My Mom Adopted 20 Children!!! 🤯 Find Out Why!

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who do I have here? I have my mom. If you know anything about my story, you know that I am one of 25 children. My mother, as amazing she is, it is a little crazy, but she adopted 20 children. And so I know a lot of you know of my story. And so I'm here in Boise visiting her as we speak. I just wanted to introduce you. Say, what's up, Mom?

Hi.

Yes, yes. Yeah, look, we got someone says, love heart, love your heart. Aw, you're getting love, Mom. How you feel about that? I love it. So, look, you know, I just want to jump on, say hi, introduce you. If you have any questions, please put them in the comments and. But I thought I'd have a quick conversation. These are all to you, by the way, Mom. All the. Everyone's saying, hey, hi. What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? Oh, you get from Lake Mama. Hi, Mom. You gotta love this. Okay, cool. So let's get started. I got her about for 15 minutes and I gotta go run to the airport and head back home and we'll do our live tomorrow with notary coaching. But, you know, look, here is, you know, everybody knows that if you're a student of mine, I teach gratitude, I teach paying it forward. I teach being authentic. I teach, you know, living from the heart. And I don't think there is somebody more representative of living from the heart, someone who's more representative of giving than my mom. So, you know, mom, let's take them back, dude. So, I mean, I guess the first question is, you know, I think everyone is kind of curious, you know, why would you adopt so many children? You know, kind of walk people through the. Through the emotion side of like, what made you, you know, just do what you did so amazingly from the heart. Like, talk about that. I don't know if any of that made sense.

No, I don't think it's a why question. I think it has to do with circumstances that came into our life and who we were as people. I grew up in a very poor family and there were 10 children. We were migrant farm workers. A lot of my life, my early life, we were homeless. Although they didn't call it that in those days. I think they called it camping or something. But I always wanted a large family and I only had two birth kids. I adopted a child from Vietnam as a single parent. And when my husband and I were married, Mark's dad, when we were married, we wanted to adopt one child. That was our plan.

So that so, but let me get more into, like, the why. Right. And because, you know, I always teach my community, you know, everything needs to kind of come from why. If you put the why at the forefront of what you do, everything else kind of falls into place. So why did you want to give back? Why did you want to help so many children? Why did you, like, kind of talk through that?

I can answer that. Why did I want to give back? It was just an innate part of who I was as a person. I adopted the first child from Vietnam because I saw need and I knew that I could love that child. And then we wanted to adopt another child so he wouldn't be the only adopted child. And after that agency started coming to us, to be honest with you, we never applied to adopt another child. The next three kids that came were boat children who needed a place to live, and we took them in. And after that, it was just one child at a time that we found out about, and every single child had a compelling story, and it's something that we were able to do. I know everybody couldn't do that. Everybody has a different kind of gift. But we knew we were able to do that, and we did, but it wasn't something that we set out to do.

Yeah, no. I think it's crazy because I think our journeys are similar, because when I started this notary training program, I didn't really set out to have 10, 20,000 students. I just set out to help one person. And, you know, one person became two, two became 10. And now the amazing loan signing system community's here. And so it's crazy how your story and my story kind of align from that standpoint of, like, if you just operate from wanting to do more give back, the universe almost puts more opportunity in front of you. And all these children that you. You joined, I mean, you helped. It's just incredible. You know, what I. What I will say though is, is, you know, you would think you'd stop after, like, child number 10, right? You're like, oh, you're like, look, I adopted enough. I've given back to the world. And so you're going from 10 to 11 to 12.

But see, if you think about it, if there are 10 kids and you find one more that needs a home, what's the difference between 10 and 11?

Well, I think the difference goes from, like, 10 to 25. So like, 10 to 11, 11 to 12. I get it.

One child at a time.

One child at a time. Absol. Incredible. You know, I think that, you know, I think the community knows how much I do my best to give back and it be. And it's because of what you've done for all of us. I'm gonna start crying. But you guys know this is what I do. And so, you know, it's just so much that you've instilled in us as far as being selfless, that I do my best to try to try to, you know, give that to the notary community. Because I think being selfless, mom, there's a lot of business attributes to being selfless. I think a lot of people do business. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna get a little bit deeper than that, because I think ethics. Correct. But I think that when you realize business is really about serving the consumer, the customer, your client, it's bigger than you, is really, I think, the parallel between what you've instilled in me that I've naturally instilled in my business practices, which I now teach. Right. And because business is bigger than the transaction that I have between me and my client, business is bigger than, you know, I'm making money from you. How can I really help you and serve you? And you've instilled that through me, and it just happened to bleed into my business, which is crazy. And so, you know, it's because of my mom and why I teach the way I do. And like I said, you know, your selflessness of raising so many others. And, you know, my mom could have had an amazing life with vacations all over the world, but she chose to spend her money and her time and resources raising so many children. And so thank you for that, Mom. And I know our whole family's full of gratitude, and so. Yes. And so. But I. Like I said, I think there's parallels in what you've. What I've watched. Not necessarily what you've said, what I've watched you do.

