Recorded on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 2023 Pinnacle Prize winner Kyle Hollins reflects on Dr. King’s legacy and shares his approach to reducing violence in Kansas City through cultural intervention programs. Kyle’s organization, Lyrik’s Institution, works with teens and young adults to rework destructive thought patterns and redirect mental energy toward productive, creative outlets and opportunities. “The Pinnacle Pod” is hosted by Maurice Watson.

Transcript:

Maurice Watson:

I am Maurice Watson and this is “The Pinnacle Pod”, a monthly podcast where we dive into the stories behind Kansas City’s most dynamic emerging leaders. Each episode celebrates the spirit of the Pinnacle Prize, an award that recognizes young visionaries sparking positive change in our community, from subtle ripples to citywide movements. Join us to listen, learn, and be inspired. I am joined today by one of the newest recipients of the Pinnacle Prize, Kyle Hollins, founder and executive director of Lyrik’s Institution, named after his daughter Kyle formed Lyrik’s Institution in 2019 with the vision to empower at-risk young adults and reduced violence through culturally competent behavior modification and cognitive-based programs by targeting destructive thinking errors and reworking them into productive behaviors. The Institution’s curriculum attacks the root cause of criminal thinking and thinking errors that can lead to destructive paths such as drug use, violence, gang involvement, incarceration and death. Kyle and his team strive to create an environment where young adults can thrive and provide the social and emotional skills needed to navigate life and foster success. Kyle has an affinity for identifying and guiding young adults to their career paths many times within the arts. Lyrik’s Institution also offers several programs, including internships, that create a pathway for these youth to enter the workforce equipped to face challenges. Kyle not only teaches the behavior modification approach, but is a product of it. He is determined to share these methods so community members can learn from his personal journey. Thank you for joining us on the Pinnacle Pod. Kyle, let’s start here. I mentioned your personal journey already. Tell us a bit about you, your background, your experience through the correctional system and what drove you to help today’s youth.

Kyle Hollins:

Thank you for this opportunity. I want to start there. So, I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, predominantly the 64103 area code. At the time it was actually kind of running the murder rate for the nation and I didn’t know anything about it, but that proves to the point why the work that we do is so critical because there’s a lot of people that are just growing up in these adverse realities, not even knowing that they’re in some of the most adverse realities, not only in the city, but also in the nation. And growing up in that area, I got caught up in the thought process of poverty, criminality, and violence. And it just kind of perpetuated as I grew up. I graduated from high school, homeless like that real homeless though, right? Like not I got a cousin house I can go to, or a couple couches I can stay on, on like vacant houses and, and you know, on the streets with like other drug addicts and stuff like that.

Maurice Watson:

How did that happen, by the way?

Kyle Hollins:

My mom wouldn’t having it. She just wasn’t having it. You know, she was a phenomenal woman as far as I can go back. I just remember the smell of like Folgers coffee, you know what I mean? Coming through the house every single day. She had worked at a plant until she had got enough money to go back to school. And when she went back to school, that’s what we had her own kind of way. My dad worked at Jackson County Jail, everything at Jackson County Jail. But what happened was their philosophy of how life was supposed to go and what I was seeing outside didn’t match. And it was more people outside than it was inside. My mom and my dad divorced early on. So I grew up in two different households with two different rules, two different thought processes, and just kind of getting pulled in between the two instead of really trying to lean into what they were saying, I leaned into what the streets were saying and got caught up in that.

Maurice Watson:

So essentially you rebelled against the positive direction your mother wanted you to go, and the consequence was you had to leave home.

Kyle Hollins:

Yeah, I did. And I hear this often. They come up in a good home then, you know, it increases their chances. But if that good home is rooted in trauma, then those chances diminish. And my dad grew up in Odessa, Missouri. It was, right now it’s only 77 black people in the whole 5,500 people, you know. So he’s growing up in the height of racism at that time. And my mom growing up in the inner city had some in-house, things that kind of happened to her that affected the way that she raised me. So growing up with that trauma, she had the right idea, right vision, but with the wrong fuel it kind of generates more trauma. So that’s what it ended up doing.

Maurice Watson:

And was that experience that you had in your personal life, what kind of motivated you or directed you into addressing the sum of the problems that you experienced with today’s youth?

