Bob Zaccheo: Therapy Under The Hood of a Car

Realizing that his traditional therapy was failing kids with substance abuse and mental health challenges, Bob Zaccheo was tired of it and so one day he decided to do something wildly different. His Project LIFT now successfully trains over 1,000 troubled teens a year in 11 different trades, while they do therapy in these natural settings, such as "under the hood of a car". They're solving 4 of society's biggest challenges all at once (the skilled trades gap, poverty, mental health, addiction) and there should be a chapter in every region of America.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
You got a thousand shirts sitting there to be lined up.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
I take my drug dealing kid and I say, look,
we're gonna make two dollars on every single shirt that
we print out there.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
We're gonna print nine hundred shirts an hour.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
How much money are you gonna make? And they're like, oh, man,
eighteen hundred dollars. You know they're going to profit eighteen
hundred dollars. And I'm like, man, that's drug dealing money
right there, you know, and just kind of kick it
back at them.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
I'm an entrepreneur, and I'm a football coach in inner
City Memphis. And the last part unintentionally led to an
oscar for the film about our football team. It's called Undefeated.
I believe our country's problems will never be solved by

(00:46):
a bunch of fancy people and nice suits talking big
words that nobody understands. On seeing it in Fox, rather
an army of normal folks, us you and me just deciding.

Speaker 4 (00:56):
Hey, I can help.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
That's what Bob's at the voice we just heard has
done realizing that traditional therapy was failing kids with substance
abuse and mental health challenges.

Speaker 4 (01:08):
He was sick of it.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
So one day, an average guy, Bob decided, I'm going
to do something different. He started Project Lift. It has
now grown to training thousands of troubled teens in eleven
different trades. Ironically, they do therapy in natural settings rather
than sitting on a couch. They get under the hood

(01:30):
of the car and they do therapy while the kids
are doing things they enjoy. Wait till you hear about
the success rate. It's amazing. So let's get started. Right
after these brief messages from our general sponsors, Bob zach

(02:00):
thank you.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
How you doing man, I'm doing well, Bill, Thanks for
having me on. This is great.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
What kind of name is zachio z A C C
H e O? What is what is that?

Speaker 4 (02:09):
Greek? What is that? Really?

Speaker 1 (02:10):
That's Italian?

Speaker 2 (02:12):
My grandmother often used to say, I had to I
had to marry an Italian in order to keep the
bloodline going. Fortunately, I found a very very awesome Irish
lady who really balances me out. So the funny part
was introducing her to my grandmother, right, So I told
her before and I said, don't don't tell.

Speaker 4 (02:32):
Her you're Irish.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
That could be that could be a problem.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
Could be a deal killer. Are you is your grandparents?
Did you grandparents' first immigrants here?

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Yeah, they were my my grandfather and my grandmother on
my on my dad's side, came through Ellis Island.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
Actually, unbelievable. That is very, very very cool.

Speaker 4 (02:54):
So would you grow up?

Speaker 2 (02:56):
I grew up in South Florida, actually the hometown of
u At, Florida, which is on the southeast coast of Florida.
My family moved here back in the early seventies. And nevertheless,
so my family were, they kind of were in the
drywall and aluminum stud you know trade up in New York,
and one of my dad's brothers decided to move down here,

(03:19):
and they all followed him and eventually kind of settled
their little life here in a town that had about
eighteen thousand people in it at the time, and now
we're right around one hundred and fifty five thousand in
our little town of Martin County. My uncle's all tell
me the stories about how they, you know, went straight
from putting the drywall in the twin tours to kind

(03:40):
of the next jobs. We're building the condos out on
the island, the Barrier Islands out here in South Florida.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
Hey, what something you may not know about me is
my undergraduate degrees in psychology.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
I did. I learned that I'm watching the movie.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
I know why I chose that discipline to study. It's
because I was really bad at math. Why did you
choose it?

Speaker 4 (04:06):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (04:06):
You know, interestingly, Bill, Like you know, it was, you know,
one of those things. I was one of the first
in my family to ever go to college, right, and
I had no business being there. And I would absolutely,
you know, stand behind that, no matter who's on the
phone with.

Speaker 4 (04:21):
Me, but.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
My family. You know, back in that time, I'm forty
six years old.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Back then, it was everybody went to college, period, right,
and you had really no choice. So I go to college.
I had no direction, I had no idea what I
really wanted to do.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
And so I had gone.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
To play football up at a small Division III school
in Philadelphia called Widduring University, really good Division III football team,
and we enjoyed, you know, I enjoyed myself doing that.
But so here's the reason why I went into psychology.
There's no smoking gun on this but I go into
it's going into my junior year, right, and again I'm

(05:00):
you know, first want to go to college, have no
guidance on any of this stuff. You know, probably should
have just went for a business degree and kind of
went on from their entrepreneurial you know components. But I
go in to see my guidance counselors. I was just
about to be a junior in college and she said, look,
you got to choose a major. And I was like, oh,
I didn't really think about that, and she said, well,

(05:23):
you need to choose one. I said, well, what will
get me out of here.

Speaker 4 (05:26):
The fastest there it is?

Speaker 2 (05:28):
And she said psychology and I said, well, sign me
up for that.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
I'll take that. So I kid you not Bill.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
That's how I decided on psychology. You know, got into
some of the classes, really enjoyed what I was doing,
but really the the reality was getting into do the
internships and the practicums. I got opportunities to do things
that was really in the field, and that's that's really
what piqued my interest about psychology.

Speaker 3 (05:55):
I actually remember those days as well, and it's it's interesting.
I mean, human behavior is interesting, it's often exciting, and
heartbreaking as well. But you know, I guess that's what
we're here to talk to you about. So you got
a graduate degree, and you did that because you realize

(06:16):
you really can't do much in therapy with just a
bachelor's degree. And then you also, in your infinite wisdom,
decided you wanted to work with at risk youth who
are struggling with drugs and alcohol. It really easy, uplifting
group of kids to work with. Bob, are you out
of your mind? I mean, why did you want to
work with this particular demographic?

