ST23 | Have Faith and You Will Succeed | Anita Soni, Cognition

Don’t miss our latest conversation with Anita Soni, founder of Cognition, on ShopTok! Discover how she helps children overcome cognitive challenges and excel in life. Learn the power of persistence, the importance of focusing on goals, and the role of parents in nurturing independence. Tune in now!

Discussion Topics: Have Faith and You Will Succeed

• Intro
• Customer Acquisition.
• Issues children face.
• Outlier Kids.
• How to make kids outlier. 
• How to increase focus.
• Parents over-control their kids.
• Challenges.
• Success
• Word of mouth. 
• Edtech in today’s world.
• Monetary benefits vs growth. 
• Adults and cognitive skills.

Transcript: Have Faith and You Will Succeed

Amit Ray: Hi everyone, this is Amit once again with another CrazyTok Live. So today we are actually trying a new format, so hopefully, this is going to be interesting to everyone. Many of you know that CrazyTok does podcasts and I think over the course of the last year or so, I personally have probably recorded maybe 70 to 80 episodes.

But they’ve all been done in private, quietly in a room and then we’ve edited those shows and then we’ve brought them out as actual podcasts in audio. So today we are trying something new and this is a format we hope to keep going, which is to do these podcasts live. For today we have our first guest in our new Live format which is Anita Soni and Anita is the founder of Cognition.

This is a company that actually does something interesting and I’m a parent, so something that I think is particularly important for this world, is that she works with students to help enhance their cognitive skills. And she can do that because she’s a trained, I think, psychiatrist, psychologist, something to do with people’s psyche so I think she will explain all of this better, but we are very excited to have this conversation with her. And to try out this new format. So if you like this, please do leave us comments and a thumbs up so that we can do more of this kind of thing. So Anita, thank you so much for joining us today and I definitely massacred your introductions. So perhaps you could tell us a little bit about yourself and your business and what you’re trying to achieve. 

Anita Soni: Hi Amit. Thank you for having me in. Hello everyone hope you all are safe, sound, and happy. I’m a founder of Cognition and have my specialisation in child psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. I’m presently working as a coach, a mentor, and a counsellor, and about cognition. Cognition facilitates knowledge-based learning, which focuses more on enhancing the cognitive skills of the students for a better and brighter future. 

Amit Ray: So that, like I said I really think it’s a really important thing that you’re doing, and obviously I think it’s born out of your background, out of your training and education, but how did you actually get started on this journey?

Anita Soni: The journey started with an intention to support my family and the first few steps were with apprehension, and I had my own doubts about things, was anxious about whether it would go as desired or not, but towards moving through the deeper inner roads. It all went beyond my imagination. 

Amit Ray: I understand the apprehension part because when we started CrazyTok I had a couple of businesses in the past, which did not really succeed. So I totally understand this whole apprehension towards starting something new. And it is impressive.

One does want a higher power to help and stuff, but ultimately one has to take the step ourselves. And so therefore, I think it’s really a very credible thing, to not take up a job or do the traditional kind of thing.

Customer Acquisition

Speaking about downside risk and making money, how did you actually get your first few customers? Because obviously when you started, I’m assuming people didn’t know about you. 

Anita Soni: The first few customers came by word of mouth. And from the near and dear ones, a lot of people joined us along the road.

And being a mentor, a coach, and a counsellor, we started to understand the psychology of our client kids, what made them unique, their character traits and much more. And this actually helped me to get grades for my students beyond imagination. 

Amit Ray: So when you say, your students started performing at North Star levels, so help our audience understand what kind of maybe age groups or what kinds of outcomes are you working toward.

Anita Soni: We have students from different age groups we have a bachelor, and students are from grade 1 to grade 5, and then the middle school, which is 6 to 8, and then the high school, which is 8 to 10. We also train students for the SAT, the IMT exams, and other competitive exams.

Amit Ray: Okay, got it. Which, you’re actually helping students do better in school or, towards their entrance exams and stuff for higher education. 

Anita Soni: Exactly. 

