Because I mean, it is, right?

Johnny
It is. I never planned on it being one, but it is.

Natalie
You know what, before I get to my question, why don’t you just say really quickly, if you can sum it up — essentially, what is Cope Notes? (We’re gonna put it all in the show notes anyways for folks.)

Rebecca
And you don’t really have to be that fast about it. Does he have to sum it up quick?

Johnny
Cope Notes, what we do is provide daily mental health support via text message. So what that actually looks like, is we have these messages that are written by peers with lived experience — regular people like you and me, who are going through tough stuff. It might be an exercise, or a psychology fact, or a journaling prompt. Whatever it is we’re sending that day is written by a peer, with lived experience, then reviewed by clinicians to make sure it’s actually legit, and then it’s delivered at a random time so that no two people ever get the same text at the same time. You never know when we will text you, or what the text will say, but these randomly timed interruptions are actually designed to interrupt negative thought patterns with catalysts for positive thoughts. So over time, your brain can learn to think in healthier patterns. So in the beginning of the interview, you’re like, “Why did you reach out?” Reframing is, like, all Cope Notes does. It is a cognitive restructuring tool. That’s its primary function.

Natalie
Yeah. Win for us that we picked him off the list! I’m dapsing you through the screen here, because there’s something really cool, that we found each other — I think there’s something pretty amazing.

Rebecca
So if my problem is OCD, or my problem is alcohol or whatever, is it tailored that specifically?

Johnny
No — so here’s what’s kind of cool. I don’t know if any listeners have have been in this situation, or if you two have, but for me, when I’m signing up for a resource, it does take some serious gumption to overcome your self-stigma and to be like, “I’m going to use something, I’m going to work on this.” If you go through this onboarding process that’s like, your name, and your birthday, and your mother’s maiden name, and your social security number, like all of these — I’m exaggerating, but like a big questionnaire about like, what you’ve been through and what you’re going through and what you need help with, you’re like, “I don’t know, just help me. I’m in the middle of something right now.” So we wanted to make Cope Notes as simple as possible to join. And then what’s cool is, the more you text back in your thread, the more relevant the text will become, because your input determines that relevance. If I send you a text message, and you’re like, “I literally have never experienced anything like that in the entirety of my whole life,” which has never happened. But let’s just say we somehow sent you the worst text you’ve ever received, that would affect the future texts that you receive. Basically, Cope Notes listens. It’s anonymous, so it doesn’t know, like, “Rebecca said that,” but it knows that this subscriber doesn’t appreciate that type of content, would prefer something else instead. It’s kind of like Netflix, when you thumbs up and thumbs down different things, and then it serves you more relevant stuff.

Natalie
Right, but less algorithm-based and more literally, that people are reading it on the other end and going “Oh, that didn’t jive.”

Johnny
It’s both. That’s what’s mind-blowing. So we have an oversight panel that’s reviewing all of these different types of anonymized feedback. And then we serve that — not to get too techy — but basically, we serve that to Cope Notes so that it can further determine relevance.

Rebecca
So do you use it too? Obviously, you would, probably? You have your own?

Johnny
Oh, yeah. I built it for me, selfishly?

Rebecca
So does it take the place of a therapist for you?

Johnny
Oh, wouldn’t that be awesome? Oh, come on, a replacement for therapy for 10 bucks a month? Let’s go. That sounds great.

Rebecca
You still need some personalized conversation?

Johnny
I’m a big fan of therapy, personally. I have a lot of friends who are therapists, because I’ve been volunteering in the mental health space for over a decade — so this is kind of my world. When I started Cope Notes, a lot of my therapist friends were like, “Screw you, you’re gonna put me out of a job.” I’m like, “Do toothbrushes put dentists out of a job?” They’re two completely different things, they just both support the same end goal. I am a huge proponent of therapy, I recommend anyone give it a swing. I think that’s actually a perfect example — if you have a dentist, you still need to brush your teeth. And if you brush your teeth all the time, you should probably still check in with a dentist every once in a while.

Rebecca
Yeah. Although what do you say to that, Nat? I think our very first podcast, we started by talking about therapy — and Nat, you don’t want it anymore, do you?

Natalie
Well, no. So Johnny, you did preface by saying that you went through a number of therapists before you found one that you really connected with. When I was going through my divorce, there were some things that prompted me to go to therapy, and some of those therapy sessions had been quite excellent — and then others had been really very much not excellent. I think that I have worked over a number of years to appreciate and respect where my friends are at when they’re going down that road, family members, whatever it ends up being. But for me, over the last decade, my therapy has been much more related to my own learning. So books I’m reading, finding the therapist’s voice in fiction. I see you’re nodding in appreciation for that. Everybody has a different vibe with it. But for me, definitely, therapy hasn’t been my jam in a while.

