0:01
Have you ever looked back in your life and wish that there was someone who had helped you identify your passions and your purpose at an earlier age? Well, what if we could be that person for a new generation? I'm Mendhi Audlin, the founder of The What If UP Club and today's episode of What if it all goes right is for those of you who are parents, or those of you who work with young people, especially if your kids have reached those critical teenage years. So today, I am joined by Jonathan and Renee Harris, a husband and wife team whose passion is helping teens find their passion. So if you are a parent of teens, or you work with teens, turn up the volume. Take some notes this week, we're exploring what if it all goes right for our teenagers, Jonathan? Rene, welcome. It's so great to have you here.
0:44
Thank you. All right. Yes. fun topic.
0:46
Yes. So you have nine children, and some of them grown, many of them grown into entrepreneurs. So how did all of this start for you? Where did it begin?
0:57
Okay. Yeah, our oldest is 24. Now, and we still have youngest in our household is six. So we have the six, she 12. Now almost almost 12. Okay, she like 1214 and 16 year old, four kids at home. And then the five they're out of the home, we applied this idea of finding their passion early in life systematically. So different personalities, different interests, different abilities. We started when our oldest was 12 at the time, and so we were already doing things a little bit differently if we did homeschool, but around the age of 12, I was going through some major career changes, which is pretty typical for men, you kind of hit a plateau where to go to the next level or to stay in the field, you have to make sacrifices, you see it coming, but you resist it. And you started saying what if I had made these changes sooner? And and so I was knee deep into self help books, and then correct good stuff, by the way, which did help me in my career. And eventually I did leave that. But I asked that question. I was starting to get frustrated with this. At the end of those books, a lot of them would say, well, it's better if you can start sooner. Then kids, we had seven kids
2:10
were also taught me you have you know, you can't take those risks, as you know, when you have kids that you're taking care of compared to younger? Yeah.
2:19
I literally asked that question. Like, what if we did start sooner with our kids? That was what if so a lot of these ideas like I'm going to start applying these adult ideas to my teens, my 12 year old that time was even technically a teenager. And of course, then it's like, well, I'm gonna have to tweak it, obviously, there's some things they can can't do. So I'm going to document this on a blog. We'd like to experiment on our kids in a good way. And we're always we're always hoping, what if we did this differently? Yeah. And, and I started documenting that, and that was kind of a personal passion of my own to see how we can do it better. So both my wife and I feel that we had good education growing up. So we don't feel like we had a bad we weren't bullied in school, our teachers weren't bad, but we thought we could do way better. Whatever, we could do it better. And so we started tweaking what we were teaching them and doing. And our biggest shift came because we stopped thinking about filling up buckets of knowledge for our kids, you know, so many hours of history, so many hours of math, so many hours of whatever it is that you think they need to know, at a particular age, that's not too new in especially in the homeschooling world, but you're still kind of on this treadmill. So we reversed everything. So we were just looking for a way how can we provide them an education so that it accelerates their potential? That's a really different question. Yeah, really aggressive about it. So we were starting to one by one change things in our environment as far as the kids education was concerned. And so we reverse engineered everything for each child to see how we could explode that potential. Probably within two years of starting this, we fell into the idea that we'll have to bring value to other people. And that was a huge turning point, it gave direction as to how much of whatever ingredient you're going to spend time or put into your child's life. So that was a big turning point for us. Yeah, had to bring value to other people. And that that question is how can you bring value to someone else is very different. So if you have a child who's really into music, usually the question is, how can I go to the next level, but you're bringing value to the teacher, you're paying them? They're not, they're not paying you to go listen to so if you say, Well, how can I bring value to someone else, maybe as much as willing for them to pay me $10? That's a very different question when you're 12 or 14, and you have to wrestle with that. And the answer to that question is part of the process because usually the answer the question is you realize you have an obstacle of some kind, you're playing the wrong music. You're you're not available at the right time. You're not that good. And none of those questions get answered if you're just accumulating and consuming knowledge and skill, but as soon as you ask that question, how can I bring value to someone else it wow, that is a huge difference. in a child's life,
5:01
and we're also looking at our family's environment to see what kinds of things they can bring value to, to start with. So going back to then it's, you know, our 12 year old has certain interests. And then we had started a family business, which even that was something that was different. It's almost like what you're saying, what if we were not expecting that wasn't the that wasn't the plan when we got married to start a family business someday, but we did have an opportunity. And we took it and took that risk. And then we decided, well, what if the kids could somehow help us in the business, and that's where we started to take some of the talents. And then as our son who was into photography, we he can show his photography by helping us take product shots, for example. So that those were a few of the things that in the early stages, first question, what are they going to do with all of these buckets of knowledge, by the time they're done with us? And if they can actually start something sooner? at a younger age, when I mean, kids are in sports, kids are in music, kids are in camps all the time anyway. So it's not, it's just been a lot more intentional about thinking, where's that going to lead them? So that was just a mindset switch for us.
