Productivity Smarts 057 - Parents on a Mission with Richard R. Ramos

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Good day everyone. Today I have with me Richard Ramos. Richard Ramos has devoted his career to serving high risk families and youths. To that end, In July of 2003, Ramos founded the Latino Coalition of Community Leaders, LCCL, a national nonprofit whose purpose is to find, fund form and feature nonprofits in marginalized communities meeting the needs of individuals and families. Over his 20 year tenure from July 2003 to July of 2023, the LCCL granted over $1.5 million in grants to over 220 grassroots nonprofits in numerous cities and different states. Since 2007, Ramos has trained thousands of parents and community leaders with his life transforming parent leadership program, Parents on a Mission. Richard, how are you?

Hey, I'm good. Joe. I appreciate you having me on. Thank you.

No problem. I'm really excited I had a chance to go through your book, look at your Website. And I remember our previous conversation about coming on the show, and I felt like this was a topic that's really not talked a lot about on productivity shows when it comes to what is the impact of parenting on a professional's productivity. Because no matter who you are, no matter how high you go, many of us are parents and parenting impacts our work and it impacts who we are. What's made you so successful in doing this?

Well, I think what's made me successful is I've learned a lot. First of all, as a parent and through my own mistakes that I've made of all our children. You know, I have a blended family and we have eight children, and so I call us the Mexican Brady Bunch. And so, first of all, I've learned a lot from that because, you know, we could talk about it later. But blending a family is not easy. It's difficult. There's lots of different ways families form step parenting and blended families. So that that's a whole work in itself. Right. I think also I've learned from other parents that I've worked with and their stories and seen them work with their kids. So between my own personal experience, listening to the experiences of others, and of course, doing a lot of reading and research, those are the things that have just helped me continue to build. I don't believe we should ever stop learning or, you know, think that we've arrived. I've just kept learning and kept building and thankfully we've had a little bit of success.

Excellent. It sounds like you had a lot of success and job well done. So let me ask you this. When it comes to parents on a mission, what you've learned and seen, right? Because you obviously got a lot of hands on real world experience, working with parents, seeing the situations, things that you've gone through yourself, what do you think is poorly understood in this area?

I think what's poorly understood is that we can't take these things for granted. That becoming a parent, being a human being, you know, rather than focusing on the doing, when are we focusing on the being part of human being and not taking for granted our emotional growth, our emotional maturity, our mental capacity, and all the gifts and talents that we inherently have. But what's misunderstood, I think, is that we think that the older we get, that these gifts and talents are just going to grow old with us and mature by age. And that's not true. We grow old automatically, but we do not grow up automatically. And that's a key for anybody. But especially when you become a parent and you start to have children. If you're not continually growing, your children are growing. And sooner or later we don't want our children both in capacity, mental, spiritually, to surpass us in their own emotional maturity. And I think a lot of parents take it for granted. Well, I'm older and so I know more than you and I'm more mature than you are. And I find that that's not true in every case.

Yes, yeah. And that could cause a lot of angst, but it really requires the parents not to rest on their laurels just because you are the parent. You have to keep growing as a parent and leading the way as well. And I truly, truly believe that. So obviously you didn't wake up one day and said, you know, I'm going to focus on the parents. I'm going to create a mission around this. This is something that's a mission on my heart. Like, how did you go from just growing up and your experience of being a kid and seeing your own parents to bringing this on as a mission and seeing that this becomes your purpose?

