“We want to create a resilient youth; we just happen to use skateboarding.”
Build Then Bless has two main goals: to improve the world one micro-interaction at a time, and to highlight businesses trying to do the same. It’d be tough to find another business in Utah who’s more dialed in on “micro-interactions” than Thread Wallets.
Adrie and Abby, your co-authors, got together with Colby Bauer, co-owner of Thread Wallets and the Carry On Foundation, to talk about how businesses don’t just line the pockets of executives—they can be the perfect platform to actually make a difference.
First, What Does Carry On Do? And What’s the Thread Wallets Connection?
Colby and McKenzie Bauer started Thread Wallets nearly a decade ago. They always knew they wanted to use their business to do good but weren’t sure what exactly that would look like. And while they supported different causes along the way, Colby stressed that they wanted to “emphasize one thing we’re really passionate about … because that’s where we’re actually gonna have impact.”
Born from a campaign at Thread Wallets during the pandemic (more on that later), Carry On teaches kids mental health coping mechanisms and resiliency through skateboarding. Fast forward to 2024, and the Carry On Foundation just opened its first official location in Provo, Utah.
If the idea of skateboarding elicits images of helmet-less teenage boys doing kickflips by a sign that says “No Skateboarding” in a strip mall, you’re not alone. But action sports provide the perfect environment for kids to learn figuratively and literally how to face obstacles, stare down stress-inducing situations, fall down sometimes (okay, fall a lot), and always get back up.
Colby isn’t just changing the stigma around skateboarding. He’s fostering a new generation of kids with the vocabulary to articulate their mental obstacles and the bravery to carry on—no matter what.
Carry On Has Been 60 Years in Progress
While Carry On is technically only a few years old, Colby said it’s been “60 years in progress.” Colby’s mom, Cindy, has struggled with alcohol addiction for most of her life. Like so many people who battle substance use, it started with intensely negative childhood experiences. In 2020, she lost her job and relapsed, getting to a point she describes as between either “death or jail.”
After being seriously injured while living on the streets in Salt Lake City, she moved in with the Bauers. She checked herself into rehab once healed and has been sober since. The emotional toil this induced while so many other things were happening in his personal life—seeing someone he loved suffer, growing a business, having a new baby—caused the anxiety that Colby had been managing for the last 12 years to resurface along with panic attacks.
How These Experiences Helped Create Carry On
While he did get professional help, Colby also started skateboarding almost every night. The progression he felt from the sport starkly contrasted the “stagnation” he was feeling in the rest of his life.
All of these experiences started to come together: he reflected on his mom’s past and what led to her addiction, how it impacted his own mental health, what he was doing to try and work through it all, and how Thread Wallets could get involved.
What if he could get to people before the addiction started? How big of an impact could he have if he targeted the root problems instead of just the outcomes? Skateboarding had become a creative outlet, a “meditation in motion” that helped Colby build mental resilience. Maybe teaching kids how to build the same resilience through action sports could break the direct link between mental health struggles and substance use.
The data backs Colby up—studies show that kids who participate in sports have higher mental resilience to help them through “adverse childhood experiences,” like what Colby’s mom experienced.
Thread Wallets Gave Carry On the Platform It Needed
So, where does Thread Wallets come into play? During the pandemic, the Bauers used their Thread Wallet platform to highlight the stories of a few of their brand ambassadors—people who overcame adversity and embodied their core values. The positive feedback from these videos helped Colby realize they could use their very own Thread platform instead of building something separate.
Colby needed “[his] mom’s childhood and all the ups and downs … some soul searching and maybe some trial and trauma” to decide what kind of impact Thread Wallets and their platform were going to make. And so, Carry On was created.
Real Life Success Stories From Carry On Kids
Part of what makes Carry On so unique is the science-backed approach. It’s so much more than dropping your kid off for their weekly sports practice.
The Carry On Curriculum
Carry On Impact Director Cole Parkinson and Program Director Dave Lowery built a child development and mental resilience curriculum based on years of experience and current research. Cole was uniquely situated to bring Colby’s vision to life with a background in sports psychology, whereas Dave brought years of hands-on experience as a coach and high school teacher.
The Carry On curriculum is driven by four principles, or the “guiding Cs”: Confidence, Competence, Connection, and Character. Distilled into “kid language,” the coaches are equipped with terms like “red mindset” and “positive talk” to teach the kids how to process their reactions to stressful situations.