6:11
I love it. I have a 15 year old daughter. So and we are my husband and I are both entrepreneurial. So she grew up seeing us working from home, setting our hours, like I'm working now. Now. I'm a mom, now I'm working. And when she was six years old, I remember her knocking on the door and saying, Mom, I want to start a business. Because that's what she saw, like, do you have one and dad has one and I want one. And so you know, we supported her. And in doing that when she was when she was little bitty you know, we do it together. But I think I think it has been really helpful for her what was what I thought was really interesting was she learned how to do math, because we talked about giving some to charity, she learned about charitable giving, she learned about making a bank deposit, and she had a lot of pride in creating something. And she's done other things since then. But I found that no matter what the business is, there's math involved. There's accounting involved, there's writing skills involved. There's so many different things that she's learning in school, but she's able to take her passions and apply it to the things that she's learning in a practical way. So for kids that don't have that, that purpose, what do you think is, is the downside of not having that
7:21
we were very aware of because we have friends, older friends that were a few years ahead of us with their children. And so we were seeing a trend, I think it's growing. I mean, I haven't statistically analyzed it. But it definitely felt that the circles that we were traveling the kids, we felt were over educated. So you know, people complain, you're not educated enough? Well, in this case, the kids have so much knowledge, but they have nowhere to apply it. And I see it a little bit like a caged animal, where people react differently either to become wild, or they become almost depressed. And I think it's because they have all this potential that they have no way to express it or release it. I think there's something big about that. I mean, people make funny shows about rich kids, you know, where they're comedic. And I think they nail it. I mean, they exaggerated but but they, they nail it correctly, they have all this potential around them, right, they got a helicopter sitting outside, they've got a chef, they can be, you know, fly to Paris overnight. And yet, they're doing nothing. And they're either acting really wild or borderline suicidal, if they've been well taught. And they're sophisticated and witty, and all this thing. They're not doing anything. And I think that's part of people's DNA, they need to be to put it crudely producing, but producing means that they're bringing value to someone else. And so if they can't find a way to bring that to market, so that's, you know, using the business terms, if they can't bring it to market, then they're frustrated. And I think people, kids, teenagers react differently to that.
8:53
And I think a lot of it has to do with a parent's mindset with the kids because if they if they separate like entertainment, with school, and there's totally separate, then the kids are just seeing the entertainment as I'm I'm consuming I'm consuming, I'm consuming we always have like when the boys we have a lot more boys and girls, when they hit the computer gaming age, they would just consume they're just playing Minecraft and and they're enjoying it. And if the parents say, Okay, your time is done with that. Now it's time to go do schoolwork or your homework, those are separate in a parent's mind. But what we would do is you have to you have to use your parenting skills and kind of come up with whenever you want your kids to eat vegetables, sometimes you have to be creative. So it's the same thing where you know, I will let you do your minecraft time. But when you're playing, what would make that game better, you know, so we had a 12 year old who was very much into, he enjoyed playing, but he also could find things that would make it better like Oh, I wish I had this or that. But he also was very computer minded like he could code and he wanted to learn more of that. Well
9:53
actually, he learned to code
9:54
after that. After that, yes as a result, but he knew there's ways to make the game more fun for everyone. If only and so then he would come up with well, I think everybody would have more fun if we have this or that. So then then we give them the time and this ends up being recent. We're not saying, Okay, now school time, you're gonna go research, we just say, Well, maybe you can go like, look up how to create plugins. And that's what he did. So he would go and create plugins, bring it back. And the kids in the room had a great time. And these were all strangers, but they would say, Oh, can you make and sometimes it's just like, I don't know all the terms, but it's the profile of the person or the Minecraft figure playing, they can easily make it look different or personal or whatever. So the very simple things that they can do to stand out and make it a more fun game for everybody else, the kids will start saying, Hey, can you make that for me? Or hey, can you do this. So as they're starting to bring value to something that they're already involved in, the others want to know too. So if a kid is involved in sports, and he finds out, if you do this special technique, you're better at the sport, or if you were this certain kind of whatever, you get better at it, and you're bringing that back. That's the bringing value part in something that you're already interested in. So sometimes I think kids just don't even think outside the box. But the parents need to help with that.
