An Army of Normal Folks - Pam Rosener: 33,000 Moms And Sons Serving Together (Pt 1)

Episode Date: August 19, 2025

Pam was a member of National Service League, where moms and daughters do service projects. But she's got 3 sons, so she thought why not start something for moms and sons to do this too?! 24 years later, Young Men’s Service League has 199 chapters with 33,000 moms and sons serving together!Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I clearly distinctly remembering thinking about, gosh, you know, this is so popular. What are we going to do? And I had a whisper. My little whisper said, build it. And like I say in the field of dreams, and they will come. But it said, build it, and they will serve. You know, like, people will do this. If you make it duplicatable, you can make this so that it impacts communities across the country.

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've been a football coach in inner city Memphis. And the last part somehow, well, it led to a film about our team and that won the Oscar.

It's called Undefeated. I believe our country's problems are never going to be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits using big words that nobody ever uses on CNN and Fox, but rather by an army of normal folks. That's us, just you and me saying, hey, maybe, maybe I can help. That's what Pam Rosner, the voice you just heard, has done. Pam and her friends wanted to volunteer with their sons, and so they started a whole movement to do that. Today, the Young Men's Service League has a hundred and ninety-nine chapters across the country and with over 30,000 moms and sons volunteering together, I can't wait for you to meet Pam and hear all about this amazing story

right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. Hello, I'm John Lithgow. We choose to go to the moon. I want to tell you about my new fiction podcast. That's one small step for man. It's about Buzz Aldrin, one of the true pioneers of space. You're a great pilot, Buzz. As far as I'm concerned, the best I've seen.

That's the story you think you know. This is the story you don't. Predisposition to depression, alcohol abuse, and suicide. We'll see Buzz try to overcome demon. What do you say, Buzz? Another beer? And triumph over addiction. Here's to you, Buzz Aldrin. Good luck to you. And become a true hero.

Buzz and I will proceed into the lunar module. Not because he conquers space, but because he conquers himself. Buzz. We intercepted a Soviet radio transmission. Starring me, John Lithgow. Can you put it through? Can you translate? In the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

When I became a journalist, I was the first Latina in the newsrooms where I worked. I'm Maria Inojosa. I dreamt of having a place where voices that have been historically sidelined would instead be centered. For over 30 years now, Latino USA has been that place. This is Latino USA, the Radio Journal of News and Cultura. As the longest running Latino news and culture show in the United States, Latino USA delivers the stories that truly matter to all of us. From sharp and deep analysis of the most pressing news,

they're creating these narrative that immigrants are criminals. This is about everyone's freedom of speech. Nobody expected two popes from the American continent to stories about our cultures and our identities. When you do get a trans character like Imidavetes, the trans community is going to push back on that. Colerism, all of these things like exist in Mexican culture and Latino culture. You'll hear from people like Congresswoman, AOC.

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and I could not stop thinking about it. I'm Bridget Todd. Host of the tech podcast, there are no girls on the internet. On this new season, I'm talking to the innovators who are left out of the tech headlines. Like the visionary behind a movie pass, black founder Stacey Spikes, who was pushed out of movie pass the company that he founded. His story is wild and it's currently the subject of a juicy new HBO documentary.

We dive into how culture connects us. When you go to France, or you go to England, or you go to Hong Kong, those kids are wearing Jordans, they're wearing Kobe's shirt, they're. watching Black Panther. And the challenges of being a black founder. Close your eyes and tell me what a tech founder looks like. They're not going to describe someone who looks like me and they're not going to describe someone who looks like you.

I created There Are No Girls on the Internet because the future belongs to all of us. So listen to There Are No Girls on the Internet on the IHurt Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our IHeart Radio Music Festival, presented by Capital One, is coming back to Las Vegas. Vegas. September 19th and 20th.

On your feet. Streaming live only on Hulu. Ladies and gentlemen, Brian Adams, Ed Shearrett, Fade, Chlorilla, Jelly Roll, John Fogarty, Lil Wayne, LL Cool J, Mariah, Mariah Carey, Maroon 5, Sammy Hagar, Tate McCray, the Offspring, Tim McGraw. Tickets are on sale now at AXS.com. Get your tickets today. AXS.com. Pam Rosner, welcome to Memphis. Hi, how are you doing today? I'm groovy. You just flew in, didn't you?

I did. Crack a dawn. Quick American flight up to Memphis and quick American flight out of Memphis, I guess. I thought I was going to get a little work done. By the time I got logged in and on the Internet, they said, shut your computers and put your trays up. It's an hour or so, isn't it? Well, thanks for coming. Everybody, Pam Rosner is the founder and national president.

president of young men's service league, headquartered out of Plano, Texas, started in Plano, Texas, and you'll learn soon that it's gone far and beyond Plano, Texas. But when I first read it, heard about you, I thought, that's a strange name for a man, Pam, the founder and president of the Young Man's Service League. Or why is the Young Man Service League being led by a lady named Pam? Good question. It was kind of interesting, and that's going to be revealed to us soon enough. First, tell me a little bit about you.