Yeah, you're right. It didn't happen overnight, that's for sure. I was raised in my own personal story quickly. I was raised in a broken home by a single mother in northeast Los Angeles. Unfortunately, my father, father was an alcoholic and I witnessed a lot of domestic violence both in my home and then violence in the community with gangs and drugs and those kinds of things that were influencing my life as a young boy. Thank God I had athletic ability and a mother that was a disciplinarian. And she didn't put up. Well, she was small, but she didn't put up with a lot of the, you know, stuff that my brother and I and sisters would get involved in. So that I credit that and having faith, spiritual life. I credit those three things to helping me overcome those obstacles that were in a lot of kids lives. Drugs, gangs, violence, domestic violence, divorce, single parent, all of those things that are a bunch of negatives. But as I grew on in my career as a counselor, as an at risk counselor, that's really what prompted me to begin to work with parents. I had kids on my caseload and they had 50 kids and they'd come to me and after I built a relationship with them, they began to trust me and I began to say to them, look, I want to help you, but you got to really, what's going on? You got to tell me what is going on. Why are you destroying your lives? These are kids and gangs, using drugs, dropping out of school, you know, all those Kinds of things. And so when they began to open up to me, this was in the early 90s, I knew as a young parent, I couldn't just believe everything they were telling me. So I decided on my own that I needed to go and talk to their parents.

Right.

And when I. I did that, that's when things changed for me. And I discovered then that I was fighting a losing battle. When I went to their homes and I saw the dysfunction, lack of communication, lack of respect and all that going on, I realized everything I was doing with my caseload, kids in school, in my office, building them up, they were going home, and it was just getting all torn down. And I said to myself, if I really want to help my students, it's going to be me working with mom and dad more than working with them.

Right, Right. You know, it was interesting as you were talking, and I didn't put this as one of my questions, but because I went through your book, it came up in my head, and that was. There was a part of your book, and there's a few stories you have in there where you talk about when a garden is going bad. Do you get onto the flowers or do you get onto the gardener? And that's what that reminded me of, is that the parents are the gardener, the kids are the flowers, and the flowers grow up based on how well they're being tended and gardened.

That's the metaphor I always use in telling my story because of a grandfather who said to me, richard, look at all these gangs and kids getting killed. And why don't you get them together and talk to them? They listen to you. I had a reputation at that time for helping gang members out of gang members out of gangs. And I told them, look, I've done that, and I will always do it, but it's not the best way to handle the problem. What do you mean? He said to me, well, let me put it to you this way. If you were to walk down the street here in your neighborhood, and you looked at all the flowers in the gardens of your neighbors, and you saw that those flowers were dry, wilted, and dying, who would you rather spend time talking to, the flowers or the gardener? And he looked at me and he said, man, I never thought about it that way. And I explained to him what you just said. You see, our kids are just like our flowers. And the problem in the community is everybody wants me to be their gardener.

Right?

And, you know, I said, I'm. I know I'm Mexican, but give me a break. You know, I said, look, I can't do it by myself. I need more gardeners, meaning I need parents. And that's how Parents on a Mission got started. I realized it was working with the gardener. If we're going to have a great flower bed, kids.

So you become the loads and the Home Depot consultant.

Pretty much. And it's a great metaphor because everybody understands that, especially if you have a yard or a garden, you know, if you don't water it and take care of it, somebody needs to water and take care of it and.

Exactly.

I was, you know, really trying to get, and have been all these years getting parents to look, look, our kids are our responsibility.

Yeah, yeah. They're a reflection of us. Well said, well said. So let me ask you this first question as I've gone through your book. How does the concept of mission driven parenting that you talk about in your book, Parents on a Mission, intersect with productivity in individual's lives, both personally and professionally?

Well, from a parent perspective, I think I mentioned, you know, I have eight children of my own and building a blended family is difficult. It's not easy work. But as a parent with a job, how many times do we as parents go to work and our heart is heavy, our mind is not on our work, we can't be as productive because emotionally, mentally, our mind is not there, our heart is not there. Why? Because we love our children. Things are happening at home or at school, they're not doing well or they're giving us a hard time, whatever it might be, if I don't have that inner peace. And this isn't to say that, you know, we don't have hard days or things. I'm not saying that there's times when things happen, but I mean, in general, if we don't have home as a refuge, if we can't come home, and that is our refuge out in the world, hey, we're working. Things happen, people come at us. Maybe it could even be the store doesn't even have to be at work, but when we come home, that we want to be a refuge. But if that's not a refuge, if we are battling at home as well, maybe at work, I don't think we can be as productive both as parents and or employees when we have all this turmoil and trauma going inside our heart, our mind, our spirit.