Speaker 2 (06:37):
So when I did a practicum in Wilmington, Delaware, and
I don't know, I probably told this story before, not
to a ton of people, but I typically I try
my best to not get emotional about this particular component.
But I grew up in an intergenerational poverty family, right,
so we didn't have a ton of stuff. You know,

(06:58):
my parents loved each other to seem married. Wasn't like
I grew up in a divorced home or anything like that.
But but I ended up taking an internship in Wilmington, Delaware.
And this was back when I was in undergraduate school
and my job at the Probation Office the Juvenile Probation
office there in Wilmington, Delaware, was to transport kids from

(07:19):
you know, Philadelphia. They'd been in a detention center up
in the Philadelphia area, and I had to transport them,
you know, through some of the inner city projects there.
I had never seen it before, Bill, Like, I grew
up in South Florida, so I didn't know what a
row home was, or kind of a ghetto or.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
Any of that stuff. So here I am kind of,
you know, transporting back and forth this you know, quintessential
white guy, you know, driving back and forth through some
ghettos and you know, picking up kids and detention centers
and driving them down to Wilmington. And one day I
picked up this kid and he was at back of
my Car's fourteen years old. Yeah, you must have been

(07:56):
six foot four.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
Just a great you know from what I could tell,
Just a great young man, great conversation.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
He's in the back of the.

Speaker 2 (08:04):
Car and I'm driving down I ninety five between Philadelphia
and Wilmington, Delaware in one of the you know, transport
cars for the probation office. And I don't know if
you know that area very well or not, but it's
like twelve lanes of I ninety five, Like it's a
very big highway. I'm driving down that road and I'm
having this conversation with this kid back and forth, which

(08:27):
was typical i'd have. I'd try my best to talk
to him, you know, talk to whoever I was driving with.
And all of a sudden, he jumps over the back
of the seat of the car and grabs the steering
wheel of the car and pulls it to the right
and rams us into one of those guardrails.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
And he's apparently six foot four to two hundred something pounds,
So you didn't have much you.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
Could do, no, you know, I was, you know, a minebacker,
so it wasn't like I couldn't handle myself. But at
the same time, it was like, holy, Honestly, what I
thought happened was I thought we got rear ended. Like
I thought we got it from behind, you know what
I mean. Like I couldn't comprehend what had happened. And
he so all of a sudden, we're in this rail

(09:08):
or we're in this you know, this concrete bunker right now,
no cell phones. It's whatever, nineteen ninety eight or ninety seven,
something like that.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
And I'm like, holy, which just happened. I you know,
Squialdo has stop stop in the middle of the road.
This kid jumps out of my out of my car
and like leap frogs across every lane of the highway.

Speaker 4 (09:30):
Do you remember the arcade game Froger exactly?

Speaker 2 (09:33):
If you can, if you can visit this kid doing
a Frogger across the north and southbound lanes of I
ninety five between Philadelphia and Wilmington. So you know, it
takes a little bit of time, but you know, police
come and you know, rescue and all that other stuff.
And and sure enough, my supervisor shows up to the scene,

(09:55):
right and my supervisor says to me, I'll never forget
this because it just pissed me off.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
He said, He said, what'd you let him run away for?

Speaker 3 (10:09):
Right? Sure?

Speaker 1 (10:11):
And I had the same reaction you just had, Bill Like,
I was like, no, I.

Speaker 3 (10:14):
Mean I might have said if you ever tried to
catch Froger?

Speaker 1 (10:16):
Yeah, right by the way, he was really fast. And
how come we aren't thinking of it this way though?

Speaker 4 (10:23):
Bill?

Speaker 2 (10:24):
Like, because this is this is really the question is
what made this kid so scared that he wanted to
ram my car into a guardrail? And that was the
that was the burning question that I had was and
that's what really lit my fire more than any.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
Did you find out why he did it?

Speaker 4 (10:40):
No?

Speaker 2 (10:40):
I think I worked there for about a whole nother
three days because they wanted me to fill out all
kinds of incident reports and blaming me for the accident
and all this other bolt and I you know, you know,
bottom line, you know, I'm twenty one years old having
been in a you know, horrible, you know, little incident,
and I'm also processing my own personal growth right never

(11:01):
been exposed to anything like that, And so really what lit.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
Me up was I knew at that point I had
to go do something about that. Like I don't, I
didn't know what it was that I had to do,
but I do know that God was calling me to
do something greater with my life, using my talents to
help people at the highest level I possibly could.

Speaker 4 (11:23):
We'll be right back, Bob.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
You said you you grew up in a socioeconomically disadvantaged.
Although you had a family, you clearly knew what it
was like not to to probably have your basic needs met,
but not to have a lot of wants satisfied. Did
you identify with these kids at all.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
You know, looking back on it, I don't know that
I was probably caught up in my own selfish, twenty
one year old world. But you know, the bottom line
was I grew up in what you know, what I term,
you know, intergenerational poverty, is that my parents, you know,
I'd go home at night and the electricity be off,
you know, the mortgage wasn't paid, no food in the fridge,

(12:16):
that kind of thing. But my parents loved me. It
wasn't like there was not love in the house. You know,
my my mom and dad stayed married, there wasn't divorce.
My sisters and I had kind of that, like you said,
the basic needs of everything that we could want, which
is probably why they really wanted me to get out
of there, go to college, get out and see something different.

(12:36):
But I don't know that it's even appropriate for me
to put myself in another person's shoes, especially that kid's shoes,
because I don't know what it's like to walk a
mile in that kid's shoes. And if I ever tried
to convince that kid that I had walked a mile
in his shoes, he probably would have called me a
liar and told me to get out of the car myself.

Speaker 3 (12:55):
And I understand as well as the next guy. There's
there's you know, in a situation like that, there's all
kinds of differences that can help you feel for a person,
but not not say you really get it. But in
your case, it's interesting to understand now that you know,

(13:16):
there were times that you would come home and the
lights were off, and you know what it is to
be scared and poor. And and as as a psychologist,
you know this better than anybody that's listening to us.
Is that, of course there is love in your house.
And I hear that, and that's wonderful, but I don't
I don't care how much love there is in the house.