Kyle Hollins:

No, it drove me into my criminality, which later led to my violent ideations. So actually, going to prison is what did the shift. I was introduced to the cognitive behavior design when I went to the state prison. I was sentenced to 10 years in state corrections, I was blessed to be able to do a four-month program that allowed me to go on probation after completing and successfully completing the program. And that’s when I got introduced to cognitive behavior design. Right before I was about to go home. About a week, actually right before I was going home, my fed number changing, I was indicted on conspiracy. After going through that process, I was able to go to more cognitive behavior programs and I just fell in love with the concepts and the modalities. It was for me. And then what I really learned was that it just wasn’t culturally competent. You know, I was kind of designed my, you know, with my mom and my dad coming from their cultural designs kind of shaped me to be able to listen to a lecture. But everybody into my class just wasn’t for it. So I figured out a way to blend the cultural aspects to it with the sciences of it. And poof, we got Lyrik’s.

Maurice Watson:

Kyle, can you explain to us in the simplest way possible, what is cognitive based behavior modification? Because that’s the tool that you believe is really effective in changing people’s lives.

Kyle Hollins:

For sure. So it’s rooted in neuroplasticity and what it is, is the rewriting of neurological pathways. So simplistically, when I’m talking to people, what I say is like young adult or a young person goes through a traumatic instance, seven, eight years old. What they’re gonna do is they’re gonna create a solution to that problem. It may not be the best solution. It may be working off limited information. You know, you’re seven years old, eight years old, 12, 15. It’s just not the best solution. It’s one of them. But when you’re in survival mode, you’re not going back to go look at that solution again. You’re just gonna keep applying that solution over and over and over and over. What cognitive behavior modification does is it goes and it takes a look at that solution and it has a strategic way of uprooting a thought process that kind of cemented into our minds to say, this is really the only way to go about it. So once it starts tilling that ground, it allows the facilitator to be able to plant new solutions to the problem, to increase the objectivity, to see the situation from a different standpoint and apply different tools to get you to another solution. So the goal is for you to be able to self-regulate yourself instead of always needing somebody else to self-regulate you.

Maurice Watson:

Now you’ve talked earlier about the need to adapt that approach in a culturally competent way. Tell us more about that.

Kyle Hollins:

Well, it’s super scientific. It sounds like the people that took some people’s family away from them, it looks like a system that they have to fight against. A lot of times I think that we think that people that come from poverty or this demographic, like we, we see able-bodied people. We see people that that should be able to get it, but because of the rate of trauma and how it impacts. So I hear this all the time, like, well, I’ve been through it too, or I’ve been through struggles too. It’s the rate of the struggle. If you’re going through that struggle five years or every, every now and then within a month, or we’re talking about every single day, 24/7, this person is living this trauma on top of the trauma that they have to continue facing as they live life. They’re just different. You know what I mean? That thought process is different. It needs to be addressed different. So when we are applying the cognitive approach, it has to be through that lens because they’re already are in a heightened state of fear, already thinking that people are coming after them because they live in that area where everybody’s coming after each other. When you’re in survival mode, its survival of the fittest though, right? So people are backstabbing and people are doing all this stuff at a higher rate than it is happening everywhere else. It’s not that it’s not happening everywhere else, it’s just happening so consistently that now I have to build a relationship with you. I have to have a high level of trust. Because I can’t build that much relationship with you that quick for you to give me quality information. So what I have to do is I have to teach them to be able to pull that information out of people without having that high level of trust for them.

Maurice Watson:

So how many students are you reaching and what programs are you offering?

Kyle Hollins:

Last year we had hit 1300 people. So we serve the young adults that come through our program and we do wraparound services for the parents and family members too.

Maurice Watson:

So the 1300 includes not just students, but also their parents. Is there a cutoff in terms of the age of the kids you serve?

Kyle Hollins:

So we serve 13 to 25. That is our target demographic. But when we start having to work with families and wraparound services tend to stretch our range, but we target 13 to 25.

Maurice Watson:

So tell us a little bit about what kind of wraparound services you provide.

Kyle Hollins:

So whether it’s transportation, whether it’s food, Lyrik’s has grand babies. So we’ll do do the baby shower, we’ll provide things for the young adults. We connect families with housing, we connect families with food, we connect families with whatever the need is. That’s part of our assessment, part of the KC Common Good 360 model. And it’s a hub of community-based organizations that are doing phenomenal work in Kansas City. So what I do is we run the assessment, find out what the need is, if we can in-house the need we serve them. But if we can’t, then we go to people that specialize in those areas. One thing that we really truly believe is there’s no way that we can do this work on our own, right? We’re fighting a multi-head dragon, I cut one off, is another one’s gonna grow back. So we just try to do what we’re really, really good at and that’s tilling the ground. Once we build that level of trust, we don’t make them trust the other people. We hold them to the fire, we hold them to the expectation, and that way we can take them through a seamless process. So that’s how we add on those additional supports.