Where you come from? I was actually born in Texas, lived there a couple years, and then my mom and dad divorced when I was very young, and I moved back to live with my grandparents in Maryland. And my mom remarried, military guy, and we lived, he was out of the military by the time I was about seven or eight. And so we lived in the D.C. area as he pursued careers. My dad was involved in, he was a Navy pilot, then a commander. Then he went to work for the NSA.

Wow, that's cool. Yeah, then he went to work for the CIA. And then he went to work for the Defense Department. He served under George Bush Sr. And so I let a different life up there in the Washington world. but then he retired and got into private industry. But it was some interesting things, and he did things I never knew. I won't ever know that he did.

But I think it gave me a different perspective on life, obviously, from a young age, to be involved in that kind of stuff. And then I went to college in New Hampshire, which is kind of crazy. And they had a through program when I graduated. If you had a certain grade point average, you could get automatic acceptance into the University of Dallas. So I went home to spring break and to my roommate. And I said, what are we going to do after college?

Let's go get our MBA. And so we came down to Texas sight unseen and started the adventure here. And that's how I ended up in the Dallas area. Wow. That's a cool story. And wow, your dad was a Navy pilot and then did all that stuff. That's interesting, very interesting dynamic man. You need to get up in his attic and dig around and find out really what the deal was with Jack Ruby and some other stuff.

I don't have all that stuff. He was not FBI, though. So the CIA does different things, right? So he was involved in. He played a major role in the first Gulf War, or securing airspace over Turkey. Really? He was a Middle Eastern specialist, yeah.

That is very, very cool. That was not in the prep at all, but I think that's a really cool thing. So you get to Dallas and you get your MBA because... That's what you do. What you do, I guess, there it is. and um your story for the purposes of the young man's service league starts really it's not just one man what men's men's what i say man's you've said man oh you're serving more than one person

it's not the young man it's a bunch of other people i didn't want to correct me oh absolutely correct me i'm a big doofus if i say something stupid feel free to correct me so your story for the purposes of the young men's service league pits up when you're 40, but you've graduated. So I assume you meet Mr. Wright, get married and all that. Yeah, get married. I started a career in real estate and I did that until I had my second child. Then I went pretty much full-time mother for the next, I don't know, 10 or 15 years. I have four kids. They range. Yeah, they range in age from 40 to 31. And three of them are boys or men now. Yeah. And so that's kind of where I got started with Young Men Service League was trying to figure out something to do for my son, my oldest boy, Clark, when he was in ninth grade. I had been doing National Charity League, which is a women's organization and moms.

He was in ninth grade. Your oldest. My oldest was in ninth grade. So they were all kicking at that time. Oh, yeah. We were crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Our children are 30, 29, 28, and 27. Oh, you were crazy too. Crazy. Absolutely. My wife is a saint to just imagine having three in diapers and be pregnant. Yeah. Oh, crazy. Yeah. All right. So I've read that you were with some moms, some friends, and there was a thing for some girls that was great. And you were like, why isn't something like this for the boys? And I'll kind of let you take it from there. Is that a decent setup? That's a great setup.

Okay. Yeah, we were at a lunch with some friends celebrating somebody's birthday, and we were just talking about how much we'd enjoyed serving with our daughters. And we were like, well, you know, there's nothing. There's nothing out here for us. What was the thing for the daughters called? National Charity League. What?

I don't even know what that is. It's actually a hundred, it's either a hundred year old organization that started in California. It's girls sixth grade to 12th grade that served their communities in a very similar structure. So we structured ourselves similar to National Charity League. They focus on one other thing that which we do on is culture. We don't do cultural activities. And they have things like teas and senior presentations and all of that. So we decided we've almost seems debutante. It's a little bit that way. And so we decided to take the service part of that idea and just organize an organization for young men so that they can get out and learn how to serve those in our

communities because we were living in a, you know, a fairly, you know, well-established neighborhood, middle-class, middle-class, these kids had not seen, they've not seen what the other side of the world looks like. And so we really wanted to give them some exposure so that they would have a heart of compassion for other people instead of just staying in their little bubble where they, you know, they just go through life and not ever have that heart tug of helping somebody. So literally, how many friends are at lunch? Seven. Bill, one thing for context, I think we heard about your originally, Pam, from Stacey

Horst with Erin's Hope for Friends. Oh, okay. I think you guys and National Service League are both volunteers for her charity, Erin's Hope for Friends. So I heard her talk about that, like a lot of our volunteers come from these two places. Yes. And then I looked into you guys. So National Charity League has, I think, about close to 300 chapters, 280, maybe.

something chapters now across the country yeah and they've been there a hundred years we started in 2001 i don't do this yet okay you can't blow that yet okay i'm not going to blow that yet okay all right we'll talk about that later we're 2001 and there's a bunch of chapters so we'll get to it so we decide but there's seven of you seven but see what i'm trying to do is get into that moment yeah i mean there's seven of you living in middle to upper middle to upper class lives with kids having lunch Having lunch. Probably a $40 lunch, you know, maybe a $30 lunch, but you're not sitting at McDonald's. Right.

