The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – 12 Simple Words (12 Simple Words…Foundation) by John W Kennedy

Episode Date: August 30, 2025

12 Simple Words (12 Simple Words...Foundation) by John W Kennedy https://www.amazon.com/12-Simple-Words-Foundation/dp/B0DG7ZGD3S One of the things that drives John W. Kennedy the craziest and increases his personal cynicism is the fact that we do not communicate anymore. This sounds odd in a world full of communication devices, but 'talking at' is not 'talking with' others. We always look to find someone to blame instead of listening and trying to understand another's POV. Most of the time, blame is never the answer needed to act, but something to deal with after the solution is found. Debate and arguments have value when they do not become personal. He has changed his approach many times in life, when someone convinced him of a better solution. We must stop making broad assertions and assumptions based on factors out of one's own control. We need to decide that groups are made up of individuals that have differing life experiences. We can embrace and learn from many.

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Today's featured author comes to us from Books to Lifemarketing.co.uk. With expert publishing to strategic marketing, they help us. authors reach their audience and maximize their book's success. Today, we have an amazing young man on the show. John W. Kennedy joins us. His book was out October 23rd, 2024. It is entitled 12 Simple Words, part of the 12 Simple Words Foundation. A series of books, I believe, that what he's talking about, and we'll get into it and

what he does there and why he does it. And with John, he is a PhD. He has a insignia of D-E-S-A. We'll find out with that as too. It's a lifelong resident of Madison, New Jersey, and a proud 30-generation Madison High School Dodger and a professional industrial mechanical engineer. He's also a business owner and a passion advocate

for manufacturing and STEM education recognized as National Distinguished Eagle Scout and as a leader in manufacturing STEM initiatives in New Jersey and the U.S. As an accomplished Eagle Scout, he's led to participate in various scouting activities, An athlete throughout his life, he enjoys skiing and biking. He values family mentorship and considering himself fortunate for the support of loved ones,

including his son, Michael, Sean Michael, I should say. So welcome the show. How are you, John? Well, I'm good. I'm very good. Thank you. Yeah. You know, being Madison Dodgers, probably my greatest accomplishment of all time.

Well, there you go. Well, it probably sounds like being a father, too. So there you go. And now a new grandfather. Oh, grandfather, too. Well, there you go. There's a new accolade to add to the list there on the resume. Now you've got to do great-grandfather.

No, I'm just kidding. Maybe we're not making that. Oh, come on, man. Come on. I had great-grandmother, great-great-grandmother went alive one time. So, you know, there's still time. You know, we're living longer now. So there you go.

Anyway, give us your dot-coms. Where can people find you on the internet to get to know you better? well the social media i do most of all is linked in it i've been on that from day one and that's certainly but also uh 12 simple words dot com which is uh the book title and and it supports uh what we're trying to accomplish through the team eagle foundation there you go so give us a 30 000 overview what's inside your book you know i was a boy scout at age 11 really got a lot out of the program. Anybody that's a Boy Scout had to learn the Scout law.

And it's 12 words. And, you know, we all said it like one word, like super-califragilistic. Because that's how we learned them. And I had a scout leader, Dennis Spencer, who said, slow the hell down. Listen to the words. And he taught me to do that. And over the years, being a scout leader, being an Eagle Scout. dad, with my son, Sean, with being involved for so long, really got into it.

And I realized how impactful these 12 words were to me and probably the millions of other kids that friggin didn't figure it out until they were about the same age as me. Yeah. Yeah. So what are the 12 words? I was a Boy Scout. I never got it to be an Eagle Scout. I flunked everything when I was young.

there's probably reasons for that but that's another show uh and a whole psychological therapy session that will buy someone a yacht but uh tell us what the 12 words are trust with a loyal helpful friendly courteous kind obedient cheerful thrifty brave clean and reverend that's a slow version of it chris yeah and uh i always struggle with the clean part i bat like every other day So, you're funny. My son, Sean, he wrote about, that's the word he picked to write about. Oh, really? It's clean because he said, you know, I know that I'm messy with a lot of things,

but in the end, I'll figure it out and be organized and so on. And, yeah, you know, you get what you get sometimes. We can't all be perfect. Well, you just do what I do. You just hire a maid. That fixes everything for me. Yeah. I can't afford being married.