Maurice Watson:

I was just about to ask you, when you reference KC Common Good, what are some of the other organizations with whom you partner to deliver and meet the need of the individuals and families you serve?

Kyle Hollins:

Man, KC Common Good has introduced me to some civic leaders, Camp Choice, CCR, It’s just so many. It’s, it’s a hub. It’s a, it’s a one stop shop if you can really, really tap into it and you can get pretty much everything that you need to cross over into a successful life.

Maurice Watson:

So I’m going to reference some of Kansas City’s crime statistics from Neighborhood Scout. And you’re familiar with these statistics. Many in our audience may not be, but they include that Kansas City is ranked at a 2 in the crime index out of 100. The violent crime rate is 1 in 69 people. Property crime sits at 1 in 23 people. Our city has 91 crimes per square mile, 237% higher than the national average of 27. These numbers are familiar to you, aren’t they? And how are your programs working to address these concerns to reduce violent crime and what do you see as the way forward and what is the impact that you’re seeking to have through your program?

Kyle Hollins:

So it’s the, the, your first statistic about the crime index, right? Being a 2, a lot of times we are like, oh, we’re 2 in the, no, no, no, no, we’re rated a 2. That’s horrible. And a lot of times we’re going to the Chiefs games not knowing that we’re at a two. It’s really a, a serious problem that we really have. And because it’s such a serious problem and it’s happening so rapidly; people are wrapping their minds. They’re learning how to be content with chaos. And that’s the problem. My goal with the Lyrik’s Institution is to expose the chaos. And then, because what we can’t do is evacuate everybody from the issues and the struggles that they have. So we have to teach them how to navigate those. And a lot of times what’s happening is we have to pay $75 an hour, a hundred dollars an hour to go through a therapist for them to tell me how I should be self-regulating. When we actually can teach the people that are going through those struggles, how to do it themselves, being able to see situations objectively or recognizing the tactics that we use to duck accountability or to hold on to what’s safe in our world. If we can expose and crack those things, it’s like asking for cheese on a cheeseburger, right? Like it just comes with cheese. So no, I don’t have to push you and hold you by the neck and drag you into college. I don’t have to grab you by your neck and tell you like, Hey, let’s go talk to the family member that did that thing. Like I don’t have to, you’ll realize like, this is something that needs to be done. My belief is in systemic change. I don’t wanna, I’m not for mentoring. Mentoring is like, I’m gonna tell you what to do right now, then you hope you make some good decisions. I’m saying I wanna change your belief system, right? And if I change your belief system, it’s going to infuse into everything that you do. And then it’ll start, we’ll recreate and restart that social wheel that we really need to do.

Maurice Watson:

You know, one of the things that I find really interesting is that while these statistics are disturbing the people outside of the affected zip codes, there is a real sense in reality that violence and crime tends to be isolated into certain communities and more affluent, suburban, white communities don’t experience the same kind of statistics that we’ve just talked about. Do you think if those communities unaffected by a crime, if they had more skin in the game, there would be a greater sense of urgency around addressing the problem and concern?

Kyle Hollins:

I think you’re a hundred percent correct, right? More skin in the game. I think the issue is the way that they wanna put skin in the game is not the most effective way to put skin in the game sometimes. Of course we want our dollars to go to things that are working, things that are helping, right? But if you’re basing those metrics on metrics in other areas where it’s not as chaotic or not as violent, you’re not going to be able to put skin in the game in. All you’re gonna do is put your thought process on the top of somebody else’s thought process that you really don’t understand fully. Right. You understand violence, you understand drug addiction. You may even understand the opioid crisis, right? But can you really honestly say, I understand the thought process of a person that has the capability of killing somebody because they scratched their car. You know what I mean? If you don’t understand that, then put your skin in the game behind the people that do understand that and do reach those people. A lot of times that’s gonna come from the inner city that’s gonna come from the problem. To fix the problem, you have to pull from the problem. And I love, and I’m, I’m a spiritual person. I love Elijah. Elijah was having the issue. He was like, I’m the only one, right? I’m the only person here. I’m the only one left. There’s there no more righteous people in in the world. Right? And I was like, no, I got a remedy. It’s a bunch of y’all. You know? And that’s how I genuinely, now that I’m like the 360 exposes, there’s a group of people that are from the culture that understand the culture, that have the ability to make great impact, but we don’t have the financial backing that we need to make the strides that we need. The financial backing does come, but it comes with so many restrictions. What I learned is a lot of the people that serve our community are all passion, no paperwork. They just want to help. And there has to be organizations that help develop them to hit the data points, because I’m not saying the data points are invaluable, they really are for the organization and to the people that in philanthropy, a hundred percent. But if you got somebody that says, is an executive director that’s on the ground. So I’m in the classroom, kids call my phone for service for needs. I’m up at two o’clock, three o’clock in the morning, like I’m too close to the ground. And that’s why my recommendations when I sit in front of these board members are gonna be a lot different from executives that are maybe being positioned in their executive role or have such a large employee base that the employees are working with the people. And then, as an executive I’m supposed to be in the offices and building relationships and doing all stuff. Well, I’m doing both.

