Important Ingredients To Balance For a Healthy Relationship Between Parents and Kids

I think it starts with not parenting based on validation from the outside it's when you compromise your own values and your own beliefs because of the subjective opinion of random people success for me is not money success is peace of mind lack of anxiety smiling when you wake up versus frowning being optimistic versus being cynical not being affected by the opinions and Judgment of other parents and releasing our own I think those two steps well the more you deploy judgment the more you're susceptible to judgment there's a level of knowing that your parent gives a [ __ ] that comes along with consequences that's powerful yeah you don't like it but you can appreciate it on some level correct you also respect it parenting is hard because anything that's special is hard attention is the number one asset Gary welcome thanks so much for being here thanks for having me I'm so

excited to chat about I feel like a new topic for you somewhat you're so well known in the online world and this is a little bit of a new road for you so I'm really excited to get to delve in especially because in the prep for this interview you mentioned that you felt like you were perfectly parented and we're talking to a lot of moms and I know this is something we think a lot about as moms is obviously wanting to do the best with our kids and kind of not getting to know until they're grown what worked and what didn't so I would love to hear a little bit more on that from your perspective growing up in that environment maybe what things stood out or what do you feel like were the strengths that your mom especially had that really made a lasting difference for you it's a great question so you know obviously thinking about the audience that's living listening excuse me um I you know it's funny if you look at the 20 years of my content in the business and entrepreneurial world there's always and it starts to rev up in 2008 and over the last five to seven years I talk about it more directly but I've always been very connected to emotional intelligence and really understanding how big of an impact my childhood had on my career and then to the point that you're asking specifically just an incredible um understanding that the way my mom specifically parented me the first 14 years of my life and then the reason I use that number is then I spent a lot of time with my dad um working in the family liquor store business because he was always there um the impact was pretty enormous and the reason I have been working on a book for a long time called perfectly parented is of course I'm not perfectly parented but I'm incapable of being upset or um angry at any of the moves that my parents made that were shortcomings because I'm too grateful and thankful for all the things they did well to answer you directly ironically it's why the book is titled meet me in the middle I think what my mom did which was very unusual for the 80s and Incredibly unusual today was she found balance you know I think that a lot of parenting's shortcomings in modern times is that we've overcorrected from the parenting styles of the 50s 60s 70s and we've now gone let's just use political terms if the OG days were too red well today's last 30 years have been too blue right over coddling eighth place trophies no accountability we don't even ground kids no ramifications unbelievable disrespect in the way kids speak to their parents by comparison and so I think my mom made me feel like I was remarkable and capable but she didn't create delusion and entitlement and I'm gonna say that again she made me feel like I could do it and I was the great greatest and I was special but there was no delusion or entitlement that came along with it meaning I the ability to do many things but I was going to have to work for it and you know everything had a price and civility mattered and kindness mattered oh and most of all if you disrespected me this is her talking to me or any other grown-up that was unacceptable it was just this incredible concoction of many different ingredients that were really foundational she grounded me for every report card because I was a poor student but I never felt that I was dumb or wasn't going to succeed because of a bad Rapport card that is a tight rope that she walked that I admire to this day and it's impacted me so much that when I wrote my first kids book meet in the middle even the whole vriends thing this Pokemon meet Sesame Street world I have created this intellectual property it's about kindness and good but competition and Merit and that is a level of purple that America and parenting around the world need because we've gone to blue and read well congrats to your mom that sounds like she walked an incredible line very well and for you as an adult to still have remembered those lessons and have so much gratitude for them I think that's the goal for a lot of moms and listening I was the oldest of three I was the only one born in the Old Country um I was born in the Soviet Union we immigrated here when I was three my sister was born right when we got here and then my brother was born 11 years later um and all three of us have an incredible relationship with my mom she parented all of us differently so that's another thing she contextualized every kid and reverse engineered them and so it was not a one-size fits-all approach which I