I can't afford the divorces. I never got married, so I just hire maids. I've saved about $2 million for my first divorce, so I'm just waiting until I get enough money for the divorce, and then I'll get married. Anyway, guys, I think there should be divorce insurance, but that's a joke I stole from some comedian. Anyway, so you're trying to bring back these 12 simple words

into our culture, our society? Is that maybe the goal of what you're trying to accomplish with the book? Well, a little bit of that. I had been wanting to write this for a long time, and I started trying to write it as a business book. You know, if you followed these 12 words, you could be successful. And it never really came together. And then finally a couple years ago, I decided to look at it a different way. And I just looked at how they impacted me, but also in the book, there's what I call other voices, where I grab people to,

from all walks of life and i said pick a word right about it why is it important to you and so that you know i mean self-help books i love the one-minute manager books when i was younger because you could read them i call them bathroom books because you know take you about a week and you're done but it just was applicable to to what you know what's going on and if these words meant something to me did they mean something to somebody else oh and that was was important to me. And, you know, what trying to do is, is remind people that we got to talk. You don't have to agree all the time. And there's nothing wrong with arguing or we're telling somebody, you know, you don't believe what they say is right. But instead of things, we get to a point where we do silly

things like cancel people, you know, if I, Chris, if you don't say the words that I want, I'm going to cancel you. What value does that have in the long run? Absolutely not, because Chris doesn't care, and at the end, nobody talked about the problems that we were facing. There you go. That's one idea. So you had different people, write the different chapters of the book on each of the different 12 items? No, I wrote my take on all 12 words. Okay. And then, at the end, I had some other voices, some people that would add a blurb about the root. And then I also found some things like Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs. He's an Eagle Scout.

And he had written a piece, Jimmy Buffett, you know. Believe it or not, Jimmy Buffett was a scout, not an Eagle, but in one of his books, he wrote about being prepared and being part of. And then John Wayne had written near, when he was near. near death, he gave a speech about the 12 words and how important it worked. So as said, what I wanted to do is give people a variety. Yeah, I want you to hear what I have to say, but self-help, you know, I mean, I have a hard time saying what the book's about. People say, what, is it a self-help book?

And it's like, well, yeah, sort of, but not. Because, you know, I love playing baseball. I was a good baseball player, you know. high school college, but I'm 5'7. There's a great book written by Ted Williams about, called The Science of Hitting, but he was like 6'4. And he had 2010 eyesight. Oh.

You know, I don't have that. Yeah, I didn't know anymore. So, you know, while the book was good for me, I had to pick and choose what applied. So I wanted people to have in one book. the ability to hear what John has to say, but also hear what this former major in the U.S. Air Force has to say. There you go. Well, Warren Buffett, or not Warren Buffett, that's the billionaire, but the other Buffett

that you mentioned earlier, the reason he never got his Eagle, his Eagle Scout at Merit Vagge was he was drinking too many margaritas while he was in the Boy Scouts, so that's what that was. Probably came at some time. I'm not sure at that age, but I can't judge. It's a secret. No, I'm just kidding. He's a wonderful man, and he's in, hopefully wherever he's at. He's enjoying a lot of margaritas for free.

Hangover free, that is. That would be heaven. No hangovers. So there you go. So, you know, a lot of these aspects of you espouse of the 12 things, I remember going through those as a Boy Scout, and I think they shaped me. I think they're part of a subconscious mantra that I have in going to your life. I try to ascribe to those to those values.