Johnny
Dude, when people ask me like about the things that made the biggest difference in my recovery — health education is like, you can go on YouTube and search like, “Mental health TED talk,” or you can go on Google and search like, “Why do I feel anxious at night,” or whatever. There are so many resources, just frickin’ look, just dig into stuff — because that knowledge will do so much for you. Even if it doesn’t solve your problem, the more shape you can give it, the more equipped you are to handle it. So I’m 100% with you, Nat.

Natalie
Well, it’s interesting because the word you use in your talk — and I was really struck by it because in academia, we use this a lot, this idea of interrupting. So you know, I want to interrupt this very specific train of thought, or I want to interrupt this take up of whatever theory. The way you’re using it, how would you frame it?

Johnny
All we do is interrupt people. You’re probably familiar with automatic negative thought, which is that record player that’s like, “Did I just stutter?” Or like, “Why is there a stain on my shirt? Everyone’s probably looking at it.”

Rebecca
That’s a thing in psychology?

Johnny
Oh, yeah. Automatic negative thought. It’s extremely common. Some of it is subconscious, some of it is conscious. It’s kind of that constant survival mechanism, like, “Are people judging me?” or, “Did I do something silly?” or, “What’s wrong with me?” “Those people don’t like me,” or, “I don’t trust those people.” All those negative thoughts that feel like you’re not trying to think them, you just think them. Those are fairly pervasive. And what we do is interrupt them. If you think about the phrase ‘thought train’ — picture a negative thought train on a track. That thing might be chugging along and gaining speed, and Cope Notes is like a rock on that train track that will either slow that train down or potentially even derail it.

Natalie
That’s powerful. Because it’s so small, right? The idea of the rock and the train — the one thing is so much bigger, but the potential to be, if not derailed at least interrupted, as you say.

Rebecca
It’s interesting because, as you’re saying, some of the texts that you would send out are quite general, in a sense — generally interrupting something. But we take things quite personally, we personalize things. Which is kind of interesting, because that can be a negative part of what we do as humans, right? It’s kind of a narcissistic thing, like I make this all about me.

Natalie
You’re turning it on its head.

Rebecca
Yeah, to be like, “This thing that humans do, we can work with that.”

Johnny
Dude, I wish I knew — what is the type of martial arts where you use your opponent’s momentum against your opponent?

Natalie
I could just run next door and ask my husband, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of us sitting here.

Rebecca
Is it Tai Chi? No. Is it not? I’m gonna just throw out ones that I know.

Johnny
It might be. But the whole principle is like: the human race has spent years trying to figure out why the heck the brain does what it does. We only know a few things about it. The things that we do know are like: it likes to conserve calories, it wants to protect itself. So how can we use those things that we already know the brain will do automatically, leverage that momentum for positive change? That’s really all we’re doing. We tell people, “We’re not making your brain form habits. Your brain is doing that already. We’re just kind of putting bumpers up on the lane in the bowling alley. You’re already bowling no matter what. We’re just making sure that you actually hit the pins instead of your neighbour.”

Rebecca
Right. Interesting.

Natalie
Becca, I’m laughing a little bit because you were like, “Is it Tai Chi?” And my first response is, “No.”

Johnny
It might be. I’m sure a listener will be like, “How do they not know?”

Natalie
Our proclivities in ourselves, right?

Rebecca
Like you’re the naysayer over there?

Natalie
No, I don’t think I’m the naysayer. I think I’m like the teacher who’s supposed to know shit, and then all of a sudden I don’t. Anyways, I’m laughing at myself.

Rebecca
I was just gonna ask, do you talk about the cross you’re wearing? You know, our dad is a minister, but we’ve always tried to find our place in that, but that the cross you’re wearing is fairly prominent. Is that a part of your journey?