think is also incredibly nuanced and important for people to hear and again all three of all two of my siblings all three of us have plenty of things we can speak to mom went too far here or dad did this but it's a we're incredibly fortunate to be parented by her um and it's motivated me as a public figure I think so much of what I put out as Gary ve on my content it's like look you can be a winner but don't compromise Humanity um and definitely the mission I have with be friends in this new book um I want kids to learn that many traits can be good but not when they're out of balance I think that message of balance is so important in today's world and I love that you are bringing this to the children's space because as you explained your childhood I could obviously see the connections of how that I'm sure has translated into the work you do and into entrepreneurship and this is a big core value in my family as well I actually have an agreement with all of my kids that they have to have a profitable business for a year before they can have a phone or a car because I think so many tangible life lessons are learned through entrepreneurship and through trying something and failing through having to work hard through having to pay attention to details um and I could see those things your mom did I was taking notes of ways I can integrate that even more so but I'm really curious because

you are known as in the online world for all of your advice around entrepreneurship and business and so much and you have such a long history of that you're probably one of the longest standing in that world what inspired you to bring that into the world for children and in with this children's book so you know I started putting out content 2006 it was around wine in 2009 it started to segue into business and mindset by 15 and 16 2015 and 16 I started to realize like I started having these moments of like why are people not doing the things that I'm saying it's free advice and it's so black and white and I realized a lot of it had to do with people being insecure and that took me down a very interesting path for several years and then I really started to get more known and I started to get into forget about hundreds of thousands of followers forget about a million follow but tens of millions of followers and that started giving me a real blessing which was I was getting an outrageous amount of DMS from 15 to 25 year olds and what I still to this day do pretty well and I I really um recommend a lot of the people that are listening especially if they're entrepreneurs I think one of the biggest shortcomings we have as parents is we don't do enough listening we don't really listen like we pay we let them talk but we don't internalize their opinions because they're seven because they're 11 because they're 14 and so I understand I mean I'm very empathetic to like all the delusion and Ridiculousness that comes out of kid' mouths but if you listen and you really pay attention there's things being communicated and so one of the things that I think that happened to me was I started reading so much of the comments because I still do this to this day I mean I read hundreds of comments a week and in parts of my year parts of my career I've read thousands of messages a week and so what started to happening was I started to get themes I started to understand themes and I could see things were really changing as the world became you know we blame so much on social media politicians but I think one of the great misses in parenting currently and of course this is generalization there's so many parents that are great of what I'm about to say but there's a massive of lack of accountability in society right now so we'll blame T you know you I'm sure you'll laugh at this um I get stopped in airports and people are like Gary I love your work but I gotta tell you like I don't believe in this Tik Tock thing I think it's bad and like my kids are getting like affected by it and I look them in the face and I'm like so then take it off their phone like you know like be a parent and so I just think that I it just started to become clear to me that there was C certain themes that were populating and I started to realize oh crap getting people at 16 17 18 19 20 and starting to talk to them about accountability about optimism about patience about tenacity about kindness about Nice Guys Finish First not last about true empathy like you know if you can't feel another person and it's all about you well then you're just selfish you want the whole world to see the world the way you see it and just all these deep things that are manifesting in our society I started to realize wait a minute if I want to leave a huge impact on the world which is definitely in me you know I'm not a nonprofit I'm not altruistic I just feel like you can both build stuff for yourself and leave a good impact on the world selfish and selfless activities don't have to be in Conflict I think you can do them both at the same time and I just started to realize wait a minute I want to get my messages younger and if I can start putting out cartoons and kid books and trading cards and you know if I can start replacing some of the content that I've seen kids consume that I'm not sure is really delivering any true message it's just commercially interesting for the people that are putting it out there well I can have a selfish and selfless framework here let me