Yeah. And you know, one of the things I've learned in my own life is that when my body and my world is under stress, creativity leaves the room.

Right.

Because at that point I'm focused on in my Body. My mind is all focused on survival. Right. It's just focused on getting through the day. And if you're listening, you may be in that position where you're thinking, man, my life has been getting through the day. Well, I think you really got to pay attention to what Richard is saying because we're going to talk about some strategies. So what are some of the strategies for effective parenting that could help us as professionals and parents become more productive?

Well, what I'm suggesting to parents is that we have to be in a place where we have a desire to continue to build ourselves to or grow ourselves. I call it emotional maturity. And the first thing to do that I suggest to parents is, you know, you gotta find a time to slow down, that we are living in a fast paced world. Noise in the car, noise at home, noise at work. 247 phone and texts and emails and all, you know, and we, first of all, we got to slow down and listen to the inner conversation with ourselves and my relationship with myself. And the reason that's important is because my relationship with me, out of that flows all my relationships with other people. So that could be five minutes a day. It could be early in the morning, late at night, everybody's different. But it could be a half hour. But what I'm suggesting is there got to be that quiet time. Dad, slow down. A lot of times what I do when I have a drive to do, I just turn off the radio and I just listen to that conversation going on inside my heart and mind. Thinking about my, thinking about me. That's one of the things that I suggest. The second thing is understanding the power of our thought life.

Yeah.

And really, you know, we could get in a deep conversation, which we're not going to do right now. But, but our mind and our thoughts are so powerful. You know, there's that saying, so a thought reap a habit. So a habit reaper character. So a character reap a destiny. But it all starts with thought that your thought life, I'm sorry, lead to your actions, actions, habits, habits, character, character, destiny. So I'm always suggesting to parents, find some things to read to encourage your mind. Psychologists say that we talk to ourselves 50,000 times a day and 80% of it is negative. You know, our self talk. So those kinds of things, understanding those kinds of things take control of the thoughts of my mind. I teach three very simple things. Not easy to say, not easy to do. Yeah, you got to become a thought catcher, a thought changer and a thought replacer. Okay, you can do those things Catch the thoughts that are negative, change the thoughts that are negative, and then replace them with positive affirmations. Things like, no, I am a good dad, no, I am a smart person, no, I am a good contractor, etc. Those kinds of things. Third, we talk about the power of choice, because where do our choices come from? They come from our thoughts. So the power to choose. I'm able to choose how I'm going to react to something. So it's not about what happens to me, it's about what I choose to do about what happens to me. I'm not the victim of circumstances, I am the victim of my choices. And then the last thing, Gerald, is the power to forgive. If we are doing those things. Those four steps of thinking about my thinking, understanding the power of my mind, understanding my choices, and then letting things go and forgiving. That is how I encourage parents. That's a lifestyle. If you're living that lifestyle takes discipline. Don't beat yourself up. Nobody gets it done overnight.

Right.

But all those things are in my book. And if you read that and just follow that, you're going to see a definite growth and change and peace in your life.

Yeah, And I can totally vouch for the philosophy that you just shared there because when I went through some of the challenges I've gone through in life that I've talked about earlier on my podcast, whether with an interview or on a solo podcast that I've done in the series, it was slowing down, it was taking walks, it was examining my thinking, it was changing my thoughts by writing out affirmations by hand. Dr. Joe Dispenza, you probably have heard of him, and he says that our reality is based on our personality. And so the way we are and how we see the world is really becomes our personality. But it's also even the things that we are perceiving that are happening in our. In our sphere of reality is a mirror of our personality. And so if we want our reality, even our kids personalities to change, we have to do what they say on the airlines. Right. If they're in case of emergency, what do you do? You go help your kids or help anybody else first it says put your own mask on first. Then you can help other people. And I truly believe that before you can make a difference in your kid's life, you have to be someone who's constantly learning and growing and really desiring to be your better self and working at it. It takes work.