Maurice Watson:

So your organization is not hierarchical. You’re on the ground.

Kyle Hollins:

I’m forced to be on the ground.

Maurice Watson:

Tell me something about the youth. A lot of them that you work with are drawn to the creative art space. How do you think art can be transformative and can these outlets help lead children away from crime?

Kyle Hollins:

Yeah. So the reason I chose the arts is, first off is because of expression, but the culture of the arts was really big. We partnered with Face KC. What I love about them is they understand the culture of videography, right? And the power and impact that videography has on the culture. So if I have a young adult that wants to shoot music videos and I got another young adult that’s in recording engineering and I have another young adult that’s in marketing and I have another young adult that’s in digital marketing and photography and all of this type of thingsI if I change their thought process, their creative genius will pull from the thought process that they have and their art will start pushing a new narrative. So what I’m believing is, and what I’m holding onto is first let’s figure out a way for you to tell your story that’s hard to tell in a way that we’re not sitting across from each other in a therapeutic way because you’re desensitized to the therapeutic process. So how do you express it? That’s number one. Number two is I’m going to use the creative arch in whatever genre you choose to go through to teach the ability to socialize. Because now what I’m doing is I’m using something that you want to teach you how to deal with a manager, to teach you how to deal with somebody that’s gonna hold you accountable, to teach you affect the processes when you’re not getting your way. How to email and cc somebody on it to make sure that maybe things are getting rolling instead of walking up to them and punching on them. You know? And then I connect them to local businesses to get them to start a contract. Shoemaker Foundation, love Laura.

Maurice Watson:

Laura Curry Sloan.

Kyle Hollins:

She’s wonderful woman. She took a chance on us, her and her board took a chance on us and we built a broadcasting room and got all this photography equipment, videography equipment. And then we told her like, we really had these kids taking these amazing photos when she turned around and did what she contracted our young adults to shoot the gala. So that gave them an opportunity to create earned income strategies. We’re using the arts in a multifaceted way and these kids are coming with a skillset and a passion to go in these fields. Construction is not gonna always be the cure, you know? And I think a lot of times when we talk about like the state funding and federal funding, they fund industrial things that keep America running. That’s not where they’re starting yet. They don’t really understand that part to go in that lane when they’re looking at people on TV making millions and millions of dollars. Guys got gold teeth in their mouth with tattoos on their face making millions of dollars. So they’re, they’re confused. Like, I don’t have to wear a tie anymore. And they’re associating tie with industrial work or blue collar and they’re like, nah, I don’t know. So if we teach ’em, we meet ’em where they’re at, they’re still gonna get the skill sets. So what they do arrive to be a scientist or a doctor or whatever it is they want to be, they at least have the foundational social and emotional skills to be able to thrive in that area. Learn in that area.

Maurice Watson:

What are the goals for a Lyrik’s Institution? Short term and long term.

Kyle Hollins:

I wanna build a center. I wanna build a center that houses everything. I want it to be a place where young adults can go not only to learn and get a pathway to success through whatever internship, whatever real world experience, but a place to hang out. There’s just nowhere for young adults to do that. And I think if we merge, because kids wanna hustle, I’m gonna be honest with you. Like they’re not going to prom because I like, I’m about to go to work, you know, like I’m not going to the basketball game or the football game and if I do, I’m taking candy ’cause I’m going to hustle.

Maurice Watson:

You mean work that generates money?

Kyle Hollins:

Yeah, yeah. That’s what they want. Well, I’m sorry. You know we’re culturally competent.

Maurice Watson:

No, I understand.