(13:39):
For an adolescent or a young teen to come home
to the lights off, that has an effect. And there
is some trauma in that, and and it, in my opinion,
does guide where we go from there. Would you not
agree with that?

Speaker 4 (13:53):
I really would?

Speaker 2 (13:54):
I mean, you know, you've got you know, trauma is trauma,
and how we receive trauma is you know, different amongst us.
All you know, you know, hearing my kids, my own
kids complain about, you know, not having whatever the next
great thing is, and I you know, you you process
it differently through your developmental stage. Here I am forty

(14:14):
six years old processing what that must have been like
for my dad to have to see that when he
came home, you know, and for my mom to have
to deal with those things. Which what you know, in
generational poverty, whether whether it has to do with not
having you know enough, you know, cash assistance or whatever

(14:34):
it is that you have going on, is that you know,
it's followed by depression, anxiety, stress, attention deaths to hyperactivity
is very predominant in that type of setting. And then
also the family functional issues and substance use disorders, like
all of those things follow suit, you know, and when
you when you kind of are predestined in a lot
of ways because your parents really don't even know that

(14:56):
they're in it, or don't know what it is that
they're dealing with, or know how to help you understand
what the next step of your life is.

Speaker 1 (15:04):
Supposed to be.

Speaker 2 (15:05):
Well, how the heck am I supposed to teach that
to the next generation? How am I supposed to teach
that to my kids? You know, you got to have
a pretty considerable amount of self awareness to make it through.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
And how are the kids supposed to know anything different
when that's all they see coming up.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
You know.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
And you know what the interesting part was, I think
more than anything was the dignity associated with it, right
there was There was dignity associated with you know the
fact that I could get a free meal at school
or you know, I know it's a weird comment to make,
but it's the reality is that that's kind of where

(15:43):
we found our dignity was you know, hey, the the
cash assistance just came in, that was kind of our
dignity going to the mailbox.

Speaker 3 (15:51):
Here's why all this matters, Tommy. I want to I
want to go forward and talk about the amazing things
that you and your organization have done. But this program
is an army of normal folks, and most importantly is
that our listeners are normal folks. And all too often

(16:14):
we talk about the amazing things people have done. But
I think it's important that we qualify what a normal
folk is. And a normal folk is a guy who's
the grandson of immigrants, who moves to Florida with his family,
who lives in generational poverty, who lived the lights being

(16:35):
turned off in their house, and who played football, and
who went to school and got an internship at twenty one,
and through that process learned that they wanted to be
in the psychology field. And a kid plays frog or

(16:56):
across an interstate and it makes you interested in what
makes them tick. But in your own real experience, you
also understand some of what makes them tick because you
lived it. And I can't think of a more average
guy than that.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
Yeah, I just kind of want to cry a little bit, Bill, Like,
I haven't really heard my life summarized like that, you know,
you know, except for the conversations I have in my
head about you know, the components of you know, the
reality of people not really understanding what I've been through.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
You experienced what you experienced, you grew the way you
grew It made you part.

Speaker 4 (17:35):
Of who you are.

Speaker 3 (17:36):
And now you're psychologists dealing with kids who are poverty
at risk, kids who've been in and out of trouble
with the law, and you're and briefly, just tell me
so that those listening to us can understand it. You're
sitting in your desk and you're spending forty five minutes

(17:57):
with a kid, and you're trying to build rapport. But
it's Phil's feudal yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
I mean the reality is, you know, I did have
the altruistic views of you know, sitting inside of a
clinical office and doing you know, doing treatment with families
and teenagers and and so I specialized working with fourteen
and nineteen year old teenage boys that were struggling with
drugs and alcohol. That was my specialty. And rightfully, so
it's what I gravitated to. I understood it. I really

(18:25):
enjoyed that part. And it's probably a lot you know,
like you were saying, had to do with hey, what
could have I done better? Which is, you know, you
have the transference components of psychology that you be really careful,
right transferring your own emotion onto another person. But you know,
one day, just sitting in my office, just very very
frustrated with doing treatment inside of that clinical office because

(18:47):
you just don't get anywhere. I mean, if you ever
you ever asked to sixteen year old boy how they're feeling,
you get the one word response, right, it's like good, fine, fine.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
You know, and that cool fine f you how about
that one?

Speaker 3 (19:02):
Yeah, well that's two words, bob.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
That is two words. Sorry in Italian though, it's one fungal.

Speaker 3 (19:13):
But we can agree that you get a very dismissive tone,
short answers, because, let's face it, a sixteen year old
boy really isn't interested in telling you about his feelings.
A lot of it was judges making them go see Bob,
and therapists like Bob basically had fifty minute appointments to

(19:34):
change their lives, which is ridiculous and will never work.
So Bob said, there's got to be a better way.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
So let me kind of, you know, brief you on
this story.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
So one day I brought a fish and rod to
work with me, and I had no intention of doing
any treatment with any of the kids I was working with.
I just was going to tie a dry fly on
the end of a fly fishing rod. Is a plastic
bait on a fly fishing rod, and you could you
could actually make them.

Speaker 1 (19:59):
It's like coming these little kids, you can make them.
So I'm sitting there with the first kid.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
We tie out this knot, we put it on the
end of this fly rod, and I said to the kid, now,
and we had no conversation. We didn't talk at all, right,
because you don't talk because that's what's happening.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
It's like good will hunting in there. So I said, like, hey,
how about we bring this rod out to the back.