It takes work. It takes discipline. Yeah, that's great. I love that. That's Right. What they tell us on the airplane, that's a good example.

Every time I get on one, it's like, I know you've heard this before, but I'm going to tell you again and we're going to show you. It drops down and put it on first and then go, your neighbor. It's like, okay, got it. But it's interesting. The airlines don't go, oh, they've heard it before. We're not going to say it. They say it every time.

Hey, repetition is the mother of all learning.

There you go. They say it every time. So let me ask you this now. Could you elaborate on how instilling purpose and values within the family, the way you discuss it in the book, can also translate into, you know, a better life for productivity in not only the parents lives, but also in the kids lives?

Yeah, no, that's right. One of the questions I answer in the book is how do you win the loyalty of your children?

Right.

And there's a few ways, but one of, one of them is to think about legacy. To help your kids understand that they are part of something bigger than themselves and give them. What is our family about? What is the legacy of the Ramos family? Who are we? What do we stand for? And if your kids are a little bit older, that's a really valuable conversation to have with them. And what it does for them, it anchors them in purpose. It gives them a purpose for their life. Behave. The Ramos family, we're about this. You as an individual, here's how you contribute to that. But overall, we are about this. Another exercise I give them in that, as far as establishing purpose is a family mission statement. And the family mission statement, I learned that from Stephen Covey. That's more about daily living and where we're going in the next year, two or three years. Legacy is about, you know, generational.

Right.

And so those two similar, but a little different, focus on those. And so those are two tools that I give to parents. If we, if we're going to give our kids purpose, we need to have an intentional conversation with them about us as a family or a mission for the family, and then how they as an individual fit into developing and achieving the goals. Whether it's legacy, when I'm gone, you know, I want to give my kids and grandkids something that they can carry it on. A mission statement is more about, okay, what am I trying to achieve this week, next month, next year, et cetera.

Exactly.

And that really helps them have a purpose and realize I'm not just Here, existing. I've got a purpose for my life and for my family.

Yeah. And I think one of the other things that you talk about in your book, that's a really good way of having that conversation and beginning to implant that into your kids hearts is through the dinner time.

Yes.

Because you talk about the dinner time and in fact, as I again I tell you, I read through the book and scanned it, but then I listened to it at that super speed to kind of get through the whole book today. And as I was listening to it and I heard that part, I thought, you know, it reminded me of growing up with my parents. I've lost both my mom and dad now, mom recently, dad back in 2006. And they made a big impact on my life. And I am who the person I am because of the example they set and the life they live and, and it really made an impact on me. Lola and Willie Leonard. Right. That really made a big difference on me. But I remember dinner time because I was the youngest of six, so it was eight of us for one. If you didn't make it to dinner time, guess what?

Yeah, you got it. You might not, you may not eat.

Exactly.

But don't say that today. Nowadays you get in trouble.

He did make it out on time. It was like six, seven other people eating. But the other thing that was really interesting was that's where we had some of the best conversations. And we had the blessing that at the time there were no such thing as cell phones.

Right.

Because it really breaks your heart when you go out and you see a family at a dinner table and it's the kids, it's the mom and dad, it's the grandparents, and they're all sitting around to sit down and have dinner and their heads are down as if they were praying, but they're looking at their phone or their digital devices and not talking to anyone. I know that wasn't one of the questions I had for you, but I'd like to introduce that in the conversation.