And you just kind of come up with this idea that our boys need to learn a little bit about service and get out of their vacuum and their shell and their bubble. And we should do something about it. I mean, that is the most innocuous thing to just be having a conversation at lunch and decide to go away. act on it. Why were you? You know, at first it got a lot of excitement. Everybody was like, yeah, we should do that. We should do that. Well, everybody does that at lunch over wine and salads.

Exactly. And so then a core group of us, probably four of us, went back and said, should we do this? That's what I mean. Yeah, yeah. And we're like, well, let's give it a try. You know, why not? And so we had the experience of serving both, probably three of us had served in National

Charity League, so we knew how they're set up was. With the girls, right. So we knew how their setup was, but, you know, we didn't have a clue, you know, what it took to get from that point to actually going to serve in a philanthropy and being successful in it. And so we just, you know, did a grassroots effort and started recruiting people. And we had a meeting at one of our houses and said, anybody who has a son that's in eighth or ninth or tenth grade, I can't remember which ones, because we were doing two classes at that point, come to this meeting. And we got. 60 people to show up. You're kidding. The first time we opened the doors. All moms, yeah. Showed up to say they wanted to be, they wanted to hear about what we were going to do. And then they were like, we're in.

Let's do it. And now a few messages from our generous sponsors. But first, we're hosting two live interviews that I want to share with you. On August 20th, We're hosting one in Memphis with Peter Mutabazi, who is known as the Foster Dad Flipper and is the most famous foster dad in all of America. Peter has fostered, get this, 47 kids, has adopted three of them and is about to adopt three more, and his radical love has gone viral. This dude's got 2.5 million followers on social media to learn more. and RSVP, visit fosterdadflipper.eventbright.com.

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We choose to go to the moon. I want to tell you about my new fiction podcast. That's one small step for man. It's about Buzz Aldrin, one of the true pioneers of space. You're a great pilot, Buzz. As far as I'm concerned, the best I've seen. That's the story you think, you know. This is the story you don't.

Predisposition to depression, alcohol abuse, and suicide. We'll see Buzz try to overcome demons. What do you say, Buzz? Another beer? And triumph over addiction. Here's to you, Buzz Aldrin. Good luck to you. And become a true hero.

Buzz and I will proceed. into the lunar module. Not because he conquers space, but because he conquers himself. Buzz. We intercepted a Soviet radio transmission. Starring me, John Lithgow. Can you put it through?

No, can you translate? In the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When I became a journalist, I was the first Latina in the newsrooms where I worked. I'm Maria Inogosa. I dreamt of having a place where voices that have been historically sidelined would instead be centered.

For over 30 years now, Latino USA has been that place. This is Latino USA, the Radio Journal of News and Cultura. As the longest running Latino news and culture show in the United States, Latino USA delivers the stories that truly matter to all of us. From sharp and deep analysis of the most pressing news, they're creating this narrative that immigrants are criminals. This is about everyone's. freedom of speech. Nobody expected

to popes from the American continent to stories about our cultures and our identities. When you do get a trans character like Emilio Perez, the trans community is going to push back on that. Colorism, all of these things like exist in Mexican culture and Latino culture. You'll hear

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It made zero cents, and I could not stop thinking about it. I'm Bridget Todd, host of the tech podcast, there are no girls on the internet. On this new season, I'm talking to the innovators who are left out of the tech headlines, like the visionary behind a movie pass, Black founder Stacey Spikes, who was pushed out of Movie Pass, the company they, he founded. His story is wild that it's currently the subject of a juicy new HBO documentary. We dive into how culture connects us. When you go to France, or you go to England, or you go to Hong Kong, those kids are wearing Jordans, they're wearing Kobe's shirt, they're watching

Black Panther. And the challenges of being a Black founder. Close your eyes and tell me what a tech founder looks like. They're not going to describe someone who looks like me and they're not going to describe someone who looks like you. I created There Are No Girls on the Internet because the future belongs to all of us. So listen to There Are No Girls on the Internet on the IHurt Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our IHeart Radio Music Festival, presented by Capital One, is coming back to Las Vegas. Vegas.

September 19th and 20th. On your feet. Streaming live only on Hulu. Ladies and gentlemen. Brian Adams. Ed Shearin. Fade. Glorilla Roll.

John Fogarty. Lil Wayne. L.L. Cool J. Mariah Carey. Baroon 5, Sammy Hagar, Tate McCray, the Offspring, Tim McGraw, tickets are on sale now at AXS.com. Get your tickets today, AXS.com. And so we just started, we formed a board and started making decisions, you know, on everything under the moon and writing bylaws and do, you know, just how to become a nonprofit and, Had you ever done anything like that in life?