Speaker 2 (20:16):
Of my office. There's a little pond back there. I'll
teach you how to cast the rod. The kid's like, great,
let's do that. We go to the back and I
start teaching him how to cast this fly fishing rod
and with this little bait that he made on the
end of the rod the end of the pond, and
literally before the bait was hitting the water, the kid's
telling me all about his you know, promiscuous mom, his
drunk dad, and all the anger that he felt. And

(20:38):
I was like, okay, that was easy. I got him
out of the office and he starts talking right, hands
moving their mouth and obviously their their mouths start opening.
So what I found was there was nothing unique about
taking a kid fishing. But what I did next was
really unique. I called a buddy of mine who was
an AS certified mechanic and I who was also in recovery,

(20:58):
so he understood the processes of substance use disorders. And
I said to him, I go, hey, would you teach
these kids how to do automotive repair while I do
psychotherapy underneath the hood of a car.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
And that was thirteen years ago.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
So Bob left a job where he's making one hundred
and fifty thousand dollars a year to start this nonprofit,
Project Lift, where the first salary he took was thirty
one thousand bucks. But Bob couldn't not do this. He
felt called to try to save these at risk teens,
most of which are sent to him by judges for

(21:33):
substance abuse of mental health challenges. And now they're doing
therapy alongside a lot more than cars.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
So Project you know, this is the thirty second elevator
speech on it. Aarilard pitchar is that Project Lift is
a mental health and substance abuse program that utilizes the
vocational trades as a vehicle into a kid's life, right,
because we have to take a look at replacement behaviors
in a much different way. Right, That's what that's all
cognitive behavioral therapy is. It's replacing behaviors. It's resilience based.

(22:07):
So how do I enact resiliency inside of a kid
and effectively replaced behavior and nefarious behavior? So when I
went in front of a judge and I said, Hey,
this is what I'm going to be doing. I'm going
to be teaching them the trades, and we're going to
replacement behavior with automotive repair and carpentry and boat building
and welding and all these other you know, anything that
we could get our hands on. We build airplanes here

(22:28):
now with h VAC programs. We have eleven different trades
that we teach. And when I went to them and
told actually, we even do metal forging here. So that
was a funny one going in front of the judge
and saying, hey, we're making knives now with these kids.
Thing adjudicated, which was which was a lot of fun,
and that actually happened on.

Speaker 3 (22:46):
A homemade party.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
That was a funny one because we were up doing
an appearance with one of the kids doing an update
and the judge said, his name's Judge Levin, one of
the best judges in the universe. Universe totally got this
system and was on board from day one.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
He was actually the chief judge at the time.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
I'm standing there with one of the kids and the
Judge Levin said, so, so how's it going over there
project lift and the kid goes, it's awesome, I made
a knife. What we know is that if I'm sitting
in a clinical session with a kid and having a
behavioral session. Emotional or behavioral doesn't matter. And I open

(23:28):
up that therapeutic window on that kid and then close
it back down with some tools that that kid can
go home with so that he can deal with the
fact that he's getting the crap kicked out of him,
or he's dealing with the lights being off like we
talked about earlier, or just dealing with the shortage of assets,
or depression, anxiety and stress. Well, the bottom line is
those tools are only going to last so long in

(23:50):
that kid's toolkit, right, and then eventually they'll disappear.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
And what we find is that the original.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
Behavior gets worse because the tool, the tools that we
were teaching inside that forty five minute session, we're gone now.
But instead if we replace it with something that has dignity,
hope and promise in the future, right, like twenty eight
hundred degree oxya settling torch, like teaching a kid how
to how to weld, Like giving them something that ninety
nine point nine percent of the rest of the world

(24:17):
has no idea how to do right, gives them dignity,
It gives them an effective replacement. So instead of being
a really great drug dealer, like, oh you know, hey,
I'm really good at this. I'm really good salesman. I
always say, my drug dealing kids are all they're entrepreneurs.
They're the easiest ones to change, right, because all I
have to do is just teach them the value of.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
Money, about the drugs, it's about the bunny.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
It's about the money.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
Yeah, it's about the economy. Stupid, it's it is.

Speaker 2 (24:40):
And they're incredible entrepreneurs, right, And I I often pitch
it like that so that I can get that kid
to really see it in a much different way, right.
It's I try to tell them like, oh, you know,
how much does the average drug dealer make, Especially when
we're doing one of our manufacturing components here, you know,
one of the things that we have a partnership with
with a trust company here in our town, and they

(25:02):
we teach them how to build the basic frame room
of a trust. And so I'm starting to teach them,
you know, the value of Each instructor actually teaches them
the value of what you can make on the construction
of that trust or T shirt printing or whatever it is.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
That we do.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
And I always say to the kid, like, hey, how
much do you think the average drug dealer makes.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
And they're like, man, I'm.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
Such and such brings home two grand and I three grand,
you know whatever. And I go no, I'm like, they
make three dollars and thirteen cents an hour.

Speaker 5 (25:30):
And they're like what and take all the risk and
they take all the risk, And I said, no, google it,
And sure enough, you can google it right, you'll find
that the average drug dealer makes about three dollars and
thirteen cents per hour.

Speaker 2 (25:41):
And I said, and you're the one that goes to
jail at night. And I said, now, let's talk about
the guy that just built this trust, you know, and
what he's taken home per hour and what that looks like.
And or we'll do a manufacturing component that has to
do with our T shirts. So we print thousands of
T shirts a week out of here, out of our
social enterprise that we have here at Project Lift, and they,

(26:02):
you know, got a thousand shirts sitting there to be
lined up. I take my drug dealing kid and I say, look,
we're gonna make two dollars on every single shirt that
we print out there. We're gonna print nine hundred shirts
an hour. How much money are you going to make
and they're like, oh, man, eighteen hundred dollars. You know
they're going to profit eighteen hundred dollars And I'm like, man,
that's drug dealing money right there. Just kind of kick

(26:23):
it back at them, and you know, and that's the
way O track. Our staff is trained. They're trained with
the I love you, I care about you, and I
can't wait to see you tomorrow attitude.

Speaker 4 (26:37):
Here's the deal.

Speaker 3 (26:38):
Yeah, you got Bob who's a psychologist who says this
isn't work and catches lightning over a fishing rod, gets
a buddy who's a recovering addict to help them in
a mechanic shop. And it has grown to how many
kids have been through your door?

Speaker 1 (26:58):
Now we see about one thousand a year.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
On thousand a year, And what is the success rate
of the kids that come through your program that that
don't I guess is recidivision.

Speaker 4 (27:12):
I don't know what the right word is.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
What's what's the word your recidivisms?

Speaker 4 (27:15):
Right? Is?