Behavior is always more important than words.

That's right. And so. That's right. And so what I've watched you do, being selfless is how I've built my businesses. And I never really shared that with you or anybody, frankly, but it is the idea that, you know, you give so without wanting to receive. And that's how I build businesses. Right. I build a business. Not trying to, like, I only serve you for money. I serve you to give you a good product, and then in turn, the money and the clients come. And so it's watching your selflessness raise so many children that has created a selfless business person that I am, you know, because I always Teach my students that don't chase the money, chase the relationship, chase the product, chase serving your clients.

And everybody has different gifts.

That's right. That's right. That's exactly right. So that looks like there's a few questions on here, Mom. Let's answer some of them. So we got Zoe, Mama Wills. What's up? What's up? We have bring your mom to summer camp. Well, there's some inside knowledge. Mom will be at conferences here. What. What the question is, should we get mom on stage? Let's go. All right, let's see. Okay. Dee Dee. What up, Dee Dee? Thank you, Mama Wills, for all you did for your kids. You have a heart of gold. I thought I saw a question up here. Mark Prieto. Without his parents, Mark might not be. Have. Be here. Change all of our lives. Thank you so much, man. I mean, honestly, it's. It's, you know, I always try to teach you students that I, you know, not to get hokey. But, you know, I do believe everything happens for a reason. And my journey with her and my whole adoption and foster care has led me to be the business person I am today and hopefully a pretty good mentor and coach. But I'm more proud of the business person that I am today that anything and without you, mom and dad. My dad's outside with Seoul right now. Everyone where dad is. Okay, so I saw a question. Sweet mother, we're not going to forget you. That's beautiful. Okay. So, Lisette. Mom, how was Mark as a kid? Okay, mom, be nice. Okay.

Mark was kind of a miniature version of who he is now. He was always kind of wild and crazy, but he was one of our easiest kids, believe it or not.

I love another. Dee Dee, how was it raising Mark? Yeah, I appreciate you saying that, Mom. I mean, I mean, I would like to think I'm just kind of a continuation of who I was growing up. I definitely was all over the place. I probably wasn't the easiest child to wrangle in.

Actually, when we adopted Mark, he was the saddest child I've ever, ever seen. He had been traveled a path that was very, very difficult, but we gave him the space. And I know he felt like he was buried in this sea of children, but we were laser focused on him and his needs, and we gave him the suppose. The space to figure out that in this crazy family, they didn't send kids away. They adopted them and brought more in. So pretty soon he felt like he belonged.

Yeah, it was. It was journey, man. You know, to my Mom's point. And there's a couple great questions coming in, but to my mom's, to that question, excuse me, is, you know, I got this space to be who I needed to become, even though it was difficult finding myself amongst so many children. But honestly, you know, I think I've said this at conference around my story. It's like it's because I had to find my way through 18, 17 children to kind of find who I was. It's kind of led me to the business person I am today. So without that need to navigate, you know, 17 different personalities and 17 different stories and has all led to part of my journey on who I am and who I continue to be. I'm a work in progress man, you know, and so, you know, I am definitely. Okay, we've got a couple other questions. I think I saw some good ones. I thought this one was beautiful. By the way, someone asked. Thank you, Mark. You've been a true blessing. Changed my whole life. It's this lady. Changed my whole life. Okay, so Mandrabu. Mom, how has Mark changed your life? Oh, that's a good question.

Mark has validated us as parents and that's always good because parents don't always get that from their kids. And he's made us so proud of who he is. And I don't mean successful business person. I mean as a human being that. Because I think kindness and love are the things that should drive us in our life. And they do drive him. He's very genuine.

I'm gonna start crying. Okay, thank you. Everyone's making me cry, man. That's a great question. Someone else asked a good question. You did an excellent job for purpose driven. Okay, this is a good one, Murpha. Murph. I call you Murph. How did you manage day to day tasks with so many kids with so much on your plate? Before you answer that, mom, you can think about that. So my mom not only was a mother to now what we. What I will say so you guys understand is we have 25 total children. I always like to say we adopted in waves. I don't know if my mom wants me to say that, but there's kind of a first wave and second wave. So the point I'm making to them is it wasn't necessarily 25 children at the house at one time.

Oh no. Usually 10 or 12.