11:06
Yeah, that's when they're really young teens like 12 to 14 and changes a little bit as they get older. We have seen our house is like your talent development, we mean by that is not necessarily a musical talent. It could be but we mean talent, as in the adult sense of words, your talent development is as important to us as your schooling. So a lot of times you wouldn't normally as a parent, you say, well, if a kid comes like, Well, I haven't been keeping up with my math homework, I don't think I'm going to do because I'm not in the mood, I don't feel like it. Most parents would say, That's not acceptable. I mean, things are gonna start dropping here, you're gonna lose privileges, you know, whatever, whatever it's going to want to happen, it's going to happen. And even if they're not good at, you're still going to insist that they go. But a lot of times you don't think of their talent development as their long term identity and pub, potentially their career. So we have a saying this is as important to you. So you have not been working on your coding today. In that particular sense. They
11:56
don't mind hearing that. Say, by the way,
11:58
did you work on a plugin today? Did you produce one today? Did you take it to market? Did you take it to the forum? Did you test it out? No, I guess you've lost your privileges to gaming. But here's the irony is that I am a parent, I am paying attention, I noticed that that particular son has that ability and that innate desire, they're just feeding on sugar right now, once you get a piece of the steak, it's going to blow your mind. And that's exactly what happened. And so eventually, he abandoned I mean, he still enjoys playing games, but he got into making plugins. And then from there, he got recruited by a business person owned multiple game servers, they were trying to stop identity spoofing people wouldn't they be banned would come back on. So they had to write a code, he got involved with a team. And so in there, he learned how to use the tools and hadn't really nothing to do with Minecraft or gaming. It's just regular good old fashioned programming, he really found his passion. And at some point, when they find an outlet to bring value, they become so passionate about it that most of the time, by the time they're 16, you're telling them to turn off the lights, because they want to do one more thing, whatever that is one more thing. And that's a nice problem to have. I mean, you still have to, like you need to your sleep, you need your exercise, but they are so passionate about delivering value, that value to other people is what gives them the feedback that they're on the right track. And so they wrestle with that they want to go to the next level, if they've disappointed someone, or they've just disappointed themselves that they didn't do as well. Then they say, oh, I need to work in this area. And we'll have conversations, sometimes the kids will say, I really want to pay for this, right? I really need more time for that. And we'll you know, run it through a parent filter and say, Well, that sounds that sounds good. Go for it.
13:39
And one thing that as we coach parents through this, like it would be natural to think, okay, he likes to play Minecraft, or he's on the computer all the time. Therefore, he must be a coder in the future, in this case that has how it played out for our son, but he could be the one that likes more of the creativity, more the artistic. And so you can still work as a parent, we know some of those natural bends that they have, or natural interest. They're better at this than that. So you can take that they are maybe for somebody else. It's like, well, my kid is really not techie. But he's kind of bossy. Well, an admin for these games would love to have someone help doing the admin and that's managing people. And maybe in the future, he's gonna go down that road, but you have an opportunity where he's bringing value to the game, because he's actually the guy who's willing to say, You know what, you're being inappropriate in this game you're out of here. That's just an example. But you have so many different skill sets, even in the one thing that they're spending time in. And then another part of what we coach parents is to see what you have under your roof because parents don't even realize and this is probably what cracks us up the most when parents come and say, Well, I mean, we're just the average family. There's no such thing as the average family. However people describe your family to your neighbor to the you know, your sister in law. They're so unique and different and we teach the parents how to pull from those. We call them assets.