Speaker 2 (27:16):
You know how many are you know reoffenders are adjudicated.
So we've been actually measuring that for thirteen years and
we compare that number from juvenile record to adult record,
and we compare it every year, every single kid that's
been through Project Lift, which is now we're looking at,
you know, well well over five thousand kids at this point.
Is we compare h that juvenile record to the adult record,

(27:39):
and what we found is that seventy two percent of
the kids they come through Project Lift never get back
into the system.

Speaker 3 (27:45):
Again, what is the national average that So you're three times.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
Better, three times better.

Speaker 3 (27:53):
These are not a thousand kids, These are a thousand
of the most challenged kids, right.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
You know, eighty seven percent of the of the teens
and young adults that come through Project Lift can successfully
complete our programs. Ninety three percent successfully complete them drug free,
so meaning that only I'll kind of give you the
statistics on the back end here too, is nineteen percent
of the kids that come to Project Lift on intake,

(28:19):
only nineteen percent of them can pass a drug test, right,
so the other you know whatever, eighty one percent can't
even pass a drug test. And here we are with
ninety three percent of them at discharge passing their urine
drug testing. You know, scenarios and you know, to me,
that's really what it what it boils down to, is
clear minded decision making.

Speaker 4 (28:40):
We'll be right back, Bob.

Speaker 3 (28:52):
I think about the seventy two percent success rate, and
I think about all starting with mister Frogger going across
the interstate, and you know, from that number one to
five thousand, tell me your favorite story. What is what
is your favorite success story so far?

Speaker 2 (29:14):
Oh man, there's I got so many of them, I'm
gonna I have to go with two. The first one
met this this young man.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
This is going back years ago.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
His name was Bruce Thomas and uh, you know roll
Enclave out of you know, the you know, kind of
western side of our town, and you know, he was
the bread winner for the family. Uh you know, he
was probably sixteen at the time when I met him.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
And I mean it's you know, pretty pretty.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
Normal, you know, Hispanic family and uh, you know likely
you know, so many different things were happening, right so
I know one of the components was his dad had
gotten deported and uh, you know, it's right around a
time when they were really cracking down on illegal immigrants
and all kinds of crazy things were going on. And

(30:03):
so I got hold of this kid and his family
had been through some pretty significant trauma.

Speaker 1 (30:08):
You know, I had an uncle who.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
Sure got caught in a chopper and you know, one
of those wood choppers and dragged him in, and just
just horrible trauma that had gone on in this family's life.
And you know, after that, that's kind of how I
started seeing him, was because of this trauma. And then
you know, shortly after that, his sister was killed in
a car accident coming around one of the bends. And
at the time, we had kicked off Project Lift with

(30:33):
boat building program restoration and boat building, because that's pretty
big in our area. And again, you know, when you
look at, you know, expanding these programs, you have to
see what the communities are doing.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
And so we started teaching that.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
So we started teaching what's called carbon infusion, right, So
it's a technique of vacuum bagging holes of boats so
that you can make them nice and smooth and then
you can stand them down. And we started teaching Bruce
this technique, got him connected with one of our industry
partners and kind of cleaned him up a bit, and
just in terms of his his life, got him cleaned

(31:04):
from drugs and alcoholic right, drug testing all the time.

Speaker 1 (31:07):
So he was numbing himself.

Speaker 2 (31:08):
I mean, the trauma that kid had gone through. I
didn't did not blame him one minute for wanting to
numb himself, right sure, and got him clean and sober,
got him kind of into the end of that position
of you know, feeling loved again and feeling hope and promise.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
Taught him how to do this vacuum bagging process.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
Now, this vacuum bagging process, it's not a whole lot
of people know how to do it, and it's you know,
carbon infusion.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
You see these big sport fishing vessels that do it.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
And we got him a job at a company called
American Custom Yachts, one of the largest boat builders in
the country. Right, They're they're known for their sport fishing
yachts and all this other stuff.

Speaker 1 (31:45):
So it must have been.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
Two years three years later, you know, after he had graduated,
been through, had the job. I hadn't seen him for
a little while, and I was just at I was
at seven eleven, normal guy, right, normal guy seven eleven,
walking through thing, and I hear mister Bob, mister Bob,
and I look over and it's Bruce, right. And it
took me a second to grab his name, right, because

(32:07):
you know, you know how it is with the amount
of kids that you see through stuff.

Speaker 1 (32:11):
And I was like, oh my god, Bruce, how are you?
How are you doing? He's like, he pulls up on
his phone.

Speaker 2 (32:17):
And shows me a picture of a seventy two foot
sport fishing vessel that he just finished vacuum bagging, and
he was just like, mister Bob, like this is the
great you know. He just was so proud to show
me everything that he was doing. Then he pulls up
a picture, you know, of his kid and all the
things were going on in his life, and I knew
that he had had done it now, you know, telling

(32:39):
that story it's not like this this big burning bush
story of something right. But to me, it was like
I had done what I was supposed to do, you know,
And that's what was important to me. That moment of
seeing this kid who had had never even heard of
a vacum came back before in carbon infusion and all

(33:03):
this stuff. Now with supporting his family in a way
that I was Hike would struggle doing. I mean, it's
just an amazing.

Speaker 1 (33:13):
Let me move on.

Speaker 4 (33:16):
That is.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
But that is that is I mean, just think about it.
Father deported, uncle killed in the chipper sister killed in
a car wreck, sixteen years old, drug and alcohol abuse,
supporting a very broken family, whatever was left over left
of it, and through this, through this work, you've done it,

(33:38):
through the organization. He's got a smile on his face
and he has hope and he's clean. I mean, I
get it.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
That's it was awesome.

Speaker 2 (33:45):
And for him to tell me the story, he's he's like,
I'm the he said he was the lead on that
he I remember him saying I was the lead.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
I was the lead, right, you know. And I maybe
I'll just tell that one story because it's enough for me.

Speaker 3 (33:58):
I know, I want to know the second one.

Speaker 4 (34:00):
Now.