No, none of us had, none of us had any experience in it. That kind of speaks to the power, the untapped power of the mom. Mm-hmm. I say that and somebody asked me about this last week, I call our moms the secret sauce of young men servicely because they are so talented and amazing. And often overlooked. Yeah. Yeah. And I encourage women who, especially who haven't been in the workforce, who, you know, are looking for things to do when they come and start a chapter, for instance, and they've never done anything like that before. I was like, you can use this as a launch pad to go anywhere you want in life, you know. And I say that at our conferences. I was 42. I hadn't held a real job. You know, I was sold real estate kind of, you know, a little bit, not like I do now. And I didn't work for corporation. I didn't have any background in any of that. And I have been able to, you know, grow and learn and develop.

And I feel like I'm coming into my own now, you know, at my age and not. So I want them to know, you know, if your mom at 40, 42, 46, 48, 50, whatever it is, it's not too late to do something great, you know. And I really like to encourage our women in that capacity. I absolutely love that. I mean, it's never too late. As long as the sun's up and there's air in your lungs and you have a passion and an ability and see an area of need, you got a chance to go to work and do something. All right.

So 60 of you show up at this house. I guess you, I don't know how you got around, I guess text, emails, flowers, word of mouth. We didn't have texting back then. That's right. I guess not. What did you do? We barely had email. It was just coming out, right?

It'd been out. I don't know when the email started. So how did you get 60 people? We just called people and start. talking old-fashioned way, right? Hi, you know, we're doing this. It's interesting, though. There were 60 moms there to get young men to start engaging.

Were the young men aware that you guys were colluding against their Saturdays at this point? Not initially, no. They had no idea, did they? They're like, we're doing what? You've signed me up for what? That's exactly what my kids would have done are like, are you out of your mom? mind, you know, this is my life. What are you doing? Yeah. I'm sleeping on Saturday or, you know, whatever it is. And so, yeah, we had a little resistance at first. But as they got

involved, it really, that kind of melted away. And we always tell the moms who are thinking about joining our organization, your son's not going to jump up and down and go, can we do this? Can we do this? You know, like, you have to talk to him about it and explain to him the benefits of it. And you're probably going to have to model how to do this. And you might have to pull their hair. And you have to pull them out of bed by their arms or their ears, sometimes to go where they need to go. But in the end, we talk about it's the ride home. Okay. Yeah.

So 60 moms and tell me what you first do. So the first thing we did, which we can't do anymore. Oh, really? We've outlawed it is to help with a golf tournament that was going on at the local country club. It was supporting a philanthropy. And so the boys got to drive carts around and fill up water bottles and do all the things to manage the golf tournament. They had a ball. They thought this was the greatest thing ever.

And so that was our very first philanthropy event. And then we expanded and we had to beg people to let us. Why'd you outlawed? We want them to be actually serving the people in need and not handing out a water bottle. I kind of figured that's what you're going to say because that's nice. Yeah, it's nice. But that's kind of soft. They need it, but they don't need us to do that.

You know, like let's use our time. We don't take that much time of the boys. We want each hour to be as impactful as possible. So we much rather have them serving food or building ramps for, you know, people to get out of their homes or working in food pantries or playing with children who have physical handicaps that playing sports, you know. I think they get so much more. out of that, then they do just going to some major huge corporate event where they're not.

They're just a mass number. Okay. So after that, they had a big time, but you're still just moms and a bunch of kids at this point. So then we had to go convince some philanthropies, real philanthropies, that we could go and we will show up for them. Because that's what happens. You know, most of the philanthropies have bad experiences with volunteers. And so they're like, okay, we'll give you a try. Oh, so you had to beg.

Yeah, to get opportunities. to help because they've heard it been there done that yeah and they didn't know anything about us and we probably haven't talked about this too much on the show but you're probably aware of this Pam there is like a big movement moving away from volunteers or a lot of these nonprofits like you don't even deal with it and they just want to work with professional staff and just forget about volunteers I think that's bad I think that's I think that's I think that's I think that pulls away an integral fiber and the DNA of what philanthropy is supposed to be, which is volunteering as part of it.

So I hate that. We need to, we need to not talk about that anymore. Okay, go ahead. Well, I will say on one note that the philanthropies would rather have money than time sometimes. But once we can prove that we are an asset to them, then they like our time. I bet. So you bagged. Yeah.

And we got, so the next one we got was the Plano Senior Community Home, which is a low-income senior living facility. And so we started going in there and playing bingo with the members and or the residents. You're telling me, high school kids, boys, playing bingo. Yeah. And a low-income old folks on them. And they love it. And they fight over who gets to call the numbers. Are you kidding?

Yeah. And then so this, we're still serving that Philanx Creek 24 years later. And to the point where the seniors and the senior in that, in that residence, every year at the end of the year, have a graduation party for our seniors who are moving on and going. Are you kidding? Yeah. It's a very sweet, sweet story. That's fantastic. And I cannot imagine the lessons the boys love.

Oh, we have, we have some great stories. My favorite story there is there's a man, there's not many men. There's a lot of women in this. And one of the young men who lived down the street from me started up a relationship with this man who was in there. And he loved baseball. And so does this kid. He loved baseball. And so his name was Lou.