Well, Gerald, I call it the heads down generation. And it's sad that that is exactly what's going on. And you know, when we were young, when we came home, our parents had us. There was maybe one phone in the house, there was a tv, maybe a radio. But we were cut off from any more communication from our pickers and everything else. Maybe three channels at cbs, NBC and abc, you know, and, and we were, it was limited when you came home. That's the way we grew up. But you know, that's not life Today. And so, yeah, parents really need to think about, you know, what kind of, you know, Facebook is taking away face time. And you can't let that happen. And we're in control, especially if our kids are younger. And. But a lot of times, you know, parents, they can't even control their kids anymore, unfortunately, because when they were younger, they're on that phone and they just keeps going. And I, we encourage parents, you know, limit time. Be an example, put the phone away for dinner time, put the phone away on Sunday. You know, let's just have a conversation, let's play some games together and things like that.

Right. You know, I thought it was interesting too. And again, all these different things that I've listened to and heard and read through your book are coming up. And the other one was where there was a study or an exercise where a teacher asked the kids to basically have some face time.

Right, right.

And you know, and these were not like older kids. These are little kids who should be, you know, able to put down their device, if you will, and like, play with their friends. But many of them, because of the addiction of technology, they just struggled to, like, have a playtime with another kid because they were so used to technology.

They didn't know what to do.

Right.

And some of them just put their head down and didn't socialize with anybody. But the whole point of that email, he sent that to the parents and he said that, he said, this is not on them, mom and dad. This is on me and you. And kind of waking him up, saying, your kids need you. And so he was a sad, you know, kind of revelation he had of how addicted young kids are to their phone. And they don't know how to have that face to face, eyeball to eyeball conversation.

Right, right, right. And it's really challenging when that happens because. And it really has to be addressed at home so that when a kid is brought into school or even just a play date, that they know how to interact. And here's the thing, too, that's really critical for parents to understand, especially if you're a parent of a younger one, is that the technology is wiring their brain. Right. It's permanently wiring their brain. Now it can be changed, but it's like an addiction. It's like taking them off of a drug where their brains get so used to it and it becomes a chemical reaction that their bodies and brains get used to from using the technology.

Yeah, I was reading about that, man. You know, the, the psychology behind it. One of the co guy that first Was with Zuckerberg, he created the like button because he knew that that like button, if somebody like. Or your phone goes off with the ding.

Yeah.

That triggers that dopamine, you know, chemical in our brain. And that's what that like thing and the chime is all about. And that's why people are so addicted. They just cannot avoid once they hear their phone go off. And imagine, like you just said, kids are being programmed like that.

Exactly, exactly. You know, and I have to say this because it, you know, some. It's a little bit of science that I learned about that is that when we get addicted to those kinds of stimuli, not only does our brain produce that dopamine hit. Right. But every cell in your body begins to crave that dopamine hit.

That's right.

Right. And so pretty soon you hear someone else's phone go off and what do you do? You reach for your phone knowing it's not your phone, but your body automatically starts responding to like the Pavlov dogs situation.

Exactly. That's exactly right. And again, we're talking about parents and the influence that you're losing. You don't want to lose that influence. But if we're not careful, if we're not cognizant and we're not intentional, we are losing our children's. Our influence by. They're being influenced by influencers. I want to be the main influence in my life, my children's life, but I'm not going to be if I take it for granted.

Right. By giving them the device that's actually creating this scenario in your homes. So let me ask you a couple of more questions here. How can understanding the psychological impact of parenting approach. Right. Because there's a lot of different parenting approaches, heavy handed, soft handed, and so on. As you explore in your book, influence not only the individual productivity for the parent and habits, but also for the children as well.

Yeah. I talk about the three different styles of parenting in that regard.

Yeah.