Johnny
People who can’t see me can’t see that I have a cross tattooed on my face. And that’s so that even if I take the one around my neck off, I can’t take the one on my face off. My whole life, I never wanted to hear about God or Jesus or church or anything. I, like almost an entire generation of people, grew up in a really unhealthy Catholic church environment — abusive parents and alcohol and drug use. I learned all the wrong things about faith, and I conflated God with religion. So I spent my whole life angry at God. Only to realize — and this is a severe oversimplification of the story — in my early 20s, I realized I was actually upset with religion, and God didn’t do anything to me. In fact, I never took the time to get to know God, or Jesus, because I was so angry at Christians, that I’d never laid my prejudice down long enough to give Jesus a chance. It was and is a gradual process of shedding that hardness of heart to ask myself, “What do I really believe?” Not, “What did other people do to me?” or “What did other people do in the name of God?” But, “What do I actually believe and think?”

Natalie
Thank you for sharing.

Rebecca
That’s pretty beautiful. I was curious because I’d seen a cross — you were wearing it in your TED talk. But I was curious that that didn’t come up for you. You don’t bring it into every talk.

Johnny
Well, that’s the great thing about having it on my face, pretty much inevitably during Q&A, people are like, “Is faith a part of it?” My whole life, like I said, I didn’t want people shoving faith on me or anything like that — but now I want to make myself someone who’s always down to have the conversation. So I can definitely say that — and this is not to be dramatic or anything — without Jesus, I would have completed suicide by now. Without Jesus, I definitely would not be clean and sober. Without Jesus, I definitely would not have done trauma therapy, which I had been putting off for a super long time. Without Jesus, I wouldn’t be in the band I’m in now, I would never have started a company, I wouldn’t be public speaking. My whole life. The only reason I do what I do is because I found out what God gave to me. And now I’m compelled to give to other people, because I’ve already received something incredible.

Natalie
But in terms of the Cope Notes reality — if I were to talk about this with my Muslim students, or my atheist students, they could still participate with that helpful technique without feeling like faith was necessarily a part of the process.

Johnny
Yep. Everything I do — like, the band is secular, like Cope Notes is secular, everything I do is purposely for everybody. And if people want to have the faith conversation, I’m down.

Natalie
Yeah, it’s really special. you said this in your TED talk that we were listening to, but what do you mean by taking ownership over your own growth? And maybe that’s part of it, like maybe you tattooing that little cross was you taking ownership not just over what kind of conversations you have, but also about your own process of growth?

Johnny
Dude, I always wanted somebody else to do it, I was so tired. I just wanted someone else to make me feel better. I’ll go to the therapist, and I was like, “You do it.” I’ll go to a school counselor or social worker or a psychiatrist or life coach or whatever — “You take care of it.” I’ll buy a book, hopefully this book will fix it. This medicine will fix it. I was so afraid to have to do it because I felt like I had no idea what to do. I felt like I couldn’t do it. This is probably like, nine months into therapy, where I got over myself a little bit and stopped being so much of a brat. I was still very much a problem client, but when I got over that first stage of denial — like, “You don’t know me!” — when I got past that and realized that the only way that this will be successful is if I am an active participant in my recovery, it was devastating. Because I felt like I was admitting defeat. But it was actually me letting go of the thing that was defeating me, which was the belief that somebody else would just say, “You know what, Johnny, sit down in my chair, and I’ll fix you right up like a haircut,” or something. I wanted it to be that way, and it wasn’t.

Rebecca
That’s funny, I can relate to that idea of being a problem client in a certain way, because I always feel like I’m getting this look from therapists, and one therapist did say to me, “Oh, Rebecca and her questions!”

Natalie
Did you leave that therapist?

Rebecca
I did. I think she was threatened by my questions. So it sounds like you could be threatening, or could have been, to some therapists, who were like, “This is my teaching, you must absorb it,” right? I’m just curious about this one thing. In conjunction with the therapy, the text, have there been people you can’t dialogue with anymore, people you’ve had to cut out of your life? I’m always interested in that process — I don’t like to do that in my life, to slice things out. But is that always a necessary part of healing, to be like, “I really have to say no to this,” “I will not engage with this person anymore.” In conjunction with your positive tools, have you had to do that too?

Johnny
Yeah. I’m not talking about Cope Notes, like Cope Notes can serve anybody. But that’s because it’s a machine, right? It can serve lots of people. But I’m a human being, I can’t help make everybody feel better. I told my girlfriend the other day, “One of my favorite parts of being an adult is having the autonomy to get up and leave.” Think about it, if you’re like nine and you feel uncomfortable, what are you going to do, drive home or something? You’re frickin’ stuck there. But if you’re an adult — there was this one time I was at a startup founder’s mixer thing, it was some kind of company event, and this guy was definitely under the influence, and just started being really combative. When he found out I worked in mental health, he had some kind of long history with bad experiences with mental health providers and stuff, and he just got really combative. And I was like, “Hey, I’m not really comfortable having this conversation with you. So I think I’m gonna leave.” And I said that to him, and I was like, “Holy crap, I can just do that?” And then I just walked away. Then he came to talk to me again, a half hour later, and then I just left the function. I just drove home, and I’m like, “Holy crap, how awesome is it that I have the ability to do that?” I think more adults should seize that. Just like, “I’m allowed to go to the bathroom,” at least — just say, “I’m gonna take three minutes, go wash my hands, stretch my neck, and come back in.” We can do whatever the heck we want, we just forget that we can.