14:55
Yeah, well, we tell a lot of times, I don't think it's deliberate but sometimes you feel like it's deliberate They'll tell you well, we have nothing special. And then you'll be finished with whatever the talk and they'll mention. Oh, and by the way, the neighbors call us crazy for doing this as a family. And I'm like, that's perfect. Right there. A lot of times it's like, okay, if you can't think of it, what do your friends describe you? How do they describe you behind your back and they say, Oh, we're the family that does this yet. Okay, then that's your family and
15:23
how you spend your time how you where you go on vacation, there are so many things that people don't think about how people were raised, if you were raised in a different country, if it was just so many different things that even where you live and, and John likes to give the example of someone who lives close to the beach, compared to someone who lives near the mountains, if their interest is something that doesn't make sense for where they live, then you don't have to throw everything into that interest to develop it, maybe you need to think outside the box,
15:49
it's very much a dynamic. Sometimes a parent can feel like, okay, I put my child in front of the piano. And after three weeks, they're not making much progress, therefore, that's not their future. Or the other way around. The kid loves to play soccer, oh, my goodness, I have a kid who's now a sports, that's his Korea, they got to stop thinking like that what you're using is an interest as the wedge to get in there. And behind that, they're going to start accumulating little skills to bring value. And that's what makes the difference. So that's not natural, that's actually not natural for the child. So that's where the parent comes in. If, as an example, we met somebody who was into sports, they had a child who was into sports, and it consumed the family's time. And you know, you can feel a lot of times parents feel half guilty, right? Because it's like, okay, it's one of those things that as soon as I finished high school, it's going to have to go by the wayside, but it keeps people entertained. And you know, as a parent, you can relax and drink your latte. But you know, it's kind of that, okay, what do you do with this, if you find out if they have some other skills or tools, and they're already there. So in this particular case, he's a computer kind of kid oriented kid, but he still had to go to soccer, it was his family's culture, he discovered, and this is where you have conversation with the parents that a lot of times they have a hard time keeping score. And there's a lot of yelling back and forth between the coach and the parents to find out what the score is. So he said, Well, this is them. And he found a way to digitally have like a digital type billboard portable that you could take to his game, techie techie, and then he's been able to reproduce this and start selling it, providing it for other saturday teams, and then
17:14
he sells them now. So exactly, he came up with a solution. And soccer was his family culture, right? He wasn't really into becoming a World Cup player, but it fit. So a lot
17:23
of times your family's culture at a younger age is going to be the key to open those social doors for you. So sometimes people have ideas that sound great, but you don't have social access to an area to exercise it. So you don't you're not trying to clone your child, but you're trying to find an opening for them to bring value to other people.
17:43
Well, I just love the just the paying attention, paying attention to the things that they that they gravitate towards, and the skills that they have in the context and the environment of the family environment. So if you were to give, you know, let's say someone's watching, listening to this, and they've got a preteen or teenager, and they're thinking, Okay, this is something you know, I've got a kid who's whose home for the summer and board, like, what can I do? What are some tips, if you if you were to say, here's my top three tips for what a parent can do this summer to start putting some of these ideas into motion, you want
18:18
to find something that's a repeatable type of activity, that's different than saying, I'm gonna go mow grandpa's lawn or so which may need to be done, but you're looking for something that they can repeat at least once a week. So the goal is you want to find something that they can become better at, if they applied more time to it, that's important. So if you're all over in many different activities, you're not going to make progress and building something that's passionate that becoming better is partly what wakens up the passion. So that's just one thing. And then the other one is you want to find something that they're mildly interested in. So it doesn't mean that they're super passionate about it, but they have an interest. And then you look for a tool or a skill set that you or your family already has. And you put them together. So that's important. It's very, very rare for a single interest to turn into a passion because it just at that age, they don't have the skill. And they don't have the depth of knowledge and experience to deliver value to other people. But they could short basically take a shortcut if they say, Okay, I do have this little interest, how can I bring value to someone else using that interest using another tool in the family? So that's going to narrow down so you might have 10 interest, but once you ask that question, you're down to one or two. So it's going to give you the answer the constraints are going to tell you okay, this is where we need to spend the time to awaken that. So being able to repeat it, being able to bring real value preferably genuine so mom and dad love you. And even when they tell you your picture is great. You're you're in doubt as a teenager, as you should make
19:45
homemade rice or twice. But not all the neighbors will.