The first one we talk about is the authoritarian style, which is really a dictator style. And you don't want to hear from kids. You don't have a culture of dialogue. You just shut up, go away, go to your room. What I say goes, and that's it. And you know, that just shuts kids down. It shames them. And all of those kind of psychological things, don't build them up where they feel confident, they know how to have a conversation, they know how to disagree in an agreeable manner. Things like that. That authoritarian just. It just shuts you down. You Know what we call today? Cancel culture. And you're, we don't want to hear what you got to say, what I say. And that's it. That's the authoritarian style. Then there's the permissive style, which is the exact opposite of that, where everything goes, throw your tantrum, do whatever you want to do, however you feel nothing's wrong, nothing's right. There's no moral absolutes, you know, just, well, what that does that, then that's not teaching a kid how to deal with life.

Right.

You know, it's that mentality. Everybody gets a trophy, you know, the helicopter parent. And kids like that don't know how to fail. They don't know how to deal with hard times. Or somebody who's giving them a hard time might be a teacher, somebody in authority, and they, they don't know how to, how to deal with it. Because of that permissiveness of permissive parents does not see themselves in the role of shaping charact. In my opinion. That's a huge role from mom and dad. We are shaping character. So the third style then is what we call authoritative. And I forget the name of the woman who came up with these three things, styles. I forget her name now. Bauman or something like that. But anyway, authoritative style is a combination of yes, you're disciplinarian and yes, you're shaping character, but you also listen to your kids. You're fair with your kids, you give them a opportunity to explain themselves. You don't shame them, even though you discipline them, but you don't shame them. So you have a healthy balance of both exercising authority, but at the same time, there's a love there, there's an understanding there, there's a fairness and a flexibility there. And that builds kids up where they can begin to discover who they really are and function and have a purpose in life and function at their highest level of performance.

Excellent. Excellent. There was a lot of really good research and insights that you gave in the book that I gained from it. But I love the examples and as you know, you can hear as I'm bringing things up that you're talking about in the book that really made an impact on me that you did some really solid thinking around that. And it was based on experience, it was based on research, it was based on data. And so again, I would recommend this book to everyone that's listening. If you're know of a parent, they really need to get a copy of this. So last question I have is in the book Parents on a Mission, and obviously you Have a course and a bunch of other things that you do around this area. You discuss the significance of fostering resilience and adaptability in children. How are these qualities contributing to, again, not only to the parents, but to the children's productivity and success and as they go into adulthood? Based on your research and finding and focusing on resilience and adaptability, One of.

The things I like to encourage parents in is I talk about preparation for separation and infiltration, not isolation. And I talk about the three different phases of what I call the home field advantage. And the research says that from the ages of 12 to 15, that's when kids begin to get off track. Well, I said, okay, that's true. And that should give us a home field advantage. That's a sports metaphor. As you know, from infant to 12, we have the advantage to prepare our kids. Now, preparation for separation means that I'm not raising my children to live with me. I'm raising my for the rest of their life.

Right?

I'm my children to separate from me and get out in the world and be a productive, contributing citizen in society. So life is a process of separation, separation from the womb, separation from the home, separation in marriage, and ultimately separation and death.

Right.

So it's preparing for separation then what I mean by infiltration and not isolation. I'm not helping my children socially if I'm trying to isolate them from ever. You know, I use the metaphor of getting sick. What changed medicine over years and years ago was when doctors in the medical science began to understand they could not rid the world of all the toxins that are out there. What they discovered is that they could build the immune system. And so what I tell parents is we cannot put our kids in a closet. All of us are being bombarded 24 7, 365 by Music Media, magazines and social media lyrics to music. What can we do? You can inoculate your child with integrity. You are immunizing them with character and honesty and integrity and values so that when they go out into the world with all the toxins are out there, they have a way better chance fighting off those toxins, saying no to gang, no to drugs, no to these things, because you've inoculated them for 12 years with values and integrity and honesty and character. And that's what you can bet on, or you can have some confidence. Rather than isolating our kids, now you have somebody that's infiltrating the darkness, being an influence, being a light out in the world, and showing other kids how to be a Son, how to be a daughter, how to be a student, how to be a good neighbor, all of those things because we. You intentionally built them that way. You coach them, you were their trainer, you were their nurturer. You did all of those things. Why? Because we are sending our kids. And here's a question I always have parents think about. Where do citizens of the community come from? Citizens go to church, they don't come from church. Citizens go to school, they don't come from school. Citizens go to work, they don't come from. From work. Where do they come from? Citizens come from the home. And here's the question. If that's true, and it is true, what kind of citizen are we as parents sending into the society every day, into the neighborhood every day, to the school every day? What kind of citizen are we sending out of our home every day? And when we think about it that way now, the home and the children and society, that family unit is building society and building the community. Mom and dad, the community does not build your family. You with your family are building the community because we are sending out the citizens of that community from our home.