Do you think we need more of those values in this world where, you know, trust, honesty? I mean, we live in this world, especially with social media where, you know, everything is a lie. Like people just, people just, you know, they, they just, you know, social media is a complete fakery many times of who people really are. it's the highlight reel really most times you know it's it's it's you know no one ever posts that they're at the pawn shop or the methadone clinic or or uh you know they're at the herpes clinic you know no one ever post that on social media look i'm down pawning my shit because i'm broke you know it's always look i'm standing next to a Ferrari that isn't mine that i found parked in a parking lot but i'm pretending like it's mine or i got the owner to let me sit in it you know that's that's

that's sort of that's sort of silliness going on a lot of deception you know we see this with i i see a lot of it in dating i see this catfishing where people are using AI now photos and then when you meet them in person you just about leap out of your shoes you're just like holy shit who the hell are you and so you know integrity uh a lot of the different aspects of those 12 things uh it might be good for our society to turn to some of those aspects well yeah i think I think that's true because I don't think we hold a lot of this fear. You know, we don't look, we sort of make up stuff to give us excuses to get around something. I'm always, you know, I write in a book, you know, because my biggest hero is my mother.

I don't know how she kept things going. My dad died suddenly when I was a teen, you know, how she kept our house, how she kept food on that I have no idea, but she had the most common sense way of looking at things. You know, every day it was things like, you know, make a positive difference today. And then when you came home, she'd sit you down and say, okay, what was the positive difference? She wanted to know. She wanted to dig a little bit and find out that. And, you know, I was a fairly active child going to a Catholic school with nuns.

And some days, there wasn't a lot of positives to bring home. But somehow she would drag something out and it drilled home the fact that we've got to be able to not only talk about this stuff, because everybody tells you what the right thing is to say. We all can tell you what the right thing is. But how do you act? How do you do it? And I think that's what's lost is that we're not, you know, we're okay with, you know, people. As long as there are a guy, we're okay with them lying to us or whatever.

Yeah. And I think that should change. How do you change it? I don't know, Chris. You got a great podcast. You could probably reach a hell of a lot more than I can. Well, we try. We try to reach out to the people that want to do better, but they have to want to do it better.

You know, I mean, what you're talking about in your book is individual aspects of your personal character. And this is something you have to establish. This is something you have to monitor. This is something you have to engage in and work at every day. Am I being, you know, ethical, have integrity, I'm being honest, I mean trustworthy. You know, and kind of it starts with yourself. A lot of these, a lot of these aspects that they teach in Boy, Skagit. start with themselves, you know, am I being honest with myself?

You know, one of the things that we see a lot of people doing in this world. And, you know, I'm guilty of it too as a human where we can self-delude each other or, you know, or not each other, but we can self-delude ourselves into believing our own bullshit. Sometimes it's one thing I learned as a CEO, never buy your own bullshit. When you start believing your own bullshit, I mean, it's one thing to bullshit everybody else. So when you start believing your own bullshit, you know, that kind of tells you, tells you where you're at. And so being honest with yourself, being integral with yourself, you know, it's not so much

about, it is about so much with others, but you have to start with yourself first. Being integrity, having integrity with yourself, you know, your brain listens to you. When you ask it to do stuff or when you go, hey, I have a goal, I want to accomplish it. if you've established in your in your brain and your body that what you say is gospel and you will do it then it goes okay you know he's serious this time right but if you're just always full of shit you're always just making goals you never fall through your body when your brain you tell your brain hey i want to do this goal or achieve this thing or starting a company your business whatever your thing is and it goes uh yeah you always you always talk to talk and you never do

the walk, you do the work. So you just full of shit. So we're just going to let you just keep diluting yourself and yada, yada, yada. So yeah, a lot of these aspects are very personal. And I think we used to have that in our society, at least where we operate with a modicum of at least the golden rule, do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. I am an atheist, but Jesus talked about that. There's a lot of things where I'd be like, what would Jesus do? Even though I don't believe in them. You know, some of these aspects that they write about in the Bible and other tomes of religion, which really

are just self-help, positive manuals, they're good. They're good for us. The reason they're kind of been around for everyone follows them is because you know, being good to each other is a wise investment. Because otherwise, you just have anarchy

and raiders and everyone's stealing from everybody and, you know, it's kind of like 2025 right now. Yeah, but that's where we get to. You know, you're, you're, right about that i mean you know when i ran my companies and you know you you start to learn something different about yourself you know you look at yourself a little bit differently and you know again going back to my mom you know she's a geez to drive it into me you control one person on her one person