Amit Ray: Okay, great. So this is exactly the kind of thing that I mean my son is 14, so it’s one of those things that we are thinking about now, and I’m sure a lot of people who are watching this now or may watch this video in future or listen to the podcast would probably identify with. And the fact that you’re trying to get people to maybe understand their North Star and then work towards that, I think it seems quite credible.

Issues children face

So tell me more about outlier kids. It sounds very exciting because, of course, I want my kid to be an outlier in the right way. So what is that? And or rather, what are the problems? Maybe we start with that. What are the challenges that you see with children right now, or the kids that you’re working with? And then maybe we can get to outliers. 

Anita Soni: So the challenges faced by students these days are they have attention deficit and they have hyperactivity disorder. Apart from that, they also have mental issues, mental health issues, extreme passivism and low self-confidence as well. 

Amit Ray: I think I identify with some of these particularly not taking risks because everything is so Marks-oriented, especially, I guess especially in India. But even for the kind of children who are trying to prepare for, let’s say, trying to get into Harvard or any major institution. You tend to want to go in a straight line and try to get there versus maybe exploring other things that you might be interested in or actually figuring out your North Star.

Outlier Kids

So I think I understand where you’re coming from. So if this is the kind of thing that is afflicting children. So let’s talk about in that case, what are these outliers or what are you trying to shape people into?

Anita Soni: Outlier kids. As Malcolm Glad Will says in his book Outliers, every individual who does things that go beyond the realm of the ordinary are outlier kid. And the key attributes of outlier kids are they’re highly focused, they’re hardworking, and they are resolute towards the goal. So these are the key attributes of outlier kids.

Amit Ray: Okay, focused, hardworking, and goal-focused. I think that makes sense. It would make outlier adults as well if generally, everybody could be like that. I think that makes a lot of sense. I also like that you distil it into three points because there are so many ways of defining outperformance, but these are, I think three good ways of saying this, that you’re focused, you are hardworking and you’re persistent.

How to make kids outlier kids

So since we are talking about taking kids from maybe not so outlier to trying to make them outlier, how do you actually work with them on this journey?

Anita Soni: Frankly speaking, every kid is an outlier kid, we just need to train them accordingly. So the rules of high-performing or outlier kids, are they highly focused? That’s rule number one. Rule number two is you should not forget rule one. As Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, he says, “Sanskrit saying”.

This means that if you implicitly do one job and that one job alone and all of the jobs are forgotten, all of the things are forgotten and of no importance at all. That individual becomes a brilliant entity. So geniuses are not gone. They actually made, so if a kid, okay, if the kids are moving towards one to relentless goal, all their mind becomes pointed and integrated.

The concentration increases and they become razor-sharp focused. Just if you bring a piece of paper and place it under sunlight, nothing happens, right? But if you bring a lens and adjust the focus on it, the paper starts burning. The same with kids. Kids’ minds should not be distracted by multiple things.

They should focus on one single thing, and it should be brought to one focal point. And. If you see many people who have been very successful, they’re highly focused, except the 0.001% 

How to increase focus

Amit Ray: Which actually does beg the question, which is how do we make this kind of focus actually happen?

Anita Soni: Upbringing has a great impact on how the child is shaped. I hope everyone would’ve heard the famous story of baby elephant syndrome.

Okay, let me illustrate it a baby elephant is tied to a rope or a chain at a very young age and is unable to break free of the constraint. So when the elephant matures, the elephant has grown strong enough, to uproot the trees, and surely break. But the elephant has been conditioned to accept the constraint.

Even if a weak rope is used, the elephant will not attempt to break free, and the constraint is now in the mind of the elephant as opposed to an actual physical constraint. So the elephant is held back, not by the rope, but by its belief system. And we as parents need to help our kids break free of the mindset to help them. Get rid of the innate fears, which make them think otherwise.  

Parents overcontrol their kids

Amit Ray: Okay. You also mentioned, I think, what is, I would say, commonly known as mental health.  So do you see, either the way that we do education is negatively contributing towards that, or do you see this as something to address?

Anita Soni: The mental health of our children must be seen every bit as important as their physical health. Because today’s kids are highly anxious, depressed, and they’re less confident. This happens when they are over-guided, over-restricted, or overcontrolled, and parents reach out. Usually what happens is parents reach out to rescue their kids whenever in pain, or they are in trouble.