Kyle Hollins:

So people here the word hustle, they thinking selling weed or something like that. No, no, no. That’s not it. Our culture terms, the word hustle is like side hustle or anything that generates income. So that’s what they wanna do. So why not have fun doing that? Right? Why? Young adults don’t have a place to do date night. They don’t have these things. So what they’re going to is the plaza, right? And there’s nobody to regulate and structure how they do it. Nobody taught them how to have these social interactions because mama was at work or whatever. And we, you know, we’re only serving like 1.6 like these, these young adults that really cause problems. It’s not all of our youth and they need to be taught, they need to be coached, they don’t need to be outcasts, they just need to be coached. And I want to create a place that does that. And then long term is, of course, a school. I want to create a charter school that realizes that social emotional education is not an elective, it is an actual class that needs to be taken. We need to teach that there’s a generation that has missed that social construct and it should be just as valuable as math.

Maurice Watson:

We are recording today’s podcast on Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday. It’s the federal holiday where we recognize the life and contributions of Dr. King in addressing social justice and equity and the sacrifice he made to provide for equal rights for all and civil rights for all. How has Dr. King inspired or motivated your own commitment to social justice and equity here in Kansas City?

Kyle Hollins:

He is the GOAT. He is my biggest mentor. When I was incarcerated, it was his philosophies that I studied. It was his sermons that I studied. Martin Luther King didn’t attack the body. He attacked the consciousness, the belief system. And that’s exactly what I believe that Lyrik’s Institution does. What I loved about Martin Luther King was his strategy on exposing the reality to put the decision in the hands of the people that were pushing the narrative, what racism was. Because what I realized, even going through incarceration, because people don’t really realize, like in state and federal, it is extremely racist. Like you’re split up by your race. Like the blacks go here, the Mexicans go here, the whites go here, and they control the prisons because they only have to talk to one person instead of 1100 people. Each person has a car. So they divide them, they allow the inmates to be divided by race and then they have one advocate. So I only gotta talk to one person. If all of them do something wrong, then it’s a problem, right? Being able to witness that and see how like that cattle mentality kinda worked. There’s no arguing, there’s no screaming to change that you have to change the thought process of the leader and then the leader, it trickles down. Martin Luther King’s approach, his nonviolent approach, changed the belief system of a lot of people. And I just gravitated to that. Reading his memoirs, he was even some young adults that were in Chicago when went there and they were gang bangers. And this is where my philosophy changed on how do we really like make big impact? He gave him hope. That was his product, was hope. He believed in something so much that he put enough faith in it. And once he started seeing tangible growth in it, it was all he believed in. When he went up to Chicago and he was talking to the young adults, he was like, we we’re living in the highest versions of poverty, right? You want me to go out here and and just stand and be? And what he gave him was, this doesn’t have to be your reality. And let me explain to you how this nonviolent approach actually can push a needle in a direction that nobody else can. He taught them that this is the true war, the battle of the consciousness is the true war. And that is the heartbeat of what Lyrik’s is I’m battling for, for the heart. I’m battling for the belief system that you still have hope you’re not done even though you’ve created a reality to say that this poverty is okay. I understand that, but oh no, no, no. It’s more to it than this. It’s more to it than a one bedroom house with five people living in it. It’s just way, it’s way more to it than this. And I stand on that and I believe it and I try to imply his methodology in everything that I do.

Maurice Watson:

Kyle, How can our listeners connect with you to be supportive of you and the work that you’re doing?

Kyle Hollins:

So they can always visit Lyriksinstitute.com. You can keep up with us, the sciences behind Lyrik’s, the why behind Lyrik’s, the programs that we’re offering, the events that we’re offering. And there’s a whole tab for donating. If you wanna make real change, partner with change, with some people that are really working with a demographic that rarely gets worked with. A lot of times, a lot of programs, they have a lot of great programming, but certain parents bring their kids to Saturday programming, to afterschool programming. We serve kids that mama don’t got time or don’t care about this type of programming, they’re gonna choose food over therapy, right? We serve those young adults. So if you wanna make underneath the grass, the mud and where the worms and stuff live, you wanna make the impact there, that’s Lyrik’s Institution. We only want to work with those young adults because they’re getting left behind.

Maurice Watson:

I’m sure our audience has been inspired to hear your story, your personal story, and the story of Lyrik’s Institution. Thanks so much for joining us and thanks to our audience for listening. And be sure to sign up for our newsletter at pinnacleprizekc.org to continue to listen, learn and be inspired by dynamic emerging leaders in our community.

Hosted By Maurice Watson

Maurice is a recognized community leader and has more than thirty years of experience working in law, social and public policy and board governance as a lawyer, advisor, and board member. He is the co-founder and principal of Credo Philanthropy Advisors.