Rebecca
And decide if I want to come back.

Natalie
That’s so good.

Rebecca
I really like that. I can do that.

Natalie
But also, it does speak to, as you just named there, the challenge for the nine-year-olds, the seven-year-olds — my kid is seven, Bec has got young kids too. How very aware and conscious we need to be, as adults, in terms of keeping and maintaining and protecting the spaces that they are in because of how little power they have to exit. As an educator, I feel that just listening to those words, that’s a good reminder.

Rebecca
Yeah, there’s such vulnerability. And how much courage — I mean, did it even take you courage in that moment, to leave an adult?

Johnny
Definitely! And I was shocked that I even did it. As I’m walking away, I’m like, “Was I just really rude and mean to that person?” And I had to check myself and be like, “No, I’m just protecting myself, and I don’t feel like having that conversation. I’m allowed to leave.” It’s a free — I know “it’s a free country” is a phrase that people say, but also, you’re an adult. You can leave.

Rebecca
Yeah. I’m gonna try that.

Natalie
Becca, that’s the title of our episode. “You’re an adult.” I love it. Own it.

Rebecca
“And you can leave.”

Johnny
I love that. I’m still learning how to do it. Almost all my friends are older than me. I have a lot of friends in their 30s and 40s and 50s, just because I work in healthcare and the startup space and stuff. And these guys are still telling me like, “Oh, yeah, dude, I’m 44 and still learning how to respond when, you know, a customer complains, or when an employee quits in a blaze of fury,” or whatever. We’re all learning to navigate this in perpetuity. And the more that we share with each other — like, a life hack of just walking away, it seems so obvious, but sharing these experiences gives us more tools in our tool belt.

Rebecca
By the way, what shoes are you wearing today?

Johnny
Boom. I don’t wear shoes in my house.

Rebecca
Oh, nothing yet. But do you know what you might choose?

Johnny
Definitely. I went out earlier. But when I put an outfit together — actually, this was part of my recovery, dude. I struggled with bulimia pretty badly. I did bodybuilding. It’s a very high pressure and potentially toxic culture, where you’re focusing so much on having to look a certain way and lift a certain amount. And I, as a result, struggled with a few different eating disorders for years. My doctor at the time was saying it might help to shift my focus from an aspect of my appearance that I cannot control immediately — like the shape of my nose, or the shape of my left forearm, which is shaped differently than my right forearm, like what the heck am I supposed to do about that? — shifting my focus away from things like that, and towards things like color coordinating an outfit.

Rebecca
That was a tool that you were offered.

Johnny
Oh, dude. Everything in my life is about recovery. These sneakers I collect because of recovery. I care about cars because of recovery. I care about architecture because of recovery. All of the things that I’m passionate about have some tie in to making me feel healthier, even if it doesn’t look that way from the outside.

Natalie
That’s cool. So this morning, when you chose that pair of shoes, that was one of the first steps in your self-care in the day.

Johnny
Oh yeah. When I pick what shirt I’m going to wear and what pants I’m going to wear, I look at my sneaker wall and I say, “Which pair of shoes what I wear that would match.” Even if I don’t wind up wearing shoes that day. I’m not even joking, it makes me feel more balanced and more aligned, and I think way less about my appearance, and all of the little inconsistencies about my body that would normally haunt me, because I’m like, “Dude, I’m color coordinated, baby. I don’t gotta worry about that.”

Natalie
That’s super.

Rebecca
Yeah, I like that. When you’re saying architecture, it would just be for your space and creating, like beauty around you? Is that where you would go with that?

Johnny
Dude — I say dude so much, I’m realizing it now.

Rebecca
You know what, and I feel like from someone else, I would be like, “I don’t like that.” But I really like it coming from you, I’m like, “Dude.”

Natalie
It’s authentic.