19:50
Right So in that example of the bracelet if they're either think I want to sell it's like well, are you going to be a view as a parent say genic in your mind, are you thinking can they actually sell to complete strangers down the street? Read? And your answer is no. Yeah, more than once is no, then that's not a viable thing to do. What you have to say is, Can we repeat this? Notice we're talking about a team here? Can they go out and repeat this? And so the answer might be no, unless they do this with it, then say, okay, then that's what we're going to do. So many activities that kids are involved in, are really based are for the child's like, we had one time a bake sale, excuse me, for the for young preteen girls for our daughter and her friends. That is an example now how not how to do it, you don't want to do it that way. We spend more money as parents, and time and time doing this, because one is the can't repeat it. So they don't learn anything next week, they're not doing it again. So they don't learn from the fact that all the money they spent on the cookie dough and everything is more.
20:50
But it could be something where maybe if they do enjoy baking, and they do know that the neighbor down the street has a seven year old that needs to be watched during the day. So came like my daughter could offer to go to the neighbor's house to and say to the mom, hey, I want to practice my cooking skills, you know, obviously, it's gotta be all safe. And the mom doesn't want to have to get involved and say, Can I work with your daughter, and we're going to make this recipe and she shows her, and I'll babysit at the same time and teach her daughter something that I've been learning at home. So you're bringing value to the neighbor,
21:20
because you're setting yourself apart from the other babysitters, and yeah, you're gonna repeat it. And if you're, if a child were to go down that direction, she may decide, forget the babysitting, I'm going to do more selling kegs directly to the bachelor guys in the area. Or you may say, I really liked the babysit inside, and I'm going to bring more tricks to my bag. And I'll do all the other babysitting teams and make way more money. So your child is interacting, but repeating. So that's a
21:44
child more valuable, which takes care of so many other motivation and self esteem and all of the other stuff that you know, we're taught how to deal with our kids with it takes care of it all of that, too. Yeah, having someone come back and be all excited, oh, they're the mom was so happy with this, because the daughter learned how to, you know, decorate cookies, or whatever it was, and they want me to come back tomorrow and their ex. And now your daughter wants to go Google and start a Pinterest account. Well, that's a skill that's really valuable, especially in the future, she can start looking at recipes and coming up with tech. So it starts to just really grow once. And we teach parents how to do that. In fact, we have a course we just put out that gets people to understand or to think brainstorm all the different interests. And then we take them through a lot of q&a, kind of like a self discovery so that they come up with even more that they didn't think about. And so one thing that parents are saying is like, I didn't realize my kid had so many interests, they think they're only into one or two things, because that's what they do. But maybe the opportunities haven't been there. Or maybe after seeing a huge list of like 100 things you can do the kids like, Oh, I really want to learn that. And we're thinking with our 1450 years of life. We know a lot of different experiences. But the kids at age 12 Don't know what's out there until we expose them to it. So it's a lot of that self discovery. And then you can see where you can merge things. And then this, the kids are sparked by it. And they get passionate.
23:07
I love it. So let's cast the what if it all goes right umbrella on things. If every kid imagine every kid at the age of 1112 13 could zone in on that sphere of brilliance and develop it? How would that change the world? What do you think the ultimate expression of that is?