And Lou and Jason just talked. You know, every time they got together, they talked about baseball. And Lou said, you know, when I was young, I wanted to be a major league player, but I couldn't because my family needed me to work. And I couldn't go play. And he was able to. He would have made the team, but he couldn't because of money. And so Jason went and told his dad this story. And his dad was just like, well, we got to do something wonderful for him.

So he arranged for Lou to go to the Texas Rangers game and throw out the first pitch of one of the games. Are you kidding? That had to have been one of the highlights of Lou's life. Yeah. Yeah. He just, I mean, it was really, really powerful. That's enough. I mean, we could wrap there.

That is the feel good story. of the week. That's awesome. And was Jason? He was great. With him? Yeah. Oh, yeah. A whole bunch of people went with them. But yeah. That is fabulous. Okay. So you start doing this. All right. And how long does it go on before you say we could have chapters more than just this? So we, the first couple years, we started our second chapter in 2004. So three years. Yeah, three years. We had such demand. We had to turn people away. How many were in one chapter? So we try to do 25 young men per class. So the classes aren't too big.

Because if they get too big, then they become invisible. You know, boys can disappear into the woodwork really easily and not, you know, not communicate, not play a role, not feel safe in the environment. And so we don't want that. We want them to feel like they're really part of something. So we started our second chapter. And probably about that time, I share in my stories that I had a whispered, You know, I was, I work, I used to work late.

Like, I would get, go to start working at 10 o'clock and figuring things out and go to bed at one and get up at, you know, six to get the family going again. And I clearly distinctly remembering thinking about, gosh, how could, you know, this is so popular. What are we going to do? And my little whisper said, build it. And like I say, in the field of dreams, and they will come. But it said, build it and they will serve. You know, like they, people will do this.

if you make it duplicatable, you can make this so that it impacts the communities across the country. So it's like the next day I woke up and I was like, well, this is what we got to do. You know, we got to build this. We need to make it a system that's duplicatable. And then we need to go and take it forth. When you're at the kitchen table and you tell your unsuspecting husband, that is beautiful wife and mother of his four children who's making his happy home

has decided now to take this little idea that started at lunch over a salad and some wine. You haven't said that, I'm just guessing. And scale it. And you're already working from 10 at night to 1 because you're being mom from 6 a.m. to 10. What is his reaction to that? You know, I think he at first just didn't really worry about it, you know, because, you know, he didn't really think. It was kind of, quote, cute. Yeah.

Bless her heart. Yeah. Well, he thought, you know, yeah, they can grow in Dallas, you know, that's, I can see that. That's great. But, you know, don't take time away from too much time away from your family or, you know, other things. And so, ironically, he is a lawyer. And he's the one who helped us craft our bylaws and do the things to get us started, right? Good for him. So he's helping. He's still doing pro bono for us 24 years later, starting the new chapters and everything. So at first, I think he just, he was so wrapped up in everything he was doing. he wasn't too worried about it. But when it got bigger, he was like, are you doing that again?

We'll be right back. Hello, I'm John Lithgow. We choose to go to the move. I want to tell you about my new fiction podcast. That's one small step for man. It's about Buzz Aldrin, one of the true pioneers of space. You're a great.

pilot, Buzz. As far as I'm concerned, the best I've seen. That's the story you think, you know. This is the story you don't. Pre-disposition to depression, alcohol abuse, and suicide. We'll see Buzz try to overcome demons. What do you say, Buzz? Another beer? And triumph over addiction. Use to you, Buzz Aldrin. Good luck to you. And become a true hero. Buzz and I will proceed into the lunar module. Not because he conquers space, but because he conquers himself. Buzz. We intercepted a Soviet radio transmission.

Starring me, John Lithgow. Can you put it through? No, can you translate? On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When I became a journalist, I was the first Latina in the newsrooms where I worked. I'm Maria Inojosa. I dreamt of having a place where voices that have been historically sidelined would instead be centered. For over 30 years now, Latino USA.

has been that place. This is Latino USA, the Radio Journal of News and Cultura. As the longest running Latino news and culture show in the United States, Latino USA delivers the stories that truly matter to all of us. From sharp and deep analysis of the most pressing news, they're creating this narrative that immigrants or criminals. This is about everyone's freedom of speech. Nobody expected two popes from the American continent

to stories about our culture. and our identities. When you do get a trans character like Imira Perez, the trans community is going to push back on that. Colorism, all of these things like exist in Mexican culture and Latino culture.

You'll hear from people like Congresswoman, AOC. I don't want to give them my fear. I'm not going to give them my fear. Listen to Latino USA as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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It made zero cents and I could not stop thinking about it. I'm Bridget Todd, host of the tech podcast, there are no girls on the internet. On this new season, I'm talking to the innovators who are left out of the tech headlines. Like the visionary behind a movie pass, Black founder Stacey Spikes, who was pushed out of Movie Pass, the company that he founded. His story is wild that it's currently the subject of a juicy new HBO documentary. We dive into how culture connects us. When you go to France, or you go to England, or you go to Hong Kong, those kids are wearing Jordans, they're wearing Kobe's shirt, they're watching Black Panther.

