Children Need to be Taught Life Skills

Episode 52
August 23, 2022
Children Need to be Taught Life Skills

Vinny Capone is the managing director of Overcoming Obstacles, a nonprofit organization that provides free resources to educators so they can teach their students essential life skills.  To date, over 300,000 educators from around the world have taught Overcoming Obstacles life skills lessons to more than 70 million students.

Here are some important moments with Vinny from the podcast: 

At 7:16 Vinny shares several of the ways Overcoming Obstacles makes a difference.

 At 10:37 What have you done to make it easier for teachers to use the program?

At 17:35 Can you share some examples of where the program has made a big difference?

Here are some ways to follow and contact Vinny and Overcoming Obstacles:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OvercomingObstaclesLifeSkills

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/overcomingobstacles

Website: https://www.overcomingobstacles.org

Important information from Homeowners Be Aware:

Here are ways you can follow us on-line:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/homeownersbeaware/

Website: https://homeownersbeaware.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-siegal/

If you'd like to reach me for any reason, here's the link to my contact form:

https://homeownersbeaware.com/contact

Here's the link to the trailer for the documentary film I'm making: Built to Last: Buyer Beware.

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Transcript

Vinny Capone: 0:00

The goal is to teach these students life skills. Right? How do you listen? How do you communicate effectively? How do you solve problems or manage your emotions? One of the great benefits of that is when, when a school does, does implement it is they see a really positive impact on the school environment. Students are getting along better. They're respecting their teachers more. They're more excited to come to class. Attendance rates go up, graduation rates go up.

George Siegal: 0:25

I'm George Siegal. And this is the Tell Us How to Make It Better podcast. Every week, we introduce you to people who are working on real world problems and providing actual solutions. Tell Us How to Make It Better is partnering with The Readiness Lab, the home for podcasts, webinars, and training in the field of emergency and disaster services. Hi everybody. Thank you so much for joining me for our 52nd episode of the Tell Us How to Make It Better podcast. We have now done one a week for the past year, and thanks to everybody who has tuned in. If you've enjoyed it, I would love it if you would become a subscriber, leave a review, share it with friends. Anything you can do to help us grow the podcast is very much welcomed. Now, every week on this podcast, I try to introduce you to somebody who has identified a problem and is doing something to make it better. Well, there's a huge problem. That's out there. And if you're a parent, you probably know about it. If not, you're certainly gonna know about it after today. And that is, are your children learning life skills in particular? Are they learning life skills in school? My guest today is Vinny Capone. He's the managing director of overcoming obstacles, a nonprofit organization that provides free resources to educators so they can teach their students essential life skills to date. Over 300,000 educators from around the world have taught overcoming obstacles, life skills lessons to more than 70 million students. Wow. Vinny, Hey, thanks for coming on today. Appreciate you dropping by.

Vinny Capone: 1:53

Thanks so much for having me. It's a real honor to be here. I'm really happy to, to do this.

George Siegal: 1:57

Yeah. This is our 52nd episode. So you're kind of in rarefied air. I wanted to have you on because I love what you guys are doing. And so, so I appreciate it now, before we get started I wanted to ask you a couple questions that have nothing to do with what we're gonna talk about, but they're for people who are overcoming obstacles followers, that they might not know these things about you. What is your favorite movie of all time?

Vinny Capone: 2:19

Oh, wow. It's, I'm a big movie bus, so it's hard to really just select one. If I was going to pick a movie that maybe I could re-watch a lot it, it would probably be something like Singing In The Rain really love that movie. I think it's a huge entertainment. It's like it's the, the songs are timeless, like the choreography and like the, the, the stunt work is really exciting. I think people, even kids today who haven't seen it, if they were to watch that it holds up remarkably well. It's so it's so entertaining and it's such like a big spectacle. So that's probably a, a movie that I can always watch and always have like a big smile on my face.

George Siegal: 2:55

We don't see movies like that anymore. Except maybe Lala land, which was, yeah. Which was a lot of fun, but yeah, they, they've definitely completely changed how, how movies are made. And if you could have a meal specially prepared for you tonight, it's not a last meal, it's just a special meal. What are you having?

Vinny Capone: 3:12

So. Spoiler alert. My name is Vincenzo Capone. I'm an Italian, she'll be my mom's bake ziti. She makes it for me, my, for my birthday every year and I'm 38 years old, so I still get it. So my mom still comes over and she, she cooks a big ziti dinner for me. And it's, it's delicious. My favorite thing in the whole world.