23:24
All right, I'll tell you as a parent, what it has done. Okay, so far, and we're not done. We still have kids at home. So many things have been amazing for our firstborn who started with the photography helped us with our business. Fast forward. Now he owns his own drone operating business, but he's not the drone operator out in the field anymore. He is the one managing a lot of other drone operators. So that's one thing. Then we have the kid that was the Minecraft Kid. And now he is also doing his own full time job too. And he's doing a lot of just not just coding, but he's gotten so good at troubleshooting so that when his older brother says, Hey, can you help me with this? Create a spreadsheet that does this thing. Together, they work on an app so that my oldest son is benefiting because his younger brother has now created an app he pays the younger brother they're always in conversation the roommates now to on top of that, so as a mom, you've got the family relationships, like what what if your kids are so good at uniquely different things that they love talking to each other because one who is good at art is getting help from the one who has the computer skills and vice versa. They're trading their skills. And when they once it has an idea. The other one is bringing more ideas to it because they're used to thinking outside the box. Every I mean, we just see it in our own family. We have a son that just got engaged over the weekend. And that involved a few different kids and they're amazing skills. And so we have our 16 year old who is a great video editor now. He put my drone operator who's also a good cook that's just an extra thing but he created a whole entire environment on mountainside with put a dinner party together sure just the two of them so that my second born son had a place to propose to his now fiance, and then he also had a drone. So he had all videos,
25:04
it was a very big project.
25:08
But that's also the personality, like we get overwhelmed looking at it, but we're not telling him what to do they do it because they love it. And then our 16 year old put this whole thing with the photos and the video to music. And so it created this amazing thing. I posted that video as my son just got engaged. And then so did my son who did it, he gets contacted by another guy who runs a company and says, Can I hire you? Can you work with me on this? So it just keeps going? It just, it's all the opportunities just grow?
25:37
I would say as a dad, one of our frustrations, of course, because we were very employee minded minded. So most of the time, you know, you go to college, we had a good college experience, etc. But at the end of the day, you're, you're metaphorically still waiting by the phone to be discovered constantly. You're waiting on your boss discovery. I mean, we're both hard workers. We like to think we're risk takers, but we're not. And so we said we want our kids to be far more confident and bigger risk takers. I mean, we look back in our life is like, why did why didn't we just like pack our bags on this one job and go? Well, we still have no kids, we could have done something. Yeah. And so and that's exactly what happened to all the kids. They seem to have no fear, but they're not reckless. They've learned to sort of embrace, I wouldn't say failure, but it's like frustration and pivot. Constantly.
26:23
I've seen it as a failure, I did this whole thing, and it's not working, I give up, I'm just gonna go, I'm just gonna go apply to the local college and get it and have worked for somebody else. But instead of seeing it that way, it's like, okay, well, this didn't work. But they're so used to this, because ever since they were 12, things don't always work, they pivot, maybe they're going to add another skill set, maybe they're going to learn something new. Or maybe they're just asking other people this is the best part too, is that we're not the experts in all these different passions and talents and interests. We've taught them like there are experts out there, when you're young, you can go to them, and they will give you advice they always do when we go and say hey, how did you do this? The experts gonna say, Yeah, I'll tell you, I'll schedule a zoom call with you, it'll be 300 bucks. So as kids, it's amazing to us to see like you just got a hold of this big expert who's now become a mentor, because you're young, and he sees potential in you. And you're asking questions. And so it's just it's as young as you can not too young. But when you can start young, you have so many more opportunities.
27:20
I love it. We're just on the same bandwidth. I'm thinking about my daughter, she quickly went beyond nail parties. And next thing you know, she's chasing butterflies. And now she wrote a book on helping kids get outdoors and explore nature. So hey, that's
27:35
bringing value. Yeah. Experience though, doing interacting with other people in a more value driven environment. Right. She's she have to worry about being on time, or at least being prepared, et cetera. And so you're building on top of that, I think that's another important thing to to understand is that as much as you can, this is the third tip, which I didn't give you yet, is that you're not looking to abandon what you've done in the past, you do have an advantage as a parent, you do see some continuity, what you're showing them was okay, well, maybe this isn't working out. But how can we modify this enough, and sometimes it's so modified, you barely recognize the beginning, but you're still building on top of it. So you're never abandoning your building on top. So you don't want people going from deep sea diving to I'm going to common account that right? There's very little continuity, but if you've been paying attention to your kid, there is some continuity and there's usually a pivot. So you're actually gaining, you're compounding your abilities going forward. So that's I'm sure exactly what happened with your daughter.