Speaker 3 (34:00):
Now you got me a little choked up. I want
to hear number two.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
I got to say probably this one was this story.
And you know, we have tons of recent stories, but
I like the old ones because it was just me.
I mean, you know, I think that's the weird part,
is like it was just me and a couple of
volunteers at the time. And you know, one of the
things that we like to do at Project Lift is
we like to give away cars. So we've given away

(34:26):
one hundred and fifty five cars now, so we get
cars donated to us in our automotive repair program.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
We we we.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
Repair them and then we have the kids give the
cars away to people in the community.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
That need cars.

Speaker 3 (34:37):
That's awesome.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
Well, it helps change their thinking, right it Well.

Speaker 3 (34:41):
Yeah, because instead of taking, they're given.

Speaker 2 (34:43):
They're given right, And it's a paradigm shift, right, And
a lot of times these kids that are giving cars
away like this with us every every year, they're given
at bigger levels than most of the you know, most
of the people in our community give. I mean, you're
giving away five six thousand dollars car to a family
that's in need. Like it's it's something special. So I
wanted to do that right right from the very beginning,

(35:05):
I knew we needed to give away something to our
We need to teach a kid how to give. And
I had this young man named Ray who was working
for Project Left. And I say working because I think
it's an important delineation, right, it's destigmatize the processes. It's
mental health programming. But in their minds, they were coming
to work, right, They're coming to work because that's a

(35:25):
destigmatization process. So the new local newspaper had caught wind
of us given away a car. So they sent over
their you know, best reporter, and she comes down and
I got this a couple it must have been three
or four kids. I was working with at the time,
and it was a Toyota four Runner. It was a

(35:46):
I don't know, it was a nineteen ninety five Toyota
four Runner or something like that.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
And the family were given the car to There was
like seven the lady had seven kids, right, And I said, look,
you gotta stop having kids.

Speaker 3 (36:00):
They don't make a big enough car.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
Like I don't know how I got to give you
two cars, but you don't have anybody old enough to drive.
So so I'm standing there with Ray and I got
my arm around him and we're all kind of posing
for this picture and the kid Ray looks at me
and he goes, just just just before the picture is taken,
I actually have the picture somewhere.

Speaker 1 (36:22):
I gotta find it. But he looks at me and
he says, mister Bob, I'm used to stealing.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
Cars, not giving them away. That was the moment that
I knew we always had to give away cars. So
he was fast forward. Ray did really well. He ended
up learning welding from us. It's kind of that introduction
of welding, and we got him a position at the
Pipe Fitters Union down in Palm Beach County. So he
did go through an apprentice program and ended up going

(36:48):
into the welding you know, field working across the country
doing you know, pipes and all kinds of crazy things.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
And so anyways, fast forward.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
And one of our other kids that came through Project
if they're all not successes, but you know, we worked
with him for a while. His name was Tyler, and
unfortunately he was my dad would have called it like
shylock and you know guns right, he would loan guns
out and so on, and and we're working with him
and trying to figure out how to get him out
of that scene and get him clean and get him

(37:19):
a job and a career and all that stuff. But
unfortunately the street caught up to him and he was
shot and killed.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
So I I'm.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
Sitting right where I was sitting when I heard the
news of that, so kind of a little memory just
flashed in my brain. And then so anyways, I talked
to his mom, and you know, we go out there
and we end up doing a I get an opportunity
to speak at his funeral and you know, I had
some scripture, and you know, there's nothing that can make
any of this better, right, it's, you know, the worst

(37:50):
thing that can happen. It's your worst day as a
as a therapist, it's your worst day as a mentor.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
It's nothing good about it.

Speaker 4 (37:58):
Right.

Speaker 2 (37:59):
So I leave and we're walking down the street and
I was with my dad. I brought my dad and
my daughters with me, and we're walking out of the
out of the church, and up comes from behind comes
Ray and he says, hey, man, I just want to
say can I can we go out to lunch?

Speaker 1 (38:15):
Right? He wanted to go out to lunch. I hadn't
seen him in years.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
He had been you know, doing his thing out working
in the field and the pipe pipe fitters.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
Fields and all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
I said, yeah, I would love to write I wouldn't
have recognized him if you had, you know, told me
it was him.

Speaker 4 (38:30):
Right.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
So we go out to go out to eat.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
And this was the really the part. Again, these are
the moments that that.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
They're just the great stories.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
And I sat down with him and we ate dinner
or ate lunch, and he's telling me about his family
and about all the things he was doing, and you know,
he said, I would just want to say thank you
for for taking me in. At the time, he was
a Jamaican immigrant family from that was living out in
one of the rural enclaves again of our town. And

(39:02):
the check came to the table, and I went to
go grab the check, right, because that's what we do, right,
is we we do this, We get the check, we
take the check, because that's what we do. And he
slapped my hand down on the table and grabbed the
check and he's like, I got this. And to me,

(39:27):
that was one of the single best moments I ever
could have imagined. And I wasn't going to steal his blessing.
I I you know, I let him pay for the
meal because it was something that he really really wanted
to do to say thank you, and it was I
don't know, it's just it was a moment for me
of this major success of this kid that not only

(39:52):
did he make something out of his life in a
really bad situation because he did come from you talk
about generational poverty and raising him sof health, he was
he was way down on that pole and for him
to come in and just say thank you and grab
that check to me was I'll never forget that.

Speaker 3 (40:14):
It is a unbelievably satisfied and rewarding thing. It's happened
to me as well. When you see a kid who's
had almost had been forced to grow up patently selfish
to survive, to show as a result of some of

(40:37):
the work that he's done self lessness, it is, it is.
I feel that story because I've seen it and I
understand it.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
I should tell you a success story after success for
a jobs and and you know, families and families being repaired.

Speaker 1 (40:53):
But when you see it at that level in a
one on one moment, yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:58):
It's very personal.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
It changes you.

Speaker 4 (41:05):
We'll be right back, Bob.