George Siegal: 3:27

Wow. That's awesome. That's awesome that she's still doing that for you. Okay. So let's jump into what we're here for. It's kind of obvious when we, when I introduced you, but what is the problem that you have identified and tell us what you're doing to make it better?

Vinny Capone: 3:40

As you mentioned we I'm the managing director of a nonprofit organization that provides a life skills curriculum. And what we're trying to do is unfortunately, there's a lot of students who are not learning essential life skills. And these are skills that everybody needs in order to be successful in life. So these are skills, like how do you communicate effectively? How do you make good decisions? How do you set and achieve goals? But there's a lot of students who, who are not learning these essential skills. And if you don't. When you get older, you're gonna be at a real disadvantage to the people who were taught those skills. So what we are trying to do is make life skills, education, a regular part of the school day, so that students are learning this in the same way they're learning math or science or history because it's, it is just as essential as those subjects, you can't really lead a successful life unless you have developed these skills. So that's what we are trying to do. And we do that through the overcoming obstacles program by providing these curriculum materials that teach that give educators the ability to teach these skills to their students. And we provide that for free so that they can, there's no worry. There's, there's no need to like find a, a means to pay for it. Or there's no barriers really in their place. All they have to do is get the materials and teach it to their students.

George Siegal: 4:56

That's fantastic. Now, one of the things I always find as a father of five Each time I go to my I've gone to my kids' schools and I've, I've asked about classes that, that teach life skills. And a lot of times schools think they're offering them, but they really aren't teaching life skills. They may have a class that has some distant connection to it. Mm-hmm how do you convince these schools? Cuz you've been very successful at it, how important this is?

Vinny Capone: 5:23

So the good news is there's a lot more. The way the tide is moving it. A lot of people are buying into this more and more. They are starting to see why these are essential. And I think it's, once they start teaching it, once they actually start implementing these lessons, they see the impact it has on their students. So it's easy to kind of spread out throughout the rest of their school, the rest of their district, because they see the positive impacts, but in order to get them to actually start teaching it like that, that is a, that can be a real challenge. We one, we take away the, the need to pay for it, which is a big thing. Right? School's trying to find the budget to, to afford these programs. A lot of times they're really expensive and it's, it's hard for them to justify paying a certain amount of money to get these materials. So taking away that barrier really helps with educators saying, okay, you know what? We're gonna, we can at least test this out and see how it goes, but also showing and publishing the results of people who have implemented it. You don't have to guess if this is gonna be effective. Now you can read these full nationwide reports about how, how effective these programs can be and how effective our program in particular is so that when you're implementing it, you are not like in the dark or anything like that. You can feel confident that you're dedicating your time in a smart, in a smart way. That's gonna impact your students in a good way.

George Siegal: 6:40

Now, what do you see in terms of results when you go into a school? Cause I imagine you have some pretty impressive statistics that show how learning increases, how the attitude of the school increases. That it makes a difference in ways just beyond that lesson, doesn't it?

Vinny Capone: 6:56

Yeah. So it's not just about, so the goal is to teach these students life skills, right? How do you listen? How do you communicate effectively? How do you solve problems or manage your emotions? But the one of the great benefits of that is when, when a school does, does implement it is they see a really positive impact on the school environment. Students are getting along better. They're respecting their teachers more. They're more excited to come to class. Attendance rates go up.Graduation rates go up.. And the overall school environment and the, and the positive nature of the school increases because now students are able to articulate themselves more. They're able to empathize with others more, they're able to set and achieve goals and have motivation. And they're able to see how these things, really how these skills and how understanding them impact their life and make them and will make their lives better

George Siegal: 7:50

in the future. Let's go over some of those skills, skills, such as relationship building, goal setting, decision making, empathy, applying to college, looking for a job, managing finances. I don't remember having any of those classes a hundred years ago when I was in school, we were just taught the core stuff and then we're just kind of thrown out there into the world. And if you didn't get it at home, you weren't getting anything. And I was fortunate enough to have parents that, that taught us a lot of these things, but I imagine a lot of parents don't?