control that person first and you know she was right and it's what i you know my wife and i told my son you know, about, you know, same thing. And now he's got a little boy, Flynn Tatum, and I would hope that he's going to say the same thing to him because that's the reality of it. You know, you got to start with yourself, but the rest of it is BS, you know? I mean, you know, I mean, I remember, you know,

going and listen when I was in high school, listen to this doctor, tell us about smoking and how bad it was, and then watching him getting into his car in the parking lot and light up a cigarette. And I said, well, you know, but, you know, it's a silly example, but you know, there's a good example. But there's so many examples like that, you know, people, when you listen to what's going on. You know, they're not going to, if you love that person, whether it's political, athletic, whatever it is, no matter what they do, you can make an excuse for them. If you hate that person, no matter what they do, you're going to find fault in it.

And that's, at the end of the day, what does that do any of us? That's true. I mean, we're all in perfect beings, really, when it comes down to it, some more than others. I've been on Twitter. That's why I don't go on Twitter. You and me, you and me, keep my head down. But there you go. tell us about your life how did you grow up how were you raised what were some of your influences

and things you ever came as you were growing up and becoming who you were how did you get into starting your own businesses and things of that nature give us your life story damn it well i'll tell you what i can of it you know i mean it said i Madison new jersey good little town you know and it was much more blue collar when i grew up with it i'm still here and it's a much more white collar But, you know, my dad was an electrical and gas inspector, and we didn't have a lot of money. My mom was a checker at the local AMP. So, you know, we did everything on the house. So one of the things that I always say to people is that, you know, my dad had a weird rule, man.

He said you could take anything apart, but you had to put it back together, and it had to work. And I'd like to say we were batted a thousand on that one, but we didn't. But it was a great learning experience for somebody that wanted to be an engineer. Because if it didn't work, usually my dad would sit down and, okay, this is what you did wrong. This is why it didn't come through. But if he flipped the book at me, you know, on Friday afternoon and said, read chapter five. And I opened it and said roofing. I knew what we were doing that week.

You know, there was a lot of good to that. Unfortunately, an aneurysm took him, you know, really quickly. Yeah, he was a decent guy. He was out there with scouts and Little League and my mom was a great lady. And I said, I have no idea how she kept things together. I have no idea because she was a checker at the local A&P. She had nothing. Wow.

But yet we didn't have food, but yet we'd go out pulling a wagon in our neighborhood asking for food for the homeless. Really? Wow. And so those are the things that tied together. And it may sound, you know, like her hyperbole, but I always say that Boy Scouts help save me because two of my scoutmasters, my mom, and a coach, if it wasn't for them after dad died, it was easy to go to the dark side.

Yeah. So these things, you know, they were able to. to you know pick me up when i was down kicked me in the butt when i needed it and uh you know that drove me to things like wanting to start a business like yourself i mean how do you get to that that point how do you start a podcast for god sakes you know i don't know i'm still trying to figure that out well you're doing pretty good at it but uh you know i mean but that's the point back after 16 years so yeah i think by year 20 we might get it down well that but that's a goal right wait we're supposed to have a goal of that we're just kind of mumbling around in the dark

of you're trying to be like where's the mic at i i did some reading about you so you've had some goals and done some good stuff so uh and so uh how did you start your first business and it sounds like maybe that's shaped in with some of the aspects you talk in the book you wanted to you know i got into the ability to buy into a manufacturing company and was able to do that. And then with a couple of close friends and my bride, we started an engineering company and expanded it and grew on these things. Honestly, Chris, it was because I thought I had some really good ideas in my head.

But the only way you can prove them is going out and do it. And, you know, there were times when I said, well, that was a dumb one. but you know you but you learn that you learn and you learn it quick when the money's coming out of your pocket that's true it's it's it's always funny how well you learn stuff when uh when you can feel the you can feel failure yeah so i don't want to do that one again no exactly you know the thing that cost you money you say well let's learn a lesson there so i i got to be involved with the things i love doing engineering and manufacturing and it's you know what's my career but also my life because you know owning a small business you know even

though we got up you know into triple figures of people you know it's still a more of a family business and you still you know I remember when my mom my wife came to me and said we got 63 kids in college and I said we got one kid what the hell are you talking about and she said no all of our employees. We got 63 people. Oh, yeah. And that was a jolt. Yeah. You know, because then all of a sudden it was, oh, man.

