Healthy Business
May 4, 2022

How To Encourage Others In The Workplace

Our personal life is hard as it is. Can the workplace be better? Join as Johnny Sirpilla dives into how we can encourage others better in the workplace.

Johnny Sirpilla, founder of Encourage, LLC., is an entrepreneur, passionate leader, a committed family man and the author of Life Is Hard but I’ll Be OK: The Power of Hope, Emerging through Pain and Learning to Live with Gratitude. Johnny endured personal tragedies that led him to repurpose himself in his early 50’s focused on driving meaningful change in the workplace allowing employees to return home empowered. This passion inspired the creation of Encourage, LLC., a self-funded small family office with four divisions; Encourage Healthy Living, Encourage Leadership, Encourage Investment and Encourage Adoption. Johnny has been married to his college sweetheart, Susan, for over 30 years and has three grown children, Beau, Bella and Stone... one of which is adopted but he can’t remember which one.

JOHNNY'S WEBSITE: https://www.encourage33.com/

JOHNNY'S BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/Life-Hard-but-Ill-Gratitude/dp/1956642870/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

FEATURED PODCASTS:

Life is Hard But You'll Be Ok | Johnny Sirpilla

The Braintrust "Driving Change" Podcast | Johnny Sirpilla

Encouraging Hope With Johnny Sirpilla: Lead To Succeed 99

Life is Hard But You'll Be Ok - Johnny Sirpilla

Life is Hard, But I’ll Be Ok - Johnny Sirpilla on Reframing Your Life and Finding Growth Through Traumatic Experiences

JOHNNY'S SOCIALS

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/JohnnySirpilla/

LINKED IN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnny-sirpilla/

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/johnnysirpilla/?hl=en

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Have you ever left work feeling down and defeated? Like your boss couldn't just give you a break? Most of the time bosses don't think about what's going on in your home life, your personal life, or really any type of life outside of work. Johnny Sirpilla and I dive into how we can encourage others better in the workplace and what that looks like! Join us as we dive into how to serve others and what our happiness truly depends on.

How To Encourage Others In The Workplace

I have a great guest for you, Johnny Sirpilla. I'm going to talk about Johnny here in a little bit, but before I do, go over to IronDeep.com. We got our men's retreat. It's called the Men's Awakening, coming up. I got four spots left. It's going to be maxed out of 30 guys in the Rocky Mountains in Timber Lakes, Utah under one roof. We ran out the largest log cabin in the world, 26,000 square feet in the Rocky Mountains, 30 guys max. Also, check out our YouTube channel, Iron Deep, on YouTube to get all the episodes. We got some new videos. We got one come out called Humility: The Greatest Virtue.

I'm going to introduce you to Johnny Sirpilla. Who is Johnny Sirpilla? He is a legend in the RV industry. He owns many businesses. He's also the Founder of Encourage LLC. He's the new author of Life is Hard but I'll Be OK: The Power of Hope Emerging through Pain and Learning to Live with Gratitude. Johnny is a successful man. This guy has it all together. He knows a lot of people. He is the pinnacle of success, but he went through a very deep personal tragedy in his life. He talks about that in his book, Life is Hard but I'll Be OK.

He talks about it in this episode and how, through the pain, helped him emerge as a better leader, a better man, a better follower of Christ, a better husband, and a father. That is why he has started his organization Encourage LLC, which encourages healthy living, leadership, investments, and adoption. I'm going to let him talk about that here in a little bit. Now, here it is, Mr. Johnny Sirpilla. What's going on, Johnny?

How are you doing, Brett?

I'm doing fantastic. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Thank you for having me.

I’m super excited to chat with you and pick your brain. We have mutual friends in the RV industry. I live in Northern Indiana, which I heard, and I don't know if this is true, Johnny. They said that the three counties up here in Northern Indiana, like 70% or 80% of manufacturing RVs are in this area. Is this true or did someone make that up because they're familiar?

Yes. It’s the Mecca of the United States. There are production sites out there across the country as well, but nowhere like Elkhart County in that area.

That's cool. I'm living right in that area of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and you were born into the RV industry. You're the second generation. Your dad had this RV industry. Talk to us about how you grew up in that and your business a little bit to get us started.