28:31
That's what it is. It's not the specific thing, like the interest. I mean, they've been somewhat consistent since then, but her interests have shifted a little bit but what has been consistent is when you help a child have more confidence, that is a life skill, when you help a child know that you have it within you to create an idea and to do something with that idea that creates value for other people, that is a life skill that you can paint it whatever color you want, but it's a basis for a happy fulfilled life. And so that's I love what you're doing. And I love the idea that we can be supporting another generation the next generation to tap into that as early as possible and to build the skills and to connect with people who want to help them to do that. So for parents that are listening or people who work with young people and they're going Yes, I need some help with this help me figure out how I can support my kid how can they learn more
29:22
if they go to parent their passion.com and on that landing page you can scroll down there may be a pop up that invites you to get a download and we just take you through the steps on the download some interests work interests or self discovery sometimes the very first step is like either you have the kid that has way too many and you don't know where to start or they seem to have no interest in anything and you just want to get them off the couch. So either way that interest worksheet will will take you through kind of step by step and then from there you know even that because it's a mindset switch to for the parents especially to some of our emails will kind of help coach you through that to see what can be done all the all the what ifs are in there. And then we kind of put some stories about our kids and what they did along the way and different things that helped us out. But download that first and then spend the time with it. And then from there, read some emails. And
30:11
that's gonna be very specific to your child. So this is not an abstract, you know, choose from a list of career ideas, have you took a personality test, this is going to say, make an inventory, and we tell you what to make an inventory. And once you have that inventory, we're going to show you how things are going to pop out that you never thought about emerge
30:27
different parts of it. And all of our nine kids are very, very different from each other. There might might be two, that could be some overlap on they might end up in the same field, but they are so very different from each other. And then if you reach out to John, I point to Jonathan as the expert really on being able to pull those things out with families. But Jonathan apparents are passionate about calm. And he'll get back to you to
30:48
fabulous, Jonathan and Renee Harris, thank you for being here. So I like to wrap things up with sharing some possibilities, starting with what if so what comes to me is what if every child had a parent that had the eyes to see that interest and had the passion for helping their kids find their passion? What if it's easy and fun for the parents? What if the parents are learning just as much as the kids by supporting them? Any possibilities? What pops up for you?
31:13
Well, I think one one thing that we were recently explained was, let's say summertime means that you are going camping, and what if instead of mom doing, you know figuring out what needs to be packed, what needs what kind of food are we going to have you have a child who's interested in cooking, and you pass that on? And what or what if you have a child that is very much into like the packing part, there's so many parts of a camping trip that is so simple, really. But it's usually on the parents to do the work of it. But all of the what ifs and what if you ask the kid, we have a little family meeting? On what what would make this trip amazing for everyone. And usually kids might think, Well, if we could just like maybe do one day camping and then go to Disneyland and then you know, you've got some work to do. So you just have them come up with all of the different things like whether it's food and let them go out and research because what if you started to have amazing summer trips with your kids were at 12 to 16. I don't know about anybody else. But I was usually like parents over there. I'm over here. I'm just going to have my little headphones and listen to my little cassette tapes, and I'm done. Good. I'm not going to really communicate. But what if it was something that instead every time you're saying, let's plan our summer vacation? What are we going to do? Everybody got involved brought their skills and talents and every time it's an amazing experience, and then you even make it better the next time.
32:30
I love it. What if it's the best summer ever parent their passion.com? Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you, Renee, for being here with me. I'm Mendhi Audlin. If you'd like to go deeper in the conversation, share your possibilities. We have our web app up community at what if up.org you can join us there What if this is just the beginning of having a really amazing time with the young people in our lives. Thank you so much for being here.
33:01
Down to chase your dream
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