Johnny
Architecture is fascinating for me. I’m going to analyze myself here a little bit. I grew up in a really dangerous, unsafe environment, so the idea of being in a beautiful home that’s clean and quiet, and even having these nice tall ceilings, and this nice natural light — that feeling of imagining myself inside of a peaceful place is so tremendously comforting and healing to me. I do this regularly, several weekday mornings during the week. Before I get into any of my work stuff, I’ll watch — I don’t know if you guys have ever seen those house walkthroughs, they make like these 10 minute videos of like, “Oh, this house is for sale.” And it’s these pro-shot nice, clean, pretty houses. I’ll watch one of those and it just zens me out, because I imagine myself in that clean, quiet, beautiful place.

Natalie
That’s so interesting.

Rebecca
I feel like I’m inspired to just find my own routines — what are the different things that I could do in my life? Because sometimes I do feel quite chaotic in my mind. So I’m like, “What are the things I could do?” It’s just fun to hear about — ‘fun’ is maybe not the right word, would ‘fun’ be a word you would bring in?

Johnny
Oh, it’s totally fun. What is more fun than imagining yourself in this beautiful place? They’ll do close-ups on all these little details on the finishes and stuff and you’re just like, “Ooh, what a cool design decision.” You get pulled out of the very real problems that you’re facing in your life, like family emergencies or financial issues, and you’re sucked into this little microcosm of art and design and intention. For some people, it’s watching a cooking video. For some people it’s looking outside and listening to the birds. Everybody has stuff that kind of pulls them out of that chaos and brings them a little bit of peace. For me, for a long time, it looked like death metal shows. There’s nothing peaceful about that for most people, but it was so peaceful and healing for me. So it doesn’t have to look peaceful. It has to feel that way.

Rebecca
Your thing is cooking.

Natalie
Yeah, I really love the actual act of cooking, because I just like being in the kitchen and that’s a place where I can zone out. I don’t tend to chat a lot when I’m in there, I hope that Frankie and Clifford will disappear for a little while and go do other things while I can just chill in there and make something amazing. But I actually do find that if I watch like an Instagram cooking video, I like the look of the ingredients coming together. The process, it’s very much a zen thing. So I really get that. I’m very aware of the time, and because that is my style anyways, but just wanted to make sure that we’ve touched on all the parts of you, Johnny. Again, you reached out to us, which we really appreciate, and we want to make sure that we’ve hit on all aspects of what it is that you do, so that we’re sharing your message and just recognizing the ways that Sister On! and Johnny Crowder connect. Because we saw some connections, which was pretty cool. Do you feel heard, man?

Johnny
100%.

Natalie
Wonderful.

Rebecca
Yeah, this has been really fun to chat. I’ll keep following your work. I noticed you’re in a new country now. Is it Macedonia? Cope Notes has entered a new country?

Johnny
Yeah, so we started an international program two years ago. It’s actually two years ago this month. We expected it to be more like Canada and Mexico, and maybe Australia or something, maybe the UK. And we wound up on the front page of Reddit, from something getting shared a bunch of times, and some local news story that caught a lot of attention. I guess Reddit has a ton of international users, so all these people started signing up from all over the world, and we’re like, “What’s going on?” So we went from one country to — I think by the end of the first year we were in 70 countries. And then in our second year, we went from 70 to — we just hit 95.

Natalie
That’s amazing.

Johnny
Yeah, unreal.

Natalie
Have you had some lost in translation moments where there have been some notes sent that didn’t quite get translated right?

Rebecca
Yeah, translation would be key, right?

Natalie
That’s a big deal.

Johnny
Actually, all of our current subscribers are using the English version of Cope Notes. We will be expanding and making some translated versions. But right now, actually, we’ve been very careful to make sure — it’s part of our oversight panel’s job — like, will this text feel relevant in another culture, or to another demographic? It’s something that we’re constantly measuring and tweaking and improving based on user feedback, because you’re never going to make everybody in the world happy. But you can listen to their feedback and make those adjustments so that the next person in their culture, who received that text message, gets a better version of it.

Rebecca
Yeah, or like, a bad translation could be really upsetting.

Johnny
Yeah, definitely.

Natalie
Or hilarious.

Johnny
Both.

Rebecca
Yeah, it would probably turn into some satire.

Natalie
Johnny, thank you for everything. This was wonderful. We really appreciate you taking the time with us.

Johnny
Yeah, this was a lot of fun. Thank you both.

Rebecca
Thanks for chatting! Have a good rest of your day.

Johnny
Alrighty y’all. See ya.

Rebecca
See ya.