get to kids at 4 5 6 7 and start impacting their thinking and being a supplement to the good things their parents are putting in kind of like Sesame Street I got very very infatuated with Jim Henson during these last five years I think he had real good intent and I have really good intent with v and so yeah I just felt like I had to get to ages three four five six seven to really foundationally change perspective and be a positive contributor and a teammate to good parenting if I want because what was happening was I was seeing the effects of my words on 20y olds but that's like you know that was more similar to therapy like you have to really put in a lot of work to unwind a lot of things that were foundational and for me all the [ __ ] that kids are consuming even at a young age on YouTube kids and things of that nature I thought that I could contribute something positive that would set them up for more success and success for me is not money success is peace of mind lack of anxiety smil ing when you wake up versus frowning being optimistic versus being cynical and um I'm focused on that I love that and I think those early ages we often I'm sure you've seen it as a parent too but we often underestimate how incredibly capable kids are of understanding and I mean even more so and learning at that age and I think bringing those lessons at a really early age and trusting their capability and understanding them is amazing I also really love I want to highlight what you said about the difference between listening and letting them talk I think that One Step alone can completely change a parenting relationship when they feel heard I know so many of us go to therapy as adults because we didn't feel heard as children so I absolutely love that you said that um do you have

any tangible tips for the parents listening on ways to bring in that balance and accountability with our kids even at these young ages of course the book helps with that and I'll link to that in the show notes um but any practical tips from the parenting side that we can integrate I have some real thoughts AR this so I I'm going to give you a left field answer that I think is going to hit a lot of parents on the treadmill right now driving right in the chest I think it starts with not parenting based on validation from the outside so I'm going for dramatic pause for a reason you want to find balance how about starting with the humility required for what I'm asking right now which is looking to yourself in a mirror and realizing that a lot of things you push your kids to are based on positive affirmation um and justification from your own mother from your sister from fellow parents in the neighborhood from the teachers and principles in school there's too many parents who overvalue external Authority and who overvalue the opinions of how well their kids are doing uh from family members acquaintances and other circles including their social life and I feel like that is probably the thing that my mom did best if I really think the core of what got me to where I am and what she really did was she did not value principles and teachers her friends or any relatives opinions on her parenting or on our good grades bad grades our clothes what our activities were really anything and I think today's parent and again these are journalizing this well but so many I mean by the way let me give you an insight to a lot of parents that are listening so many of the 15 to 25 year olds DMS to me is my parents don't care about me they just want me to go Harvard to show me off to their friends you know the second you start putting honor roll student bumper stickers on your car is the second year starting to indicate to your kid that they care more about outside validation of you being good at school than their own parent being proud of it and it's like a real thing and I really do think a lot of people are listening to me right now and are either at the moment where they're ready to accept this truth that they're parenting for outside forces or they're viscerally reacting to what I'm saying right now either saying that's not me or glossing over or even maybe being like nah man that's not real and I think that um I think it's a big one I bet that did hit home for a lot of us I know even in small ways like when our toddlers have a temper tantrum in public and there's that immediate feeling of what are other people going to think it starts so young and I know I can resonate with this looking back to my own childhood I internalized early that good grades equaled love or academic achievement equaled love and that was a whole big thing that I got to learn to let go of in adulthood um but I know the goal for many parents is how do we avoid these same pitfalls in raising our own kids