Yeah, so I was gonna say that. So before you answer his question, I just wanted people to get a little backdrop of while they adopted 20. 20 children had five biological. It wasn't all 25 at one time in a household. Now, one would argue 10, 12, 15 were a lot. But I don't want to, I want to make sure it's known that not all 25 were in the house at one time. So with that being said, mom, someone asked, how did you manage day to day tasks? Oh, next thing I want to forget, I don't want to forget. To make my mom even more amazing. And my dad is, my mom worked a full time job, also worked nights, you know, whether she was a nurse or teaching at National, National Enchapment. So not only did she raise, you know, 25 children and had 10, 15 at home at any one given time, she was also working two jobs. So with all that being said, somebody asked, how did you manage your day to day tasks with so many kids with so much on your plate?

The answer was organization. And we had to learn as we went along, just like anybody does when they're traveling a path in life. And I remember talking with, when we, we got, we had three kids and we got three boat children right at the beginning who were, were boat children. And I remember going to work and saying, you know, I want to be a chocolate chip mommy, meaning that, you know, you're baking the cookies when they come home from school and, and feeling really frustrated about that. And she said, patty, I, you know, you just have to organize things. So everybody's working together. And so we did, we broke up every job in the house. Everybody had a job that lasted about 15 minutes. After school, after dinner, we started this thing where every single person went into our kitchen. I mean, there'd be 12 people in our kitchen cleaning. Somebody would be microwaving, I mean, windexing the front of the oven and somebody would be loading the dishwasher. Remember that?

Oh, man.

Because everybody was doing it. Whenever we got a new child, everybody did it. I mean, there was no question about it. And to be honest with you, we're raising a granddaughter now. Blessing. And she's 10 times harder than any of our other kids ever.

Yeah. So I mean, to add to my mom's great question by the way is, you know, she, we would all have chores and we'd all have responsibilities. And so like after dinner, like she just said, someone would clean the kitchen island, someone would clean the dishes, someone would vacuum the floor, someone would.

It was all done.

All done. And so we would get to, we would just get to work. So yeah, that was, that's a great question, by the way.

You know, I would put these cookie trays out the night before and put English muffins on with a slab of cheese, and I'd cover them up with Saran Wrap, and we'd put them in the refrigerator. And then in the morning, I could pop them in the broiler and put glasses of juice out. And so everybody had breakfast. So I could be a chocolate chip bobby.

Yeah. No, there was definitely a lot of assembly lines at our house growing up. I mean, what's crazy is, you know, she took in a lot of children who. I don't know how to say this, but were kind of not troubled. I was actually gonna get troubled. Yes. But I was gonna go kind of the children who were lost in the system. So it was the second wave of kids. The second wave of kids. And so, you know, we'd get. My brothers and sisters would be 8, 9, 10, 11 when they. When they got adopted into our family.

Maybe been in 10 foster homes.

Right. And so the fact that I was in a few foster homes was really kind of small compared to some of the kids in our. In our family who were going through 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. So it's another reason I'm so dedicated to the foster care system is I've seen the power of it and the ability to really help shape a child's life. And I wouldn't be where I am without the foster care system or Mama Will's right here. I see Papa Wells outside fishing with Sol right now. Yes. Okay, so any more questions, please ask anything that says mom. Some of you guys may not know, I am one of 25 children. My mom right here adopted 20 children. 21. And so I am one of 21 adopted children. And any questions, please ask and see if there's any other questions.

See, at the conference.

Yeah, mom is going to be a conference. Murphy. Wow. You're a superwoman. Thank you so much for answering my question. You have so much wisdom to share. She does. And okay, so some. A couple people said, what's the secret?

Facing life with joy.

Oh, that's good. Oh, Tammy has a great question. This is a great question, by the way. So Tammy says, mama Wills, how did you handle so many personalities and temperaments at once? Wow, Great question. I was an angel, by the way.

Some days were harder than others. We'll just leave it at that.

Yeah, yeah, it's a good question, you know, and if I can jump in there. And like I was telling earlier in this conversation, is, like, part of me. I had to learn how to operate different temperaments and personalities, you know, and that of being one of. I think the. Max. I think there was, like, 14 kids at the house. If I had to think, okay, yeah, Max. So I was one of 14 at kind of the peak of the children at the house. Yes. All older. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I called them waves. Everyone has had different age groups. Yeah. But, yeah, I had to learn how to navigate personalities. And now that I'm kind of, like, having this conversation live with everybody, I'm kind of realizing that that's kind of how I've learned how to, like, navigate business. Right. And it's. Yes. Learning how to navigate different personalities and kind of getting what you need. But see, in our family, to really get what you needed was to learn how to be a team player. Being autocratic didn't really work with 10 children or 10 brothers and sisters who all had their unique backgrounds. And so there was really a method to learning how to negotiate. And, you know. You know, we grew up kind of in the rural area, so we'd have, like, three channels to watch on tv, so we didn't have any cable, and so we really had to, like, negotiate. Like. No, we're watching Saved by the Bell. No, we're not. And so just learn. It was all interesting. I love doing this Q and A with everybody. Gnbs, a group in foster care. Oh, I love it. Foster care in a house. Our past doesn't define us. It's what we do today that makes it matter. This is wonderful news. Okay, anybody other questions before I let her go? Oh. So someone asked, is everyone still close? This is a great question.