With this, the kids move on to either the fight or the flight mode where the brain stops functioning on its own and they seek help for each and everything. I hope all of us have heard the story of the transformation of a pupa into a butterfly, right? Where the continuous effort from the butterfly to come out of its cocoon would actually lead the fluid stored in the body, to convert into wings and hence the body would become lighter and smaller, and the wings would be beautiful and large. So if you don’t want to undergo any struggle, you won’t be able to fly. Struggles actually make us shine. 

Amit Ray: I think that is a really good way of putting it. First of all, I think again as a parent, I highly identify with the over-guided, over-controlled thing. It’s a natural reflex, right? But I agree with you. Being able to let the kid do their own thing and figure it out for themselves, I think is obviously sound advice.

I do like the analogy over here with the butterfly as well. Basically what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. But, the reality is most of us are not doing things like that. And I’m sure there were, and continue to be, challenges or choices that you have to make in running this as a business beyond the good that you’re doing for society. So what are some of the challenges that you faced? How do you overcome them? 

Challenges

Anita Soni: Challenges are a part of an entrepreneurship journey, right? And challenges actually make us better each time. And it is just to turn ourselves into the better version of us. When we started cognition, we could see the admission rate increase as students wanted, as the parents actually wanted instant results. Which is not possible when you’re working on the root cause. 

Amit Ray: So this is interesting. So how did you, I’m just curious, how do you actually handle that? Because we are a very instant gratification society, and this is not an instant gratification problem. So how did you, how do you handle it?

Anita Soni: We divided the tasks into chunks where there were checkpoints at every level. And parents would see an amount of progress every quarter. And parents were really very happy to see the progress little by little but consistently. And this actually manifold, multifold over the years.

Success

Amit Ray: So if you are able to show success, then maybe people are more keen on the program that you have. So are you seeing that kind of success? Are children transforming from maybe not, maybe from the middle of the road to becoming outliers?

Anita Soni: Yes, we have students transforming, we have students where and when we started a journey, we had students from the ADHD background. We have students who have severe attention deficit and concentration issues. And now over the course of time, we can see that the students are studying in the top-notch elite institutions, Ivy League Institutions, Harvard, Stanford, and many others.

Word of mouth

Amit Ray: Wow, that’s pretty good. I suppose that in itself maybe gets you more customers. So if your business is growing, is the reason like just word of mouth or people observing success? 

Anita Soni: Your work actually speaks better than anyone else, right? So when you give a hundred percent to one desired goal, consistently and continuously, it gradually starts showing results. And we got students mainly from word of mouth.

 Amit Ray: Do you ask people to refer other people, incentivize that, referral, or do something like that? 

Anita Soni: No, frankly speaking, we’ve never asked anyone to refer to us, but we have. got quite a lot of students because as I said to you, like when the kids start growing, the parents are really very happy and when the parents are happy, it all, it obviously spreads. 

Edtech in today’s world

 Amit Ray: So the reason I ask this is because you are an ed tech in a way. Maybe not so much tech, but there’s definitely the whole ed part of this and in today’s world, ed tech is very much a topic of discussion and a topic of concern for that matter, because, it was like two, three years back it was, oh wow, this is gonna solve all problems because people are gonna learn, self learn motivationally online, and they’re gonna, they’re gonna take over the stuff that schools are not being able to offer, et cetera, et cetera.

And the reality today, definitely in India, and I would say in many other places, is that maybe they’ve grown bigger than the market that they could actually service in a, in the manner that they probably wanted to. 

And so they obviously have grown through many growth hacks, I would say, including incentivized referrals, obviously outbound sales some, a lot of complaints happen to be around pushing sales and then not being able to get refunds and so on.

So you’ve somehow managed to stay away from this temptation. So I’m curious, did you not get some sort of FOMO about all of these people growing at whatever rates they’re growing? And did you not feel inclined to try some of those tactics?

Monetary benefits vs growth

Anita Soni: Well, as I said, if we were not working on the monetary benefits, we were not mainly money-minded, but yes, we were surely working on. To help the cognition group and help our entity move on to the next level. But yes we have been growing. Yes, Cognition has been growing beyond leaps and bounds and we are extremely happy about it. 