let's talk about the one that you just brought up what you cheer for is what they strive for oh so my mother for example gave me most positive reinforcement when I was nice so when I open the door for elderly women when I'd go to McDonald's this is like a big story in my life this shaped my life I once opened the door to an elderly woman when we went to McDonald's when I was eight and you would have thought that I won the Nobel Peace Prize my ma my mom made such a to-do about it that it ingrained in my mind and so I tell a lot of parents that like if you tell your kid if you cheer if you are positive reinforcing and cheering for straight A they're going to overvalue conforming to systems if you over cheer for them being attractive like you know I grew up with a kid who was a good-look dude and his mom like that's all they talked about like how good look and by the way like he's now a 48y old man who's had like 40 plastic surgeries tons of like because and I get it now I'm like wow white he thinks to your point that's the love language that's the thing that's what he brings to society and so you have to be very thoughtful of what you ch cheer for and I think one thing that I'm very passionate about is cheering for good behavior civility kindness who you are as a human being and I think that's a big insight for parents like what you make a to-do is going to really implant in their brain and I think if you can get into accountability and work ethic I mean I'm I can tell you for me work ethic is very clearly and again sometimes it goes too far like no question am I a workaholic because like how many hours I worked or how hard I worked was positively reinform in my immigrant household and so you know even though that's a good trait and by the way that's the book it's a book of patient Panda excuse me patient Pig and um an eager Eagle eagerness is amazing but if you're overly sloppy and not strategic and thoughtful around your eagerness well then you're going to lose if you overdo it if you overextend yourself patience is one of my favorite things to talk about as an entrepreneur but if you overdo it and it becomes complacency well it's a disease so this goes back to that middle and I think that's what parents need to be thinking about I love that and so praising the things like the kindness the moments they go out of their way to help someone else the work ethic that when they work hard and put an effort at something I think that's a huge key and you touched

on work ethic I know as an entrepreneur who's hired people of various age groups and I hear this from other entrepreneurs a lot it seems like there's a lot of struggle with that work ethic and accountability piece especially in certain segments of the younger population do you feel like this parenting shift is going to be helpful in sort of reversing that tide or what other things do you think could make a change there well now you're going into I appreciate you going to a Hot Topic in business Land look I know unlimited gen Z kids that work for me let and companies I'm an investor in that are working very hard we need to especially if you're listening right now and you're in a first world country like America especially in America we're going to have to accept a very important truth that's happening in America we are a mature Empire that has had a long run of prosperity and it has created enormous entitlement when I was growing up I grew up in a blue collar neighborhood and I didn't know a single kid that starting in high school didn't work everyone in my his SCH worked McDonald's the car wash Landscaping the liquor store like me you know we what do you think's going to happen if kids don't grow up their whole life working what do you think's going to happen when kids don't grow up working and then are getting money from their parents to buy everything what do you think's happening when a lot of these kids I know I feel bad for these kids a lot of these kids started during covid where they were told to stay home and the government's going to send them a check they got tricked they grew up in a soft world and then they got paid to stay home at first and so yeah I mean I think yes I think parenting that finds the middle a high net worth family right you know this is a cliche husband and wife grow up poor or middle or lower middle class they work their asses off and they make it then they have children and they're buying them stuff because and they're making it easier for them because they have we overcorrected for what was hard for us the problem is finding the middle isn't overcorrecting to the other side of where you grew up it's just finding the middle and so you know I'm very empathetic I get it I see it um in so many I have Tendencies of it I get excited when you know I can buy something that I could have never bought you know when I was a kid like you know there's all that kind of stuff going on and so I'm very empathetic that it's hard but yeah I mean do I think I don't think parenting Alone um can solve an a mature Empire there's a reason the Roman Empire fell America has had a lot of prosperity and there's a lot of entitlement plus there's been a lot of communication of like you know demonizing work ethic and hard work right and people have weaponized not only youth culture many humans have weaponized mental health to reinforce their own laziness or lack of accountability which is devastating because so many people actually have mental health issues but now if like you don't want to go to work a lot of people are weaponizing that and it's a very confusing time in a time of transition for companies and people and I remind a lot of business owners the best kids are doing it for themselves you don't need to work at Kmart or Walmart or McDonald's anymore like if you're a whiz kid at 16 and 17 and hungry and ambitious you're building an online business for yourself you don't need to go and work at a you know a department store or a landscaping company or painting houses and so to make a couple bucks so you know it's a different era as well I'd love to Circle back to the competition and balance side there in a