Vinny Capone: 8:20

You're right. Yeah. And I, I never learned them in school either. You know, so I, when I had first joined overcoming obstacles, these, this was kind of new to me as well, that I didn't realize that this was something that you can actually teach in a school. But when you think about it, it is the best place for students, for, for anybody to learn life skills is in a school. Because a lot of people aren't learning life skills at home. Like either their parents were never taught them themselves, so they don't know how to teach it to their students. Or maybe they are in a single parent household and that parent is working multiple jobs and they really don't have a lot of interaction with their Stu like with their kid, maybe they are living with other caregivers or living in foster homes. Like you can't, you can't depend on a student's parents teaching them these skills. And even, so if you could, if you knew they were around all the time, you don't, you can't depend on them teaching it effectively necessarily because these are complicated things to teach the, you know, they're not, when you think of something. How do you communicate? It's kind of abstract, right? You don't know exactly what that means. Like what is, okay. So if I say you need to communicate better, like, what does that actually mean? Well, you need to like, listen effectively. You need to understand nonverbal messages. You need to communicate constructively and respectfully. And a lot of times, if you're, if you're banking on a student's parent to teach and that they're not gonna understand those nuances, but an educator who's used to. Students like skills in different areas can see, okay, this is how these are broken down. This is how I teach it to them effectively. So that's prob that's the best way they're gonna learn these skills and that's gonna make sure it stays with them and it's, and it's impactful and that they can carry it with them throughout their life.

George Siegal: 9:59

Now, the way you do it too, makes it pretty easy. I mean, I guess for teachers, they have a tough job, so I'm not gonna say that's easy. Mm-hmm , but it makes it easy for them to interject this into their teaching because you provide them the tools?

Vinny Capone: 10:13

Exactly. So we, so what we try to do, one of our main goals is by, is by removing as many challenges or obstacles, no pun intended that an educator might face in order to implement these. So we really try to think of, okay, if I'm an educator and I want to teach these skills to my students, what are the challenges that I'm gonna face? So one, I, I don't have the budget, so we, we, okay. We made it free. Two is well, I can't always be online. I need, I need to have some flexibility with how I access the materials. So we make it so you can download it, save a PDF, bring it with you, or you can access it on our website. Whatever's easier for you. And probably the most challenging thing for a lot of educators is okay, when am I gonna teach it? Like, what is like, how, how am I gonna find the time to do that? So when we provide these materials to them, that is like complete script. Here's how you teach this lesson to your students. We also segment them into smaller chunks. So if they only have. 15 minutes, 20 minutes, a half hour, whatever. They can still teach it to their students effectively. As long as it's a regular kind of a regular implementation, the student is going to learn these skills. They're gonna, they're gonna benefit from receiving these, this type of education. So that is that is our main goals. Like what, what, what is an educator need? How do we provide it for them? How do we provide it for them free? And how do we try to anticipate that before they have to ask.

George Siegal: 11:34

You know the time one, I, because you've removed all the other obstacles, as you said, the time one is the one I hear the most often. And when my kids tell me how much downtime they really do have in school, it kind of throws that one out the window. I mean, they'll come home some days and say, we sat there for 30 minutes doing nothing. We did, you know, in this period, which it's supposed to be a study skills class. They didn't do anything. The teacher's up there reading a book the whole time. And again, not to throw teachers under the bus, because I think that they're a lot of, 'em just love what they're doing and do a terrific job, but there is time you just have to make the time.

Vinny Capone: 12:09

I think that's the thing, right? You need to find those windows. And what we try to do too, is help educators find that, right? So here are, we might recommend that. Okay. If you have an advisory period, instead of, you know, Having students sit there, like, why don't you teach them this lesson? Or if you have students that are in school suspension, right. Or, or in school detention, instead of just having them sit there, why not try to teach them life skills so that they can, maybe you can help them make it a more of like a restorative process than just a punishment, right. Or if they're an after school program before school programs or counseling sessions, like these are all ways you can implement it. Doesn't have to be necessarily its own class. That that would probably be the best case scenario, but there are ways you can fit it into your into your school day. And I think that is it. It's a challenge right here. They they're, a lot of them are really overworked. They're underpaid. They, they have a lot going on. They have a lot of responsibilities, so I could see them getting. Just being like, I can't do another thing. Like, I don't know when to do this. Like, this is just too much for me right now. So if we say no, you know what, we'll help you find that space. We'll help you like say here's where it is. Here's exactly what you can do. There's you don't have to do a lot of prep work and, and you'll really help your students. You'll really be benefiting them in a really profound way.

George Siegal: 13:29

Yeah. I mean, I marvel at a lot of the things teachers put up with and I applaud them for it, but I think if they realize that, hey, if you use this, this is gonna make your job easier because maybe you'll have a more attentive class. Maybe you'll have better behaved students. Maybe they'll be nicer to each other cuz kids sure turn mean once they get into. Fourth and fifth grade and then on, into middle school. It's my goodness. It's just a, it's a war out there.