No, you know, it really. It's just like, in any family, you have some families where everybody's close and some families are not. And there. There are different groups of kids who are close to each other.

Yeah. You know, it's funny, people. I get this question from, like, friends, and one. I always say there's. It's like a high school. There's cliques. And so, you know, like, when you go to, like, a high school, you got, like, the jocks, you got the cheerleaders, and you got the band members. And so what we've. Our group is kind of like a clique, and so there's three different cliques. There's another member of the Wills family, so there's different members of cliques. And so I think that's kind of the answer, like, how everybody got along.

And that happens even in birth families.

Yeah.

As far as navigating personalities, that happens in birth families that maybe only have three kids.

Yes. Okay, we have another question. That was a great question. These are great questions, by the way. And so to end the question from gnmbs is we're close. I think you guys see on my Instagram store, the clicks are kind of close, is my point. So, like Lisa Ann, Kim Lee, super close. Me and Claire, super close. And so, yes, everyone tends to be kind of close too. And it usually kind of ended up being their age groups more than anything else. But, yeah, so some of us are close individually. Her biological daughter Shelly and I were super duper close growing up, and so, yes, it was really cool. Okay. You have you. Your. Your ways of have time when you can get all together for seasons. I don't really think we all get together this as much as we'd like to, because geographically, maybe 12 or 13.

It was the most that I've had together. I have some pictures on Facebook.

Yeah, yeah. But so it's just difficult to get, you know, 25 children from all different walks of life. Needless to say, some children, kind of brothers is what I should call them, or sisters, kind of migrate and put their anchor down and, you know, this state or whatever. So to really get everyone together is usually not super doable.

Kids in New Mexico, Arizona, Wisconsin, Wisconsin, New York.

No, I didn't know all that, actually. I didn't even know. That's a whole mug. Well, okay. This is a great question from Ale. Ale. Hey, Mama Wills. Hi. What was your source of joy? No, that's a good question.

I have a very strong faith in God, and that's what drives me.

Love it. Yes. Very, very, very faithful woman here. I think her question was, though, how about. I'll re. Ask your question that I'm curious about is, you know, what brings you happiness? I mean, is it seeing your children raise and be successful? I think she was asking, like, what brings you joy?

Like, you know, genuine giving to other people, which is what I think we were put on this earth for. Does give you joy. It really does.

Yeah. Now you know where I get it from, right? You know, it's funny. So one of my favorite sayings. And so I have so many things I want to say with that comment. Right. And now you guys know where I talk about giving so much, where it comes from. And again, it's not like something my mom or dad really spoke of. It's more witnessing it that drove me to really have this belief of giving is the best way of receiving. And so, you know, someone always. So, you know, we're all. I coach business owners Right. And so a lot of the community watching this right now are amazing business owners. And so someone the other day told me that, you know, the person who says money can't buy happiness hasn't given enough away. I think that's beautiful. And I think goes. And because I think everyone knows here I'm a pretty prominent donor to promises to get a foster care community. And I think my point is, I think, you know, I think a lot of times when people see money as evil, or some people see money as something you shouldn't really try to gravitate to, I see money as a tool. I see as money as an opportunity to help others. I see money as a way to provide for your family and give to other people who also may need it.

And so that's not the only way to give.

That's right. And well, the way you gave is, you know, and agreed. And so you gave your time, you gave your life to giving. I'm gonna start crying right now. And so that was the best example I could have saw. I'm crying right now from my mom. But now I think everybody knows where I get this true sense of passion and giving. Like, everybody knows that I teach that you got to learn how to give because giving is the best way of receiving. And I say that from a business standpoint, right from when you learn that, like business is about giving your all, giving everything you have to your client is. That's where I think that's, you know, I'm a business coach first and foremost, Mom. And so I think when people realize that business is about really giving everything you have, serving, and that's what you've done. Like you've served. I guess you're a very religious woman, but you've also served all of us children. And I think that giving gives you so much joy. Gives me so much joy. Giving all my knowledge away and trying to help all these students give is coming from this lady. So that being said, so my tears would go my face. I got an airplane to catch, but if you go to conference, I got tears coming in my eyes. Hope you guys got a little. Get to know me a little bit more. Get to know my mom for the first time. She will be at conference. So we got to encourage all of us, everyone at conference, to get her on stage. But I want to say that mom. Love you, love everybody following. Thank you so much. And I will see you guys on tomorrow's live, 12 o' clock Pacific. Bye. You want to say anything on the way out?

Mommy up.

Bye.