I was born into it. My dad was one of the pioneers in the industry in the late 1950s. I was born in the mid-‘60s and was born and raised in the industry. The company, my dad's dealership, was older than me. I did every job in the dealership growing up. When it came time for college, my dad told me I was going to be an Accounting major. He wanted me to understand accounting and finance and to never rely on anyone else to explain the P&L to me.

I did that and went off to undergrad. He chose my undergraduate degree. I got to choose my graduate degree. I came back to the industry in my family business a few years after college. I worked in Chicago for a bit until I got the phone call to come home. I loved working in the family business. I had so many family members and great people there. It is a generation of people who had been there were my bosses when I was a kid.

When I was about 36 years old, Camping World approached me as one of the first acquisitions, as they were doing a national roll-up strategy. I sold my company to Camping World and ended up becoming President and Chief Business Development Officer. I had a fifteen-year run there with them until my 50th birthday. We did our IPO, then I felt I was old enough to choose what Johnny wanted to do for the rest of his life. That's what I did.

That's quite the story. A personal question to you is, what was it like to have this family business? Did you feel like you were forced to take this over or to walk into this? Did you ever feel a lot of pressure from your family to take into this? Was this something that Johnny wanted to do? Talk to us about that.

I never felt pressure at all. My parents were so good at giving and gracious. There was an expectation. I think more unspoken. My dad always said he was so surprised when I came back, yet he did call me and asked me to come back. It was an honor. It was probably not an industry that I would've chosen for myself. I'm not a RV-er. I’ve never enjoyed the lifestyle, but what I enjoyed is I respected the lifestyle and I love the idea of families having their recreation time together.

I love serving people in that way. You work so hard for a couple of weeks, a year of vacation, then you have an opportunity that we have to serve them and give them that quality family time. I was raised in a loving family and a large extended Italian family. That part was cool to me. Doing it myself, RV-ing, I wasn't in too much, but the idea of all being together and helping serve others, that's what worked for me.

Every family at one time buys an RV. We did our RV not a long time ago. We used it a couple of times and it's one of those things. It's either a boat or an RV. The best day is when you buy it. The best day is when you sell it. I'll tell you some of our best times. There's something about being outside in nature with your family piling into this RV, being all over each other, trying to figure life out, and doing bikes. It's the closeness of it, and bringing the family together is nothing like it.

RVs keep the family together. I'm a big fan of that.

Moving forward, you grew up in the RV industry, sold it, sold your family company to Camping World, and served in the leadership, even as a past president for a while. Now you have written a book and you transitioned your life. I want to take a step back because you had some trials in your life. I read your book, which is called Life is Hard but I’ll Be OK.

I was going to open up this book and I was expecting all about business. There were a lot of lessons in there about leadership and business, but it was, honestly, a lot about your personal life, your personal grief, and a tragedy that you and your wife had. Let's talk about this a little bit. In your late twenties, something happened. Tell our audiences about that.

We were both thriving in our careers. My wife was a rockstar in the pharmaceutical industry back in the early ‘90s. We were ready to start a family. Years went by, and we were unsuccessful at that. Through a lot of medical intervention, we did end up pregnant with triplets. We had two sons and a daughter, Nicholas, Mary and Peter. Unfortunately, they all passed away as infants. Our world was shattered. The darkness that we felt was overwhelming, the time after the funeral and returning to work. The whole experience transformed us.

We have so much gratitude as we look back on it. My wife and I have talked about the idea where we wish for a different outcome. We wish that Nicholas, Mary, and Peter lived, but we would not wish the experience away that it never happened because we don't know who we are as a couple, as a family, the later kids that followed, and knowing their older brothers and sister that passed before them. We don't know ourselves as a family unit without Nicholas, Mary, and Peter. We would never ask for that to have never happened to us.

We were fortunate in so many ways through that tragedy that we changed it from a tragedy to a blessing. It led into my business life because it further formed my heart because I was never a yeller or screamer of a leader, but it made me more of a compassionate leader. It made me understand and be very respectful of what my employees, my associates, and their home lives could be like. What am I doing in my business to create a great environment for them to go home and be the best for their families, or am I creating an environment that is so stress-producing for them that they end up going home and taking out that aggression and stress on their families? It shaped me in a lot of ways for good. I'm very thankful for our journey as hard as it was to end up with the three kids that we have.