You're responsible. I've had triple-digit employees, man. You lose some sleep at night because you're like, if I make a bad decision, I hurt a lot of people's lives. Yeah, exactly. And it's, but, you know, it taught you some really good lessons. And to be honest with you, I'm glad I had these frigging 12, 12 words to fall back on because there were times when, you know, thinking about, you know, stuff way more heavily than I wanted them to. Yeah, I mean, you know, it can kind of feel arduous. I mean, one of the problems with this is in business and a lot of people don't realize this. As you get more successful, you, as you get more successful, you, the high wire goes up higher.

So it becomes more challenging to, you know, you don't have the ability to fall. And sometimes the view from there can be kind of scary a little bit because you're like, this is pretty high up here. Things can go bad and there it is. But, you know, espousing those 12 attributes, I'd forgotten about them. And I should put, I should have them mount them on the wall. I should find a place in here. I can mount them on the wall.

Because we really need a return to that. And it needs to be personal values. I mean, is self-accountability one of the 12 on there? Or is there a variation of it? It's not. But, you know, when you talk about it, as I came to write about each word, Chris, I found the weave into the other parts of me, whether that was integrity or whatever else. Because when you looked at the words and you applied them to yourself,

Even Reverend, you talk about, you know, being an atheist and so on, you know, and I was raised a Catholic and, you know, sort of moved away from all structured religion. I do believe that there's a God, and that's, but when I wrote about Reverend, I wasn't talking about religion because to me the word didn't apply there. And so whereas other people, other voices, spoke totally of their belief. And so it's where the journey takes us. And I think that that's part of it. When you read these words as an 11-year-old boy, it starts out, a scout is. A scout is. So you start sitting there and you're saying, I'm an 11-year-old kid,

and they think that I'm a trustworthy, loyal help. There's a lot of boots to fill here, man. I'm just, I'm just 10. You sit there and say, well, geez. And then after a while, you say, you feel pretty good about it because I say, well, they must think I'm okay. But as you get older and you go through the program and, you know, I became an eagle and I worked with 252 Eagle Scouts as a, as a mentor, you started to see how really how these were. where it's applied, and by taking them and just using them, instead of all this other BS, you know, instead of all this other, first thing we do is we hate you.

You know, you're Hitler, you're this, you're that. Listen to somebody before you speak about something. I don't even know what half these terms mean anymore. You know, constitutional crisis. There was somebody speaking about a constitutional. crisis and they were talking about the separation of church and state and separation of church and state isn't in the constitution no it's actually a letter written by Thomas Jefferson that sort of got applied to it but it just talks that the government should not create and demand that you join any

religion that's really what's in there but I'm saying that this is a person who happened to be senator speaking about a constitutional crisis and then misquoting the constitution read the damn thing you know before you speak about it read the damn thing it is in the first amendment establishment clause though so that makes it part of the constitution so it is not in the original u.s constitution the first amendment congress from make no law respecting an establishment of religion the free exercise thereof. So it actually gives

regulation to religion, but it also gives them the free exercise cause, which means government cannot prohibit the free exercise of religion, you know, like they do in places like, I mean, name any dictator, Stalin,

Russia, et cetera, et cetera. They have the state appointed religion there and part of the oligarchy, but yeah. Well, I may be all leaving king george where they were the church of england so but you know you said you ask questions argue a little bit talk about things figure yourself out how'd you become a better business person how did you be how did chris boss become a you know the podcaster you are yeah you make you joke around but obviously you've learned a hell of a lot what works and what doesn't

I hope I have them. Because if there's more, man, I'm not a patience. Well, come on. You got four more years to get to 20. Thanks. And my back hurts now. I've got to take it on that. So, yeah, there you go.