world where it is about the eighth place trophies or the participation trophies helping our kids develop and find a healthy relationship with competitiveness with self-esteem I coach High School track and it's interesting to see those Dynamics play out often of like the parents seem like their egos are on the line even more than the kids when the kids are competing and often a lot of the stress comes from the parent side not even from the athletes who are doing the work so I'm curious any ways that you think as parents especially we can nurture a healthy relationship with competitiveness and with self-esteem but also a balance there in a world that gives out participation trophies for everything I mean this one's super simple eighth place trophies are hurting us this one's not even like I really don't see the path of what we're accomplishing here because at its most basic form when we're starting to tell kids at five years old that it doesn't matter and everybody wins you're telling them that losing is bad and then they fear losing and then they're risk adverse they lose courage they overval other people's opinions on their losses we've destroyed so many children competitive advantages and all those like this is why Youth Sports was so good for so long learn it was one place where Merit dominated the truth like it was what it was this is where you really learned Merit even schools not Merit you know like you get you know grades they e and flow a little bit based on a teacher you know like it's not like every te like there's participation in the classroom and that's 40% of or 30% or 25% of your grade that's completely subjective at some level you know obviously if you raise your hand or things that nature but nonetheless Sports was the most merit-based thing to kids and once we eliminated that because we didn't want to have our kids hurt hurting from losing is one of the great foundational blocks of human development I would say that a parent's job is to eliminate indifference is what leads to very dark places in people's minds and I think when you tell them it doesn't matter it breathes in difference and so yeah I'm I really struggle with eighth place trophies I really think that they've done real damage and um and you know I think parents have to acknowledge that the last 30 40 years we've created a bunch of zoo animals you know these kids are over coddled and then they go into the real world and you know I don't know if you know what happens with zoo animals back in the day zoo animals used to be let out into the wild they stopped doing that um because within a week within a day sometimes within hours that animal was killed because it was over coddled in the zoo and then it goes into the jungle and it gets killed you have a 22-year-old that you as a parent paid for everything their whole lives eighth place trophies you fighting teachers to give them better grades you manipulating things behind the scenes you creating nepotism and entitlement what do you think happens when they go into the workforce they're not prepared yeah and I can see that being a little bit of an uphill battle in a society where that's reinforced from so many angles but thankfully it seems like there is a lot that parents have the ability to affect change within that Realm um any suggestions for within our

home culture and within our interactions with our kids obviously not cuddling them but anything that can help sort of undo that societal pressure from all sides stay unmuted because I want to go back and forth in this and it's okay if any of the kids yell in the background I think it's good ambient noise um okay I mean you know this like of course we're in control this goes back to me getting yelled at an airport for Tik Tok you know like what do you want for me John you're Rick's father you're Ricky's father you don't believe in Tik Tok delete it oh you don't you can't deal with your kid pushing back a little bit and crying because he's the only one without Tik Tok in the school tough [ __ ] you're his [ __ ] dad you know what is my advice like you're in control of your kids and their four walls and my mom had no interest in being popular with other parents or other kids in my school and most of all with me you can be kind and warm and loving to your child you don't need to be their pushover friend grounding consequences ramifications you know and I know it's hard I'm not advocating for extreme red but this blue [ __ ] we've been on is also not been working the answer is purple meet me in the middle you know but yeah I think parents need to but again here's where people [ __ ] up if they think the world is blue they go fully red in their household the way to find the middle is to be purple in your household got it that's the Nuance that everyone's struggling with the number one way to find the middle is to be middle ah let me give you one that's really going to hit this hit me for all the moms that are listening right now if you're the blue or the red or the left and the right or the hard or the soft and your husband's the reverse what we tend to do is if the husband let's say he's the soft one and you're the disciplinarian if the husband's being overly soft too far what a lot of times happens is the mom in this scenario that's listening in on the treadmill right now will go too far the other way thinking that finds the middle the Insight on parenting is you as the mom in that scary go to the middle a little bit of what that saying and you and find that middle that's how you get kids to the balance point a lot of our kids are byproducts today of the extremes it's a great point it's like that pendulum analogy and we often swing way too far in the other direction before we come back I'll tell you I've done it for a long period of my life in every genre work parenting being parented and I I've really come to learn the value over the last five years and see the ramifications in every aspect of my life relationships parenting and definitely