I was reading that and it was gut-wrenching to go through that experience. I was walking in that experience as you wrote it in your book, Life is Hard but I'll Be OK. I want to ask you. You were starting to come into your career, you were a leader, had this family business, typically in your late 20s or early ‘30s, mid-30s or 40s. You're in that season of your success and you were highly successful, but you had this tragedy at home, which eventually transformed your heart and gave you that compassion for your employees.

Off the bat, was there a time period or a season of walking back into your business? You take your personal experiences into your business world. What was that like for you? Was there a season of numbness and darkness and your business didn't matter as much as it did the year before? What was that like for you walking back into your work life after having this tragedy at home?

It was a season of awakening. After the funeral, we took some time, went down South to Florida, and let my wife rest. We were gone for a few weeks, then came back to have both of us resume our careers. I realized all the things that I saw wrong with my own company. I saw it through a different lens. There was that awakening where I recognized that I was in such a bad place mentally, maybe a place where some of my employees are in the same place mentally for what's going on in their home lives. I realized the disrespect that was being shown to each other as coworkers. It is not a genuine authentic customer experience environment where we can create raving fans.

There was a great book on customer experience called Raving Fans that we studied and read as a company many years ago. For me, I was at such a dark place that I needed work to be more significant and uplifting to help me when I went home. It gave me the clarity of how I'm going to lead. I'm not going to lead to the bottom line performance or the top line performance. I'm going to lead to the individual performance.

IDP 83 | Encourage Others
Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service

When I started doing that, I was able to see a rise in our company. Our sales nearly tripled. The money falling to the bottom line was far greater than it had ever been before. The culture and the customer experience were so different. Camping World came knocking on the door for an acquisition, and they were very generous to me in that deal. Many blessings came out of that time and that awakening. That's how I saw that transition of going from darkness to light.

I love the term awakening and having that awakening moment. It sounds like you had that compassion. You started to care about people, whether it was your employees, people who worked for you, or people buying products from you. It sounds like your view is starting to see people as people. They're not just a number or someone working for you but they're a person and they have a home life.

I love what you said. It's like, “You can have this work life, this culture in your work that you can give them to go home. It is going to give them energy to pour into their family, to love their family more, or vice versa.” It can be so stressful. They'll come in and be quick to yell or snap at their loved ones as well. Would you agree that it gave you that eyes or that lens to see people as human beings?

For sure. I have to say that God did bless me with a kind and compassionate heart. I didn't go from this rough and gruff guy to, all of a sudden, a kinder version. That, I was pretty consistent with. Again, it was the awareness in my head of seeing everything come together because when you think about a greater home life that you carry that mind and heart into work gives a greater work life, then you carry that circle back to home, it's a circle. When you think about work-life balance, I always say it's just life. It's life at home and life at work. If you're a bad guy at home, you're likely a bad guy at work.

I felt a responsibility then for the ten hours or so that I might have somebody at work. How was I feeding their soul and the culture? How was I allowing their manager or their coworkers to treat each other that fed their soul to go back home? I started thinking about the hand that we as employers and leaders have in people's home lives. If you want to accept that title as president, vice president, manager, director, foreman, or supervisor, whatever that is, you have to realize that you're supervising someone's work-life that flows into their home life. If you don't want that responsibility, you need to get out of that role because if you're just doing it for the self-glorifying purposes of your own paycheck, that's not leadership.

Let's talk about this leadership because you have this organization now called Encourage LLC. You're on this mission. You've repurposed yourself to encourage people, healthy living, leadership, investment, and adoption. Let's start with this new organization. What brought this about? You've been in the RV industry pretty much your entire life, and now you're on this mission to encourage others in these.

Our IPO at Camping World happened on my 50th birthday. It was a blessed day. It was on a Friday, October 7th, in 2016. I was hearing in my heart, literally, on the New York Stock Exchange floor. We're ringing the bell, all that excitement and I'm hearing, “It's time to go.” I got to the airport six hours early. I thought it was some anxiety about my youngest son. He was a high school quarterback and I was thinking about getting home for Friday Night Lights.

As I'm sitting at the airport, I keep hearing it again, “It's time to go.” I recognized that day that it was in my heart that it was time to leave the company. It was the most selfish decision I've ever made in my life, to walk away from people I loved and cared about in a