Yes. And again, as you talk, all these things in the book keep coming up. There was an example, I love the home field advantage because I'm a football fan. So that one was really clear. And then training your kids to be good neighbors, you know, where, where the father told the son to go tell the. The neighbor, the elderly wife that I'll be taking out your trash. And he's like, why am I going to do that? Because you. I want to teach you how to be a good neighbor. But then it was the grandparents with the kids and they had the little pot of beans or little beans, and they kind of showed the example of all the different people in the neighborhood. And a few of the people in the neighborhood that represented the beans, they weren't so. Weren't so good people. They had some challenges, right? One alcoholic, and one was this, and one was that. But when the kids learned the backstory and decided they didn't want them in their new community, well, there were other beans that had to come out. Because even though that bean wasn't the most ripe bean or the best bean, it actually helped support some of the others in the group. And they would have lost their entire big chunks of their community and friends if they would have pulled out the other person. And so the lesson for the kids was we have to learn to love everyone, regardless of the situations they're in, because we don't know how they help support and make up the community. I thought it was a beautiful story in the book.

Yeah, it's called the Lima Bean Story, and it's in the book. And it's a wonderful story of teaching young kids why everybody in the community has value, even though, you know, some of us, you know, we've done things maybe that are not so great, but it's kind of like the, you know, it's a wonderful life. Most people know that story.

Yeah.

The angel shows him what would happen to all the other people if just he himself was going to commit suicide. You know, he's. Yeah, he's ready to jump off the bridge. And then they say, hey, let me show you what the world is like without you. That's the point of the same, is that the story that you referenced is called the Lima Bean Story.

Yeah, it was excellent. Again, there's so many stories. There's so many metaphors. There's so much research. The more I listen, the more I went through the book and looked at the concepts, I thought, man, this is a really, really good book that every parent. I wish, as when I was a young parent, I wish it was a book that was written at that time that. And I would have had that insight because it really touched me. And again, I just felt like, wow, this was. This was really, really, really good. So with that being said, where can people learn more about you and find out about your programs and courses and things that you do?

Yeah. Thank you, Joe. I really appreciate your comments. It's very graceful of you. The book's available on Amazon.

Okay.

Or if they'd like a PDF version of it, which is a cheaper version, they can go to my author website, which is Outskirts Press. That's Outskirts Press. All one word. Okay.com forward slash pom. Outskirtspress.com forward slash pom. And there they can get a download for 12 bucks if they would like to have it on their phone. And then also I have a website, parentsonamission.org and they can go there and learn more about the parent leadership program that I do. And I train parent mentors. And then the mentors, I have a curriculum based on the book. And the tours I train, they teach my curriculum, what we've been discussing in prisons, jails, school districts, nonprofits, and churches throughout the country in Guatemala, and this year, I'll also be implementing it in El Salvador and the Philippine Islands.

Excellent. Excellent. Well, it's definitely a needed curriculum and book. Again, wonderful stories, great insights. And Richard Ramos, thank you so much for being on Productivity Smarts and I will definitely put this out there and hopefully we'll get a lot of people to check it out and learn more about you and your programs. And thank you so much again for all that you've done and for being on the show.

My pleasure, Joe. Thank you.

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