Speaker 3 (41:20):
I'm not a very smart guy, which makes me kind
of meat potatoes, and if I've got to boil it down,
But if I listen to you, if I understand our conversation,
it turns out if you give kids something interesting to
do and reward them and allow them to change their

(41:43):
addiction from weed to actual dollars, give them a glimpse
of what employing those things in their life and as
an adult can do for him, it turns out they
might be able to find some success in there.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
Well, it's more than my you know, we have evidence
to support that. It's pretty much a guarantee. You know,
when you put an effective replacement behavior in and it's
something that has dignity associated with it, that's the key,
right you know. I gotta I'd be remiss if I
you know, I cannot say that this is all me,
you know, number one, I point point to my Lord

(42:17):
and Savior like that. I gotta tell you, like, I
can't do this without being faced down on the ground.
The people that work for these kids every single day,
the staff that we work with, they have the same mantra.
It is I love you, I care about you, and
I cannot wait to see you again tomorrow. And when
you have that as your as your first steps in,

(42:38):
when you start with love, when you start with just
that basic, minimum viable product of love, that's where you
see an amazing staff and amazing team come together and
change change lives.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
That is beautiful stuff. It is absolutely true. I have
felt that in my own life. I've seen that my
own life. I've been on I've been both the giver
and recipient of that.

Speaker 4 (43:05):
And it is.

Speaker 3 (43:06):
True, and it doesn't You are living proof, Bob that
it doesn't take a bunch of money, it doesn't take
some special degree. It's just an average guy paying attention
to the things around him and finding a place where
they can fit in and make a difference. And you,

(43:26):
my friend, have answered a question. And for decades, I'm
fifty three years old, and I think the question has
been asked by the right, the left, Christian, non Christian,
every race under the sun. We continue to, decade after decade,

(43:47):
ask the question, how do we break the proverbial cycle?
And to hear that you are a guy who's found
a way to help break that cycle, not only through
being creative, not only through Billy being willing to work hard,
but by also just showing some genuine human compassion. And

(44:11):
you know what, that's something every single body on the
face of this planet can do to make their culture
and societies better. And that is what it means to
be a part of the army of normal folks.

Speaker 1 (44:25):
Now, you're right, you know I am.

Speaker 3 (44:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
I watched you watch the documentary, and you know I was.
I had so many knee jerks watching what you were doing.
And the biggest knee jerk I had, Take the football away,
Take the torch away, Take everything out of it. What
resonated the most with me was when you'd wrap your
arms around those kids and say I love you, and

(44:51):
it was like they'd never heard it before.

Speaker 3 (44:55):
No, they hadn't. And I'll tell you a story.

Speaker 4 (44:59):
You know.

Speaker 3 (45:00):
That was your seven year two. I can't remember which
player it was, unfortunately, but the kid was having a
bad day. He showed up the practice, pissed off, he
screwed up a couple times. And I've got a coaching
mantra that is, you can beat him up all you
want to, as long as you love him up twice

(45:21):
as hard as you beat him up. And so I
ripped on him pretty good because I hold my players accountable.
And boy, I could tell he was angry or was frustrated,
he was sad, and so, you know, just tongue in
cheek as a joke. I looked at him. I said, man,
you need a hug, and he's like a hug. Grown

(45:42):
men don't hug, right, And I said, now come here,
we're gonna hug. And I mean he turned and he
turned from a seventeen year old six foot to two
hundred and thirty pound behemoth into a three year old
child in the matter of seconds, he melted, and it
dawned on me that kids who haven't had a lot

(46:04):
of hugs have a long way to go. And if
you just show them a little bit of love and
you're willing to give to them a little bit of
your time, you can change some things. And that is exactly, Bob,
what you've done. And I am, I am, I am
just in awe of the work you've done. So last
question for you, how do we scale this?

Speaker 4 (46:26):
Bro?

Speaker 3 (46:26):
How do we take your dream? How do we take
what you've stumbled across and then been creative with and
then built and have such a passion for How How
does if we want to break the proverbial chains? How
do we how do we scale this? And is it scalable?

(46:49):
And is there a way that other people could reach
out to you if they want to scale this in
their community?

Speaker 2 (46:56):
Yeah, you know, I am like that is my the
million dollar question. It's the question that I have on
my brain. Actually every single day I put together expansion
plans and playbooks and you know, you know, leaning on
my football days to make sure that everybody understands exactly
how this should work. And this is probably the most
transparent program you'll ever see in your entire life. Because

(47:19):
if we don't teach it to everybody with transparency and
fidelity and really, you know, putting the research behind it
to make sure that that it is, you know, a
viable solution for every municipality or for every county across
the country, then we really don't don't have anything, you know.
But the bottom line is, you know, my vision and

(47:39):
mission and vision on this is that we should be
in sixty cities, one hundred and twenty thousand people out
of poverty and thirty thousand kids served in the next
ten years. Now, that was a big vision to have
four or five years ago, and now I see no
reason why we really can't see this in every single
county across the country because it's a it is a

(48:00):
solution that you can bite the tire of. It makes sense,
it doesn't. It's not like you you you know, you
go to a program and you're and you've got to
wait to see what's going on, and you walk in
the doors here and it's like every kid has walked
into their into their workplace.

Speaker 1 (48:17):
Every person is here. It's a shared work environment.

Speaker 2 (48:19):
Everybody's treated equally, they're given opportunities that they never would
have been able to dream of. But it's all about
the path to make that happen in any in any
municipality that's across the across the country. You could scale
Project Lift the way it is just you know, go
in do your development. You have three teams operations, development
and finance and administration, you know, components of it. You

(48:43):
take those three components and you you intertwine them equally,
yoke of them, equally, yoke them, work your development out,
Understand where your funding needs to come from. Have an
ambassador from every city that wants to do this, because
I got to tell you, without an ambassador, you don't
excale anywhere. You know, it's very very difficult for Bob
Zachio or you know, or for Bill to go into

(49:04):
some community somewhere and say, hey, we're going to start
this program without having that one person who believes deeply
and understands the community, because you can't just force stuff
on a community that does does or does not need it.
And then you could do it in a lot of
different ways. One, you can put the programs you know,
you know as they sit. You can't bastardize it. You
got to you got to you got to pull the

(49:24):
emotional intelligence components together with industry partners to make sure
they're all working together, because that's where the disruption is.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
Bill.