But yeah, these aspects, you know, you mentioned the Reverend one, the 12 points of the Scout law. I mean, that can apply to spirituality. I utilize spirituality. Every Sunday I have, I call it my day of gratitude, my great, day of kind of spiritual spending time with me, appreciating my family, being grateful for what I have. And I call it my, what is it, gratitude for gratefulness day. And it's also a day where I work through my archives. I take a look at my files and back them up and look through my photos

and organize my life. And you try and get my head around the week coming up. And so spirituality is a big part of that. I wish that one of the 12 laws was self-accountability, but you know, I can't have everything, Chris. It's not your world. You just live in it. But I remember when we used to say these 12 points,

didn't we used to hold up our hand and it was like an oath and we would hold up the scout. I don't even remember. Was the scout two fingers or? Three fingers. Cub Scouts was two. Oh, okay, that's it. Because that was Bobcat ears. Yeah, yeah. I remember. I know it was in the

boys or the cubs scouts too growing up yeah there you go you know these points are important and uh i mean even if well i don't really you know i find people in the world are untrustworthy so i'm not sure i'm going to fully trust them that's great focus on yourself first build the better machine you know we live in this victimhood world where we blame everybody for everything i think this is someone what you're getting at and what you're talking about and instead of trying to make each of ourselves on our own the best people we possibly can and go and take that

into the world, we're too busy pointing fingers of the people and being like, well, you should be better. And then kind of like the example you said as a guy who goes and smokes in the car, you know? You've all had that, you know? Sometimes their parents are like, you don't lie to people. And then you'll catch your parents

line. You're like, ah, ha! You're full of shit, as George Conlon would say. But, you know, there's, there's, you know, the nature of human beings is apocrates, is that a word, in its nature. And, you know, we're fallible as human beings. We don't make mistakes. But all the more important, why we should try and build the best quality machine.

And I remember taking those those and principles. And I remember, like you say, thinking they were, they're like, you know, this is a lot to put on me. I mean, I'm just like trying to. But, you know, Cub Scouts had prepared us for some of it. And you looked up to Eagle Scouts. You looked up to Boy Scouts. And we kind of need more of that again. We return to that.

You know, we just had a gentleman on the show earlier today who was talking about giving back. He's a very wealthy gentleman. Let's put that way. I'm not sure if he's a billionaire, but he's a very wealthy, successful man. And he still espouses from an early age, his parents taught him to devote himself to charity, to help other people. He worked with Mother Teresa at one point in his youth. and this was in an age where you remember the peace corps where people would do the peace corps

and that used to be a thing people go out and learn about the world doing peace corps they would learn how to serve and give you know John of Kennedy kind of maybe your name's sake talked about you know what can you do for your country Bobby Kennedy Bribles of Hope speech and other speeches

talked about the peace corps and you know what we need to do to help other people be better and help ourselves be better as well And he held up a good mirror to that. So a lot of these aspects, you know, something we really need to turn to in this life because it just seems like it's just bullshitville these days with everybody. I mean, you look at Instagram, and like I said, it's a highlight rule, you know. Then you meet people in person and they're just certainly never the people that profess to be online.

Maybe I don't. Maybe I profess to be online a great person. I'm just an idiot. Wait, I am. But I think everyone online has figured out by now. So there you go. Yeah, but you're right about that. By the way, I was named after two heroes, but not that particular hero.

I was named after William John Sr., my father, and my older brother, William John Jr., who named him. Well, it always drove me crazy that I'm John William because I'm like, you know, geez, you know. But looking back now that both of them are gone, I'm glad that they, that Billy put my name that way. But, you know, it's the simple stuff that we just don't do and think about it. You know, I look around living in the same town, you know, people can't help an older person shovel their driveway, you know, can't, you know, if it's raining, the lady down the street walking up with, you know, bags of groceries and nobody stops, you know. and it just and I read some actually

it was in USA Today where they said that like almost 80% of us feel that we've done our charitable duties when we've given away money and certainly money's important. Don't get me wrong I mean that helps all of these programs run

but until you've gone to a special Olympics meet and hugged a kid that you know ran his first 100 yard dash in his life You know, you find that it's the action that has to happen that that pays off dividends. And it's not just to the kid or to the other person. It pays off to you, too.