business I also think it's really important to point out that you said your mom had a zero interest in a popularity cont of being liked by you when you were little that wasn't her main goal but you seem to have a great deal of respect and a great relationship with her as an adult as a result and I know that I've seen some statistics of the parents who go out of their way to be their kids's friend and to only be the soft one are actually the ones that most often get cut off by their adult children when the kid starts un patterning things so I think that's just a really important there's a reason why there's two different words for the word love and like my mom loved the [ __ ] out of me but she was okay if I didn't like her in moments where she had to create consequences for behavior that she didn't deem good my mom thought I was going to be wildly successful and yet grounded me to my senior year of high school for every bad report card even though I knew she knew that I knew that she knew that it didn't mean [ __ ] in the future my life think about how amazing that is what level of discipline that took we were incredibly close and I would be so devastated and cry and like but she like it's like anything else she Drew lines in the sand and there's like a safety in the structure of knowing those boundaries versus them being sort of unclear and hard to find and so then you're testing them to try to find out what they are to find that sense of security I think everyone's every mother's going to agree with me because they all remember being kids there's a level of knowing that your parent gives a [ __ ] that comes along with consequences that's powerful yeah you don't like it but you can appreciate it on some level correct you also respect it like I love that I get to walk around Earth respecting my parents like too many kids by four when you're 11 When You're 15 when you're 12 and you're [ __ ] on your parent and they're not doing anything about it you lose all you lose respect for and that screws with you as a kid if you don't respect your CH your parents are way too focused on what other parents are doing yeah key takeaway if we can all let go of something is let go of the opinions of other people related to our relationship with our children especially to remind everybody most of the parents that you know that are your friends with your kids or in your circles very few of them are going to be your friends after your kids leave high school so you're basically forming the rest of your life's relationship with your children based on the opinions of people that you're not even going to know for the majority of your life that's insane yeah I don't give a [ __ ] that Alpha mom Sarah like judged you because you took Instagram off your or that you didn't give your kid a phone and that you're what here is the you know what the scene is ala mom Sarah and you are in some sort of function or dropping off at school it gets brought up like what gr uh she says with a fourth grader I'm giving Little Sally a phone this year when are you giving a phone and if you say ninth grade oh my God if you can deal with that oh my God you have a much better chance of having a healthy relationship with your children in perpetuity oh such if you think that ninth grade is the right year you may think it's seventh College you may think it's first grade I'll be honest with you I have zero opinions or Judgment of other parents how about that let me say it nice and close you may decide that you don't give a phone to your child until they leave your house at 18 or you may decide that you give it to them at six years old and I'm telling you right now at least one man's point of view good for you as long as it's your decision if you're being peer pressured into giving a phone and for cuz that's when everybody else is getting a phone that's when it starts getting ugly if you in your heart believe that your kid's not ready in needs and in seventh grade it's when you compromise your own values and your own beliefs because of the subjective opinion of random people and those Andor not random opinions if you do something your mom if your mom tells you fourth grad's the right year for Sally she's my granddaughter I know but you want sixth grade well then you've already failed you're going to resent your mom if it doesn't work out by the way that's a cool scenario let's play out this scenario oldest son gets a phone in fifth grade youngest daughter's coming up she's going into fifth grade she's like all right Mom I'm ready and you do you have the strength to say no darling you're getting a your phone in seventh grade but wait a minute my brother Tom got in fifth grade Tom and you are different do you like Tom more no baby I just think that another year or two for you to keep your innocence or to keep you like you these