And the challenges of being a Black founder. Close your eyes and tell me what a tech founder looks like. They're not going to describe someone who looks like me and they're not going to describe someone who looks like you. I created There Are No Girls on the Internet because the future belongs to all of us. So listen to There Are No Girls on the Internet on the IHurt Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Everyone thinks they'd never join a cult. But it happens all the time to people just like you. And people just like us.

I'm Lola Blanc and I'm Megan Elizabeth. We're the hosts of Trust Me, a podcast about cults, manipulation, and the psychology of belief. Each week we talk to fellow survivors, former believers, and experts to understand why people get pulled in and how they get out. Trust me, new episodes every Wednesday on exactly right. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. So, 2004, you felt called in some way or another. You saw the success of the last three years. You said, built it. But again, you had never built anything. really. So what does build it look like and how did that unfold for you?

I think that initially the first thing we did is once we got all our rules and systems in place, we used to make, this is so funny, we used to make notebooks. So we would make a master notebook for every new chapter that had like all the job descriptions and the timelines and what you have to do a to Z to start the chapter. And these binders were like this thick and the chapter presidents would be so excited to get them, you know, because then they could go. and do it. And then our board would just support those chapters, like one by one, like our new babies. And really, we carried that process in place for another six, seven years before we got onto a website. We didn't even have a website until 2010 or 2012, something like that. And so

we just really did it one at a time. And we didn't do any advertising. It was all word of mouth. It was primarily focused in Dallas initially. And then we started our first out-of-state chapter in Atlanta. And that was from a mom who had lived in Plano who moved to Atlanta with twin boys. And she's like, we're going to do this for my boys. And so she started the whole thing. We have, I think, 20 chapters in Atlanta now. You have 20 chapters in Atlanta alone?

All right. We jumped too far ahead. I know. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. That's okay. So 2004, you start your second chapter.

I mean, well, I guess now is the time. How many chapters do you have today? We have 199 chapters officially as of today. And how many cities? We go by states. So we're in 23 states. I'd have to count the cities. Unbelievable.

And how many members? About 33, 5, I think, 33,000 something members. What is boys? Boys and moms. Yeah, the mom is actually. the member, but officially, but total people participating in the program. And then we have about 20, some thousand alumni now. Okay.

With that little reveal, which is unbelievable to me, I'll ask you the question. I just want to ask you later. But so when does this thing become two chapters to like 10 to like 20 to like you're saying, holy crap, I have a full-time job now? You understand what I'm saying? Yeah, you know, I think it just happened. We started that second chapter 2004. I think in 2006 we added five.

So we went from adding one to adding five. And so we've gradually increased that number as we've grown and grew a bigger staff. And this past year we started 25. We started 25 one year? That has to be an enormous amount of work. It's an enormous amount of work. but because we have the system, the system really makes it easier to do. And our people who start, the new chapters are just blown away by the resources that we provide them.

I mean, they were just like, we had no idea. When we jumped on this webinar to hear about this thing that you would hand us this gift of an organization that we just had to plug and play. And so that is, we've started that in the very beginning and we've carried it on and gotten it better, you know, as time and technology has moved along. So when you started this thing, your oldest was in ninth grade. How many boys do you have? I have three.

Three boys. How old was the third? So the next one, he was in sixth grade and then the next one was in second grade. Second grade. So I didn't do it your way. I had two years apart, three years apart, four years apart. We didn't plan it. Trust me.

Third, fourth, fifth. sixth, and then six, so that's 12 years. At the end of 12 or 13 years, your kids are done. Done. Why keep going at that point? I think I am an entrepreneur at heart, I think, and I love the idea of expanding it and growing it to touch as many communities as possible. And then I've uncovered a lot of things.

I've learned a lot of things about myself in the process. What have you learned about yourself? I've learned that I am a good leader. I've learned that I am a good visionary. I think that I have a lot of people in my organization who are great at, you know, governance or finance or marketing or whatever. Or legal. Right.

Yeah. But there's really nobody that has the vision to push it forward that I have right now anyway. I'm sure there's people out there. And that is a little founder syndrome maybe. But I think that that has, my gifts have come out as I've gotten older and I can utilize those to help grow this organization. You know, I'm moving from day to day things now to, you know, getting more exposure to corporations and, you know, starting to do fundraising, just really elevating the knowledge of our organization out in the communities that haven't heard of us before. And so my role is changing and I don't see myself stepping away anytime real. soon. I think that right now is still relevant and to keeping the organization going and moving

forward. And we have hiccups. Trust me, we have had some hiccups. Nothing's easy. Nothing worthwhile. There's been a couple times I want to quit, but, you know, I didn't. So is there, is there a chapter in Memphis? There is not. Change that. That's right. We got to change that for sure. I just need one eighth grade mom to talk to. That's all. all I mean. One eighth grade mom to talk to. I think there's probably at least a hundred listening to us right now from this area. Expect a call.