In addition, it’s customary for the kids and coaches to clap when someone falls or doesn’t stick a perfect landing (and with the earliest participants being four years old, this happens pretty frequently). Carry On coaches don’t remove obstacles for the kids; they teach them how to face anything and learn from their failures and successes alike.
Carry On’s Numbers Don’t Lie
Colby said it best: “Our coaching philosophy includes that we’re not focused on the outcomes, but we’re more focused on the process. And as context, we don’t really care if the kid lands the kickflip, necessarily. We care about that kid as a human being, and how they’re able to overcome their fears and anxieties.”
Here’s an idea of how successful this curriculum has been:
- 83% of parents agree that resilience skills taught were used outside of skateboarding
- 100% of parents agree students had an increase in confidence
- 93% of parents agree that students were more aware of negative thought patterns
Stories From Real Carry On Kids
Colby has seen the firsthand effects of Carry On’s mission with his own daughters. He shared that his oldest daughter, Rae, talked herself through one of her first acting classes. She recognized that she was feeling paralyzed by fear and anxiety when expected to stand in front of the whole class. She told Colby that she got out of the “red mindset” with positive talk and a power stance. All the coping mechanisms she had learned on her skateboard at Carry On got her through a pivotal moment.
Colby says it feels like kids’ lives are changing daily at Carry On. He also shared another rather poignant example with us. One child who participated at Carry On had been struggling with suicidal ideation. Unable to find relief through traditional therapy or organized sports, they signed up for skateboarding classes. Not only did they love skateboarding and develop a hobby, but their mental health improved significantly. Their mom feels like Carry On “saved her kid’s life.”
Roots Vs. Branches: How Carry On Is Getting to the Heart of Issues
A Personal Story from Abby
What stuck out to Adrie and me most was Colby’s decision to go deeper than rehabilitation and focus more on prevention. My grandpa died of cirrhosis of the liver because he started drinking as a kid. He battled an alcohol addiction his whole life, bouncing back and forth between living behind bars and on the streets right in front of them.
I never met him; my dad hardly knew him. Ironically, my dad was driving down the street on a very hot summer day and noticed a man wearing a fur winter coat riding a skateboard. It was his dad. He was homeless and didn’t remember his own son.
I wonder how a program like Carry On could have changed my family’s life. My grandma might not have had to raise two kids as a single mother; I might have known my grandpa and had a relationship with him. My uncle could have also avoided a lifelong alcohol addiction that made my only memories of him the times he would call my dad during a binge drinking episode.
It’s sad—it makes me sad to write about it. And that’s what makes Carry On so impactful. It’s not an “end all be all” solution to the endless problems that negatively affect people’s lives. But it does give people the tools they need to work through those problems and come out on the other side a little stronger.
“Dreaming and Scheming”: Is the Carry On Program Going to Open Near You Soon?
Colby has no shortage of dreams and schemes (as he put it) for Carry On’s future. We were stunned by the extent to which he’s thought about the possibilities for the program. Without counting his chickens before they hatch, here’s a fun sneak peek into what might be coming.
First, Colby wants to equip Carry On parents with the same vocabulary as the kids. This way, everything they’re teaching students can be reinforced at home. He promises that there is “so much ahead” to support families with their curriculum.
They also want to expand beyond Utah and make the curriculum available throughout the U.S. Coaches would be Carry On-certified and run chapters in their city. There are already so many passionate skateboarding coaches out there who know how much resiliency can be developed through action sports. These are the people he sees driving the mission forward and extending the impact.
And if we want to go really far into the future, Colby sees a possibility for camps at a Carry On campus. Think sleepaway camp with a day full of high-intensity sports, facing your fears with supportive peers, learning how much you’re capable of, and treating yourself with a nice s’more by the fire at the end of the day. Sign us up!
Carry On Shows Us That Businesses Can Do Good on a Major Scale
If you can’t already tell, we love Carry On and its mission. Personally, I’ve always been terrified of skateboarding but it sounds like I just needed a program like this to build my confidence! (This is Abby again; Adrie is probably a Tony Hawk-level skater.)
We wanted to highlight Carry On for so many reasons but especially because it started with a business: Thread Wallets. Without the platform that Thread Wallets already built, Carry On would have had to start from scratch. If you own a business or can influence a business to do good, do it. There are people everywhere who could benefit from your involvement.
If you want to learn more about Carry On, skate through their website and maybe even think about donating.
And if you’re looking for a connection between business and doing good, Build Then Bless can help. See how we’re doing it!