are the combos parents are not having everything's a conformed system they read they listen to by the way my greatest hope is that not a single parent listens to anything that I'm saying right now and agrees with it for the sake of agreeing they may agree because it's how they see the world as well there might be an Insight that they heard that starts them down a path of changing their mind I love changing my mind um there may be things they hear they're like [ __ ] you Gary I'm like respect you know your parents we're talking macro this you know this why answered your gen Z question of like I have tons of workaholic gen Z kids I just have way more than are not you know so none of this is blanket but do we have the strength to make our own decisions based on our own kids realities that's I think what we're struggling with how about like the reverse here's one that's impossible my dad was always scared about giving anything because he always said if you give something you can't take it back how about giving it giving your kid a phone in fifth grade because everyone else is getting one that year you can see that they're not handling it well and taking it away talk about tough right do you have the strength as a parent to be okay with that all that crying and moaning and J and judgment from parents crying and moaning inside your own house you give a fifth grader a phone for three months and then you take it away it's like detox those first months are going to be hard parenting is hard because anything that's special is hard and um and this all goes to like you know there's a character I haven't done a kids book on yet called accountable ant inside of be friends and I really want to make accountable ant powerful and famous and sought-after and collectible and cool like Coco melon and Spider-Man because if God forbid I pull that off and kids love accountability it would change the world absolutely yeah I think it's so important that like developing a comfort with being temporarily disliked by our children to do what's in their best interest out of love and also the two sides of what you said is not being affected by the opinions and Judgment of other parents and releasing our own judgment of other parents I think those two steps well would shift so much very you're a very smart lady you that little last part you said it's so funny that you said that I'm G to pull it up on my phone right now GNA show it I know this is probably audio but I'm going to show you or if there's a video clip here you go literally you know I posted today I'll read it want less negativity in your life Step One Stop deploying it in retaliation to it two wrongs don't think you're right and number two stop looking for it and that comes from this whole thing of judgment that I think a lot about which is you want to be less susceptible to judgment stop deploying it yeah one of the reasons that I think I'm able to be a public figure and deal with judgment is because I don't tend to judge it's notp framewor so when you are a judger and you've got opinions on how Carol dresses her daughter Susan or what you know R what Rick and Nancy are doing this summer with the more you deploy judgment the more you're susceptible to judgment I love that well I know we got to weave in a little bit of talk about the book through some really amazing conversations around parenting but before we wrap up I want to make sure we get to talk a little in more detail about the book where people can find it and what's coming next for the whole V universe so befriends vri. com go check that out I think a lot of you are going to associate with it we the book comes out in July meet me in the middle um it's a story of eager eagle and patient Pig on it's a really fun book it reads from both sides so you read the story from patient Pig's perspective and then you flip the book over and you read the book from eager Eagle's perspective and they meet in the middle the stories and it really does talk about this balance which is something I think all of us as parents are trying to uh figure out as far as what's else is going on with v friends um Moon bug the makers of Coco melon and I have teamed up and the vriends cartoons hit uh this fall uh on YouTube kids so I'm very excited about that and then for all the collectors all the parents that have Pokemon collectors in their house if you go to eBay and type in be friends um I think you'll get a really good look at what's going on with the collectibility of this world so yeah it's been a lot of fun you know I grew up loving Transformers and I've always been into 80s pop culture My Little Ponies and Strawberry Shortcake and Gem and Josie and the Pussycats and you know save by the and all this stuff like pop culture 80s life and I always wanted to get into that world and now creating my own little Universe which I really do see as a Sesame Street meets Pokemon Sesame Street and instilling good values and Pokemon competition and collectibility and uh we're we're taking a stab at it this kids book is a big big uh step in the right direction well I love it I will put links in the show notes for all of you guys listening on the go Gary I hope it's wild day successful and that it resonates with many families it was such a great joy to get to catch up with you today and have this conversation and I know how busy you are so I'm deeply grateful for your time today thank you so much thanks for having me