Our basic motive is we identify the kid’s strength and use it to help them excel in their endeavours by counselling and helping them to work on the key areas with checkpoints to test and stress the skills. This helps cognition unleash the true potential of every kid.

Amit Ray: So my question is, in hindsight, what might you have done differently, or maybe just what is some advice you’d give to aspiring entrepreneurs, either in the education space or just in general?

Anita Soni: The only thing we could do differently if we had a chance, is reduce the amount of time we took to reach you. My only advice to every entrepreneur is you have to act smart and act fast. You have to trust your gut be customer-focused and have faith in yourself, which is very important. And the entire world will conspire to make it happen.

Amit Ray: Right? I think it’s good advice. It is a little hard to stick to it, but it’s good to hear it from someone else as well. 

Adults and cognitive skills

How can people use cognitive skills in their professional careers? Going back to the point I was saying earlier, I think even if adults were that focused and resolute, I think it would be good for them. So what are some thoughts you might have on this? 

Anita Soni: The five primary cognitive skills are reading, learning, remembering, and paying attention, which is very important. So I’ve already answered the question, right? You need to be highly focused, focused on one relentless goal.

Amit Ray: Actually there is a lot of conversation and I also tend to write on LinkedIn about these kinds of topics from time to time. One of the things a lot of people have a problem with nowadays is multitasking, right?

Because first of all, you have five different channels with which people are trying to reach you, and then you’re also trying to do two or three things at the same time. Like you’re listening to a call, but you’re making your presentation for tomorrow. And you know that at the back of your mind, you’ve got this chore to do at home and so on.

So I think this is a, it’s quite a struggle for people to kind of address. So how do you stay focused in that kind of environment?

Anita Soni: I think we need to adapt the traditional methods to stay focused. One is we need to meditate because meditation actually calms our mind. It reduces the chattering of your mind. And when you are single-minded, when you’re focused, you can think way a lot better when compared to the chattering of your brain, right?

 Amit Ray: That’s true. I have read this in various forums. Unfortunately, my mind was chattering too much for me to actually implement it, but yes I do agree that this is something that I think a lot of people say and it works for a lot of people. From my side, what I’ve tried doing is time boxing, which works well for me, like just block one hour or two hours and just do one thing.

The knowledge that I have, that time to do that one thing actually helps a lot because even if there are other distractions, I know that this time was already set up. And I will have time for other things after this is done. So that kind of works for me. It’s not as deep as meditation, but it’s a sort of tactical thing, so that way. So thank you very much. One last point is where can people find out more about Cognition or if they want to get in touch or figure out how to work with you. How should they get in touch? 

Anita Soni: People can reach us on Instagram, Facebook or YouTube and they can also reach us via WhatsApp.

Amit Ray: Cool. Anita, thank you very much. I think joining us today was really a nice conversation. It was a pleasure having you with us. Also because it’s our first Talk live, I think it’s a special moment, at least for me. So really appreciate you being our Guinea pig here today and for doing such a great job with this conversation. 

Anita Soni: Thank you, Amit. On the finishing note, I would like to put forward a couple of lines for the budding entrepreneurs. So to every entrepreneur out there, may you build an entity rare, and may you grow leaps and bounds. Break through every record ground, may you rise in, grow tall. Best wishes to you all. Best wishes to you all. 

 Amit Ray: Thank you very much. As a budding entrepreneur, I really appreciate that. So thanks a lot. Very well written as well. Nice chatting. Take care.

Our Guests: Anita Soni

Anita Soni is the founder of Cognition, which makes it easier for students to engage in knowledge-based learning that is more concerned with improving their cognitive abilities for a better and more promising future. She is enthusiastic about developing the skills of the Children’s Workforce, especially those working in Children’s Centres, and early childhood/years provision in the maintained, voluntary and independent sectors. This includes teachers, managers, teaching assistants, Family Support Workers, early years practitioners and childminders. She has used a range of approaches to enable this including training, group supervision and consultation. Anita’s particular interests are early childhood, Children’s Centres, the Key Person approach, personal, social and emotional development and supervision, video interactive guidance (VIG) and video enhanced reflective practice (VERP).