Okay. All right. So explain to me kind of what a chapter looks like and what the year looks like for them. Okay. So we start out our calendar year runs April 1 to May 1 to April 30th. And so we recruit in the spring. So for anybody starting a chapter, they'll get their incoming ninth grade class, unless it's a new chapter, then we let them do two classes. But existing chapters will recruit in the spring and then kick off their year May 1st.

And we do that so that kids can serve some hours during the summer, you know, when they have a little bit more free times. But we offer two parts to our program. We do the service component. They have to do a minimum of 20 hours a year. And a lot of them do more than that. We have some kids doing 100, 150 hours a year. who really have a passion for it, and then they can do their service hours whenever they want to, but they do them with their mom. And that's what makes us different than a lot of organizations.

I think that is our key differentiator is that you go serve with your mom. Your mom doesn't sign you up and kick you out the door, and she actually goes and does the work with you. So they start serving during the summer, and then in the fall we start a set of meetings that the young men have to attend, and they have to attend five out of seven meetings that are offered a year. And the meeting are like once a month on a Sunday afternoon for an hour and a half and they will do a variety of life skills that we teach them and so we have a set curriculum in place and we cover things from you know like how to change a tire you know how do you shop at the grocery store mom based organization teaching boys how to change a tire now that I love what's the what's the car maintenance you know

well we get we bring in speakers for the grade level or they make go to an auto shop, right, and learn the 10 things they need to check on their car or we will teach them about insurance and why it's important not to mess up your insurance or we teach them about things. I say one of the big things that we do is making good decisions and we bring in speakers who will speak to them. Moms tell the kids all the time, don't drive and drink, don't take drugs, don't do this, don't do that. But when somebody else comes in and talks to them and shares the real life consequences of some of those bad decisions, it's far more. more impactful. So we have a very relevant... Can you share that story?

Is it Sean speaks? You share that specific story? Yeah. Okay. So one of the most impactful ones that I have had, we actually did this as a multi-chapter meeting in Plano. I think we had 15, 1,200 people there, I think. And this young man got up to speak and he's in a motorized wheelchair and he comes up to the stage. And he does his entire presentation he has presented and created himself with this index finger because he can't speak but he can type and he so use a voice. His paralysis has taken his voice too. And so he was paralyzed by being a rider in a friend's car who was drunk and had an accident

and he lost everything and, you know, except for his actual life. And he was making people's, changing people's lives by doing these presentations. And I remember, I was with my youngest son. How did he do a speech with his finger? It was voice activated through the... So he could type on a keypad and the computer would read... What he had had. Would speak what he's typing.

And he would tell the story of being a writer in a drunk accident. And you could hear a pin drop, right? And my son turned to me and goes, I'm never going to drink alcohol. Of course, you know, that changed later. But, you know... Drinking alcohol and drinking and driving or driving or... two different things, too. Yeah. And so we really try to, we do that. We've had another family in Plano, the Taylor Houten Foundation. I don't know if you've heard of them, but this young man

took his life because he had been taking steroids. And so they came in and teach, taught the kids about steroid use, about, you know, a lot of these kids are into pre-workout things. They're very dangerous. We've had moms come in and talk about how they lost their son because they had a massive of heart attack by taking the pre-workout stuff. So there's a lot. We try to bring in things that will educate the young men. Sometimes we educate the young men and the moms. You know, we were right on the bandwagon with a vaping thing when it came out and

was talking about that, about the fentanyl, you know, that's out there in the world. So we- So education around practical life experience stuff as well as service. Those are two focus. I mean, that's awesome. my my so i do not believe in having able-bodied children in your house while you are working and they are doing nothing yeah it infuriates me so one of the things lisa and i did at a very early age when the kids were eight they started learning how to do yard work edging weed eating mowing,

Clippin Ivy, picking up leaves, whatever. And it was a typical, I mean, you're for Plano, so you know what early August heat. Yeah, it's hot. Oh, it's hot. And in Memphis, it's humid. And so my nine-year-old daughter, or at that time, she would have been,

11-year-old daughter, comes around the corner. Red face, sweaty, angry. And 11- or 12-year-old girl has a little, level of sassiness that starts to burble up that I think is the precursor to becoming a woman. Anyway, so she comes around the corner and looks at me with a bag of grass over her shoulder and says, why can't we have a yard man like normal people? And I said, honey, the very question is the reason you're out here in this yard. My kids, my girls had still-toed boots and worked on the lawn.

Lumberyard before they had makeup. My boys. That's impressive because I can't say I did the same. Well, you didn't have a Lumberyard. Yeah. I haven't owned a Lumberyard. I did all those things, but I did my kids. My boys learned how to weld and change tires and do all the.

Here's the reason I'm telling you all this is my son, my first son, went to college and by his senior year in his fraternity of 180 people. any single time somebody had something as simple as a wiper blade that didn't work, a blinker light out, a flat tire, a switch on the wall of their dorm that didn't work. They called Will. That's great. Well, these idiots didn't even know which side of a screwdriver to hold. Yeah, okay.