Vinny Capone: 13:53

Yeah. You get the hormones going and, and students are trying, and again, kids are starting to get more competitive and yeah. So it's, it's a, that's why it's really important for them to learn these skills, cuz it does help them manage. One, if they are the target of bullying or they are the target of, of stress or anxiety, it gives them skills to help manage that and navigate those emotions. But also two, it helps students who might be bullies or they might not realize that they're being bullies or they might not realizing they're being mean to, to other classmates really think empathetically about, okay, the decisions I'm making or the, the way I'm communicating with others. Or the conflicts I'm causing. Why is that? And how do I stop doing that? And so you're, you're absolutely right. Like if, if you, if you're an educator and you take the time to teach these skills, you're gonna, you're gonna see a benefit in your classroom. You're gonna see more participation, more happier students, more prepared students, more capable students. If you take the time to teach 'em these skills.

George Siegal: 14:54

Yeah, I would think that, I mean, bullying is such a huge problem. And with social media now, the way kids bully or get bullied on social media, I would think that this would make your lessons even more valuable just as you say, as an awareness thing.

Vinny Capone: 15:11

Exactly. Cuz you're absolutely right. Especially with things like social media, cuz now if a student's getting bullied or harassed, there's no escape in it. Right? Like when I was in school, If I had a problem with somebody, at least at the end of the school day, I didn't have to see them until the next day. Now, you know, it could follow me throughout my entire like existence. Like, you know, they, they can keep messaging me or, or, or commenting on things I post and like really have a profound impact on like my own, like feeling of self worth. But by teaching, you know, these, these life skills. You're one again, like not to sound like a broken record, but you're the, the student, who's the target. You're giving them the, the, the tools to kind of manage their emotions and also navigate and figure out, okay, what are the decisions or the course of actions I have to take in order to try to, to get away from this, but the one who is targeting those students, you're preparing them with the decision making skills and empathy skills to know, okay, if I do this, this is gonna be the result of that. And a lot of times students don't think that way, right. They just think action. They don't really think concept.

George Siegal: 16:13

Yeah. Plus I would think it gets other kids involved too. So they recognize this. They may, might not be directly involved in the bullying, but they see it going on and maybe they'll be less accepting of it.

Vinny Capone: 16:24

Right. They might call it out right. Or identify it and say like, actually that's bullying or that's that's, that's disrespect or that's, that's poor communication. And that's not what we learned in in, in our life skills class or our advisory periods. We know this is how we're supposed to behave. And really try to, as a community and as a school community, reduce those instances and make it more positive.

George Siegal: 16:48

Are there any examples you can bring up that would show how you guys got into a school and the difference that it made and how it turned things around for them?

Vinny Capone: 17:00

So one example that I like is. It's not a school particularly, but we did a lot of work with the students in transitional housing, in New York city. And so for people who don't know, those are, those are programs that are geared towards students who are experiencing homelessness. So we had done a lot of work with, with the New York city department of educations branch that helps those students and that provides services to them and the students who would learn these life skills who would learn these cuz obviously it's not, we're not saying like, if you learn life skills, you're, you're, it's a guaranteed, you're not gonna be experiencing homelessness or, or, or, or things like that. But they learn to be more resourceful. They learn to be more pro like proactive and advocate for themselves more and to make good decisions and to, and to set goals for themselves that help them see pathways that were there that might be available to them that they might not have seen before. Right. So now they understand, okay, if I make these decisions or, or take these actions, or I make these plans, I have a better chance of, of reaching a place I want to go to than by not doing that. So another good example is we had a student who grew up in south central LA, who was involved in gang violence and he was surrounded by it and he thought that that's just life, right? That's the life he's going to live. That's the life that he is, you know, he's just destined to be a part of, but once he was taught overcoming obstacles and start different pathways in front of him, he realized, no, you know, that was just a box and I can break outta that box. And there's plenty of more opportunities for me. I don't have to make that decision. There's other things there's other paths for me. And I think that's one of the profound things that happens to students when they learn these skills is they don't, they're not locked into one destiny. They could see a lot of opportunities that might light ahead for them.

George Siegal: 18:53

And you were talking about homelessness. There was a statistic here in in Tampa where I live about the number of students that were homeless. And it's, it's staggering to hear that. And you think about all the challenges you have in school? If you live in a good home, if you have a roof over your head in a secure neighborhood, and then imagine what it's like for those children that are homeless and then what they have to go to school carrying with them, knowing that that's what their life is like. I, I would think that would be just an impossible thing to deal with.

Vinny Capone: 19:24

You're absolutely right. I think that's, that's one of the things we would talk to a lot of educators about is imagine. You know, ideally you want your students coming to school, just prepared to learn, like just ready to ready to go as a blank slate, but life is not like that. And you know, you have students who are experiencing homelessness or they're in foster care, they're in abusive households or they're any, any number of things can impact their ability to learn. And I think well, what we know is that by, by having a, a life skill dedicated course or life skills part of your day or week, that's dedicated to teaching these skills, you can really help those students, whether it be by just teaching them the skills to really understand what their situation is and how to navigate around it, or, or seek help or advocate for themselves. There's lots of things you can do to support those students. But you can't do that unless you're not trying to think about where they're coming from every day, how they're entering the school and how that's gonna impact what their learning.

George Siegal: 20:22

Now I've seen some of the role playing lessons that you guys do. And what I see as one of the most valuable things, and I wish we had had this when I was in school, cuz we would pick on kids. We were not always the nicest kids in school, but we never really thought about what that child was experiencing. We never really put ourselves in their shoes. We were always just thinking about ourselves and what we were doing or felt like saying. And what I see in these role playing examples is it makes you aware of, of understanding what the other person is going through. Maybe it makes you a little nicer.

Vinny Capone: 20:52

Exactly. Right. That's empathy. Right. It's learning. It's trying to understand what it's like to be somebody else and, and having that impact your decisions. Right. So I was the same way, you know, I, I know I've said things to, to students when I was in school that were, for me, they probably nothing, I didn't think much of it, but for them could have been devastating or could have been, could have ruined their day or could have had an impact that I didn't anticipate. But if I knew, okay. Like if I knew to really think about what I was saying and think about the impact it would have and think about how it could, it could affect somebody else. I wouldn't have said those things, you know, I would've been more mindful. I would've been more tactful in what I was saying to not subject people, to a, a life or, or experience of, of feeling less than like less than what they should feel like. You know, like I, I, I, knowing that like you could have that impact on somebody is really disheartening. And I think if you know how to communicate effectively and, and make, make better decisions, you'll also feel better about yourself too, because you're treating people with the respect they deserve.

George Siegal: 22:02

Absolutely. I mean, I'm bothered to this day of some of the incredibly stupid things I've done, I wish, you know, and, and you can't get those things back, but then you relive 'em through your children. Mm-hmm when you see things that the kids come home and tell you and, you know, hopefully it makes you a a more aware parent to put a stop to those things.

Vinny Capone: 22:19

Exactly. Right. It lets, you know, now you can see it too. Like you could see those trends or, or those hints that like, okay, this thing that I did, I could see it happening in my students and, and my kids rather. And now's an opportunity to correct that instead of on a better path and have them making better decisions. That's also ties into one, one of the things we also offer are materials for parents. So they could all, if they want to teach students or reinforce the life skills, their students are learning, their kids are learning in school rather, they can do that. Like we have materials for them too. So because there is good opportunity sometimes when you're a parent and you have five minutes or 10 minutes, and you wanna give a little lesson or teach a little have a moment to teach a life skill. These will give you the opportunity to do that.

George Siegal: 23:02

Now is the way the world is right now and the, the climate that we are experiencing. Does it make it more important than ever to have life skills? I mean, we all can't seem to agree on anything, whether it's politics or anything else, but we should all agree that children need a good foundation in order to go on and have a successful life. I would think we could find a common ground with that.

Vinny Capone: 23:24

Yeah. I can't see anybody really having an argument against Students learning these types of skills. Cause I think everybody understands that you can't there there's no path ahead for you if you don't know how to resolve conflicts or solve problems or, or evaluate decisions or set like long-term goals. So I don't think there's a lot of controversy there about should students learn these, especially because they're not really necessarily pushing a certain type of value, right? It's, it's, it's, it's helping students understand what they personally value and how to, how to live their life around those values. So I, I think nowadays I think since we're so connected, everything seems so much bigger. I mean, I'm sure it is too, but like, I I'd say even 10 years ago, 15 years ago, I've seen like plenty of examples of when people needed to learn life skills. So I think the need has always been there. I think it's just more evident now that, oh, this is Def, this is really important. We should have been teaching this all along. Like now, now is the time we should, we need to start making sure our students are learning these.

George Siegal: 24:27

Now I had a principal once that kept referring to this as soft skills.

Vinny Capone: 24:31

Yeah. We hate that term.

George Siegal: 24:33

Wow. That, I mean, I think that's completely misses the boat there.

Vinny Capone: 24:36

Yeah. I, I, I'm not, we're not a fan of that term because it, it it really could trivialize it. Right? So if you think soft, you think, oh, it's, it's, you know, it's something you need, but it's not that important. It's, it's, it's not a hard skill. It's a soft skill. And I think, no, you know, these are, these are skills that you need to solve hard problems. Like they're not, you, you can't undervalue them by calling them something like soft skills. So it really kinda undermines what they are like it's life skills. That's why we, we call 'em life skills because you need them to live a successful life like you, that that's, it that's, that's, that's the truth. And so soft skills. We, we really don't like using that term.

George Siegal: 25:11

I would think everyone of these skills is gonna be a lot more valuable than chemistry or geometry, unless you specifically go into those fields. But whatever, not nothing I can do about that.

Vinny Capone: 25:21

No, you're I think you're right. Like I, you wanna, and you wanna not teach that, right? You wanna go to school and say, we're not gonna teach chemistry. We're not gonna teach math. But it's easy to say, we're not gonna teach life skills, which seems kind of weird, right? Cause this is something no matter what you do, you will benefit from, right. Whatever you do in life, you'll benefit from being taught life skills. So that's why we really try to push like you, you really need to teach this regularly at some part of your school day. You know, I understand a lot of schools can't do an hour a day. They might be able to do an hour a week. They might be able to do 15 minutes a day. They might be able to do a half hour a day. Whatever you can do. It just needs to be a regular part of their education.

George Siegal: 25:58

Yeah. I can honestly say I haven't dissected one frog since high school. It's just something that just hasn't come around. So explain how the portal works for people so that tell 'em where to go and then what they're gonna find when they get there.

Vinny Capone: 26:10

Sure. So it's it's we call it our digital library. It's overcoming obstacles.org forward slash library. And then I'll bring them to our, where all of our resources are housed. It has our middle school, our elementary school and our high school curricula. It has all of our additional resources, like our resources for parents, has training guides. It has materials and multiple languages. So students who are English language learners, we have materials for them so that they can interact with the program. We have them in over 25 languages. And then it's really simple to navigate. They just, and anybody and educator just click on the level they're interested in. Say, if they're interested in high school, there's a big high school button. They click on that and they'll give them a list of skills. So they'll have communication, decision making, confidence building, and they click on one of those and they'll give'em all the lessons associated with that particular life skills topic. So it's super easy to navigate. We also make it completely customizable cuz the way we write the curricula, we try to make it applicable to everyone, right. As, as, as universal as possible. But we also understand that different schools or different classrooms like, going from I'm I'm in New Jersey and you're in Florida. I'm sure our classrooms are, could be wildly different, right? The, the cultures and like what the values are. So we wanna give the tools to educators to be able to tweak it a little bit, to make it a little bit more relevant for their students, if they wanna do that. So they have that's up on our website as well. As a free component that they can engage with.

George Siegal: 27:28

You're pretty much removing all the obstacles, right. There's really no excuse for not doing this?

Vinny Capone: 27:32

We're trying, we're trying our best. We'll keep doing it. We'll keep adding more things. We'll keep developing the curricula, adding more material, and it's always gonna be free.

George Siegal: 27:40

All right. Now, in the show notes, I'll put all the links for people to follow you on social media. We'll put the link to the website as well. Vinny congratulations on the work you guys have done. And thanks for coming on today. Continued success in the future.

Vinny Capone: 27:51

Thanks so much. And you said this is the 52nd episode. So is this your one year?

George Siegal: 27:55

It is one year and, you know, buzzsprout where we host it makes a big deal out of 50 episodes. Okay. We actually have done 52. So who knew.

Vinny Capone: 28:04

Well, congratulations to you and thank you so much for having me. This is great.

George Siegal: 28:07

Appreciate it. Thanks, Vinny.

Vinny Capone: 28:09

All right, take care.

George Siegal: 28:10

Thank you for joining me today on our 52nd episode of the Tell Us How to Make It Better podcast. Please share the link with your friends. Become a subscriber. If you wanna get more information on overcoming obstacles, it is in the show notes and you should definitely check them out. It's a great program. Also, if you have any ideas for future shows for season two, please use the contact form link that is in the show notes as well. Let me know your thoughts about future guests or comments that you've had about past episodes. Thanks again for listening. See you next time.