Yeah, yeah. I wish I could remember the quote from our prior guest, but he talked about basically how when you give, and I think it's a quote from a famous writer, but when you give, you don't lose anything. That's, you're gaining something when you give. If you die with a bunch of shit, like, you've lost. But if you give and contribute to the world and try to make the world a better place every day that you're in it so that when you leave, it's a better place, you haven't lost anything.

You haven't, if you've given money, you haven't lost money. If you've given your time, effort, love, and care, you haven't lost any of that. You've actually built a higher character of a person and contributed to the world in a way that's going to add value. And you don't know. I mean, that person you help one day, they could go on to come up with some life-changing cancer-saving thing, or maybe they just make the better world a better world in their own place, you know. We had Tim Schreiber on the show a couple years ago during COVID. He wrote the book The Call to Unite, and I think he helped founded or helped oversee.

I think the Kennedys did help start Special Olympics. Oh, yes. He's overseen that for a lot of years. Yeah, Ethel Kennedy started it. I think that was his mom. Yeah. Him and Maria Shriver's mom. But we had Tim on.

We talked about Bobby and John, yourself, I guess. We were talking about you. Thanks. That bullet is a wound is really healed up nicely. There you go. You've done well. Still sore. So sorry to, sorry to my friends of the Kennedy family too soon.

There you go. But any final thoughts as we go out on. what you want people to do, give them the pitch out on where they can pick up the book, any dot-coms where they can get to know you better. You know, I mean, the book you can get, I've been lucky. I've been learning this business by the seat of my pants. Book Baby was my original publisher. They're a good publisher.

I've been working very closely with reading glass book and writer's branding. and that's a veteran-owned company. In fact, coming up, they're going to open their fourth bookstore in New Jersey coming up on September 5th at Quaker Bridge Mall, which is kind of cool. You know, I love to see small businesses take off. And Books to Life has helped me set up this tonight, which I greatly appreciated. You know, every nickel that we earned for the book goes to Team Eagle Foundation. It's a foundation that a couple of us started in 2010 for mentoring for older youth, 15 to 20.

And then we ran programs every summer at camps, used a lot of scout camps. It wasn't a scout program, but scouting certainly supported us by giving us a good deal on their camps. And then COVID hit. and that blistered, you know, that. So we sort of switched and started doing scholarships and grants. And again, you can find this out on a 12 Simple Words.com. You can buy a book there. You can donate to Team Eagle Foundation.

You can learn a little bit about me. But more importantly, you can learn a little bit about, you know, some of the other voices that were involved. and, you know, we blew past a million dollars a year or so ago, which really, that was kind of cool, you know, because we started it as a, almost as a lark to try to figure something out and to be able to do something with that and to give out that many scholarships, you know, I mean, not incredibly wealthy, well off, I guess you'd have to say, been very blessed to own, a couple of businesses and sell them, but as my mother said, if you don't give back, you don't get any more.

That's true. And she was serious. Trying to write a second book called 12 more words, and I brought in a lot of the people that read the book suggested other words. Oh, really? So we've picked 12 more words, and I call it 12 more words acting.

it forward because I want to know what your action is on those words. Oh, like you pick a word integrity. Well, okay, how do you show integrity? How do you teach other people about integrity? Mm-hmm. You know, how do you behave with integrity, right? Right. You know, so maybe I'll get Chris Voss to write something in that book, you know? Who knows? It's an idea if I could ever find time. I can't even find time to brush my own teeth. So there's that. Well, I don't want to hear about you, you know. I mean, that gets a little. I'm a Jersey. I'm a Jersey boy.

You better watch. I mean, I can be a choice. There you. Thank you for coming on the show, John. We really appreciate it. I appreciate you having me. I know that you've had some pretty phenomenal guests.

And, you know, I appreciate being one of them. Thank you very much. Thank you. And we appreciate having you as well. And sharing your message that can raise the awareness and level of integrity of our society. If people just kind of follow those rules.

there you go so thanks for tuning in order the book where we find books are sold 12 simple words part of the 12 simple words foundation book one of one i imagine there'll be book one of two or book two of two coming out soon uh so there you go out october 23rd 2024 thanks for lines for tuning in, go to goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortess, Chris Foss, Chris Foss, wanted TikTokity, and all those crazy places in it. Be good at each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. There you go.