You know? And it does speak, in my opinion, to a little bit of a, of a law. among our young men coming up that they we stuff that I took granted that a male needed to know to do they don't no I know and so I hear what you're talking about about how to change a tire and finances and just basic practical responsibility stuff I mean that seems so simple that stuff we ought to be teaching, but you're putting it into almost a practical curriculum. Yeah. One of the things I've gone after and said to our ninth grade moms when they're helping plan

the meetings, you need to have a class and teach them how to paint. Because, you know, we go to all these places to paint for the, you know, shelters and things like that. And they make a hot mess. And then when somebody has to come in and clean up after them, and so I was like, first we need to take them to Lowe's or Home Depot or something like that and teach them how to paint. at least simply, you know? And so they were like, really?

And I was like, yes, really, because we don't have the energy to go back and clean up your mess. So, you know, if you're going to do a paint project, make sure you have a class that teaches them how to paint a wall. The old adage, if you do something right, do it right the first time. Yeah, right, right. I remember a friend of my kids coming over when Will was cutting the grass and the kid was looking at this lawnmour as if he was looking at an alien. And he said, Mr. Bill. I said, yeah, he said, where's the button? And I said, what button?

I said, the button to start it. And I'm like, come here, boy. And I made them hold the thing. And I told him to lean over and pull the cord. And he pulled it three times. And he was like, wow, that's hard. And I'm like, what? Your parents should be flogged.

And now they have electric ones. So you know, they don't have to worry about it. Well, we're still in Memphis. We don't have a lot of wars around here. All right. So, robot driven. It looks like in May, they're serving. And then throughout this time, you have these practical classes.

You have meetings. And the moms are with the boys. The moms don't meet with the boys. There's only a team. No, no, when they do the service. Yeah, when they do the service. The moms actually have meetings also. But we teach different things.

We actually try to find things that are interesting for moms like elder care. You know, where do you start with that? Or bringing in a philanthropy speaker, you know, to talk about one of the philanthropy partners that we have or, you know, talking through, you know, how to communicate with your son. So we try to give them different types of things that are, we call it, feeding the mom. So she wants to come to the business meeting and hear what's going on with the chapter. And she only has to attend three a year. So both ends get a little bit of a curriculum. And then they do the service.

That is really cool. So I want you to tell this story and why. matters um we highlighted probably a year ago sleep and heavenly peace and it's still one of my favorite stories and it actually connected us to another story in is it Jamaica Haiti in Haiti where we now have a Haitian orphanage that has beds that now are working with sleep in heavenly peace and the because the orphanage has a woodwork shop. The orphans at the woodworking shop are building beds for Haitian kids who are not orphans who don't have beds. Oh, I love that. Yeah. That's amazing. Well, that's the power

of an army of normal folks. That's that connectivity and the bottom up work. But anyway, I know you guys have done something in Sleep and Heavenly Peace, but you had a really creative idea to make sure that the kids understood why these beds were important. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Love it. Tell us. So we actually work with Sleep and Heavenly Peace in many of our chapters, you know, because they're all over the country, too. And one of the chapters this year for their ultimate gift, they do an education segment. Explain ultimate gift first. I jumped it. I should have let you. Well, we serve Sleep in Heavenly Peace for regular hours and for ultimate gift hours. So it could be either one. So let me skip the ultimate gift and I'll finish the story. And then we'll talk about that because that's a bigger subject.

That's cool. Okay. So Sleep and Heavenly Peace, they were going to go do their project. So they decided they take all the kids who were going to participate in the project and their moms and go sleep like in a gym floor overnight without, you know, anything, but maybe, I think they were allowed to bring a pillow. And so these kids, then they got up the next morning and they're like, so how do you feel today? And they're like, not so great. How did you sleep? Not so great. Yeah, my body hurts. And then they were like, well, how do you think it would feel like if you had to do that and then you didn't get breakfast and then you had to go to school, you know, and how would you feel in school? Would you be able to be the best students?

that you could be? And they were just like, oh, my gosh, how do people do this? I did it one night, you know, and it made them understand why they were building these beds at the project. And so when they actually build the beds and they deliver them, they connect with the children who are receiving it and understand that this is making their life better. And it's just so powerful. And that concludes part one of my conversation with Pam Rosner. And you don't want to miss part two. It's now available to listen to. Together, guys, we can change this country.

It's going to start with you. I'll see in part two. In sitcoms, when someone has a problem, they just blurt it out and move on. Well, I lost my job and my parakeet is missing. How is your day? But the real world is different. Managing life's challenges can be overwhelming, so what do we do? We get support. The Huntsman Mental Health Institute and the Ad Council have mental health resources

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Buzz, starring me, John Lithgow. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Everyone thinks they'd never join a cult. But it happens all the time to people just like you. And people just like us. I'm Lola Blanc and I'm Megan Elizabeth. We're the hosts of Trust Me, a podcast about cults, manipulation, and the psychology of belief.

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