Speaker 2 (49:31):
It's like, if we don't follow industry partners through what
it is that they need, Like, for instance, your lumber company,
you're you're gonna need I don't. I don't know lumber
at all, so I probably shouldn't even speak intelligently. But
you've got you've got, you got, you got certain positions
that you need filled there. You have a talent acquisition
issue going on, you probably have a retention problem. Why

(49:52):
are we not teaching emotional intelligence inside of the workplace
and why aren't we teaching it to fourteen year olds?
So we need to know exactly what it is the
lumber company would need in order for us to teach
that to a fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen year old so
that they'd have more success in the future. They're going
to spend ninety percent of their life at your company.
It's a career, that's their new family. We better teach

(50:13):
them how.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
To work well in that environment.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
Another way that you can scale project lift is you know,
by using already existing foundations.

Speaker 1 (50:21):
That are that are running already. You know.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
One of the ways we've done it here is, besides
just the traditional scaling components are we worked with the
Police Athletic League.

Speaker 1 (50:31):
So police athletic leagues.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
Traditionally don't have strong foundations foundational supports in their environments,
so we teach them how to do that, and then
we put our operating system inside of different programs like that,
so you have your job readiness, employability, mental health components,
hands on, high touch vocational training, and then obviously destigmatizing
other mental health processes. Here's the process, here's the operating system.

(50:55):
Plug and play that right into your system that you
have there at the Police Athletic League or Boys and
Girls club or a Big Brothers and Big Sisters, and
so you can kind of use the uber ride path
of the system itself to do that. You even do
it with veterans.

Speaker 1 (51:10):
I just I just piloted a program built with homeless
And I got to tell you, most people, when I
say the word, hey, we're working with homeless folks, you're automatically,
you know, switched to access to diagnosis schizophrenia and all
these other things that are going on.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
And I got to tell you it works with them too,
with that population as well. You can deep dive this
system in just about any plug in play scenario. I
choose my mission and vision fourteen and nineteen year olds
because we haven't taught them anything.

Speaker 1 (51:40):
We need to get them in that position.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
So I don't know if that really answered your question, Bill,
but I agree with you. I think it should be
across the country, not just because I'm the founder of
the organization, but because it makes sense.

Speaker 3 (51:53):
It works, Bob plug it. How do people find it?

Speaker 4 (52:00):
What where do they? What are they?

Speaker 3 (52:01):
Google?

Speaker 1 (52:02):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (52:02):
Just google project lift dot org U r G h
O P R O j E c T l I
F T dot O r G. You know, just jump
on our website. You'll see everything I talked about is
on there.

Speaker 1 (52:14):
Again.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
Transparency is our number one policy. You can even call
my cell phone number if you want is seven seven
two three five nine two five five four.

Speaker 3 (52:25):
Call me. I hope that you get one hundred thousand
calls tomorrow. Buy not that I want you to have
to deal with it, but I hope that that people
listening us understand the phenomenal work that you and your
organization are doing, and and and the success and and
and I hope folks see that. You know, you can

(52:48):
be a grandson of an immigrant and a son of
a sheet rock guy and do amazing things in this country,
and Bob or one of them.

Speaker 4 (52:59):
I I I have really.

Speaker 3 (53:02):
Enjoyed speaking to you about this this evening me too.

Speaker 2 (53:05):
I cannot tell you how much I've enjoyed this conversation.
I've been looking forward to it all week. And and
I can't tell you how how much of an honor
it is to be on the phone with you and
having this awesome discussion about things that I'm just so
passionate about. And I could see that in this you know,
I get to see the film, and and also you know,

(53:27):
one of the conversations that you've had on this but
having a conversation with you as a whole new level.

Speaker 1 (53:32):
Thank you. Thank you for that.

Speaker 3 (53:34):
Bob. I wrote down a bunch of stuff. I don't
even know what I said. Everybody, Bob Zachio Project left
and Palm City, Florida. It's taken five thousand kids. And
I'm not talking about just normal kids. I'm talking about
at risk kids who've had drug problems and been in

(53:55):
trouble with the law. And the court sent them to Bob,
and he's taken five thousand of them and seventy two
percent of them have straightened their life out, as compared
to twenty seven percent of those kids nationally. It's a
guy who's an average guy. He's an army of normal
folk making a difference in our world. Bob zachioh thank you,

(54:17):
my friend.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
Thank you, Bill. I can't think enough awesome time, Bob.

Speaker 3 (54:23):
I think we are good to go. Look, I mean
there's some production here and some cutting and editing and
all of that, but I hope we do a good
enough job that a lot of people hear the story
because it's not for the production of the show. When
I tell you, I genuinely believe what you're doing is
freaking phenomenal, Dude. The success rate says it. And you

(54:48):
are one by one changing the community. And if we
could just get people to see people like you and
what you do, we could fix a lot of what
ails us. And Dude, you are a part of that
army for sure.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
Man, I'm humbled and thankful to have had this conversation
with you. And do you ever need me how I
definitely will. All right, my friends, Thank you for a
great evening, guys.

Speaker 3 (55:19):
To join an army of normal folks, just go to
normal folks dot us. That's right, normalfolks dot us and
sign up and become a member of our movement. It
only takes committing to doing one new thing this year
to help somebody else. And there will be a ton
of awesome ideas on this podcast from the folks for featuring.
Some of them may resonate with you deeply and others

(55:41):
may not at all, and that's okay because we're called
to do different things with the different talents that each
of us are blessed with. But together with each of
us doing what we can, we genuinely can change this country.
We'd love to hear what you do. And if there's
stories you've heard that you think we must tell, we'll
tell them. Write me anytime at Bill atnormalfolks dot us.

(56:06):
As you've heard everyone, we're featuring, myself included, we're sharing
our direct contact information. We're not just putting on a show, guys.
We're hoping to build a real community that's unlike anything
America has ever seen. And if you enjoyed this episode,
rate it, review it, share it with friends. On social

(56:26):
all these things that will help us grow an army
of normal folks.

Speaker 4 (56:32):
I'm Bill Courtney.

Speaker 3 (56:33):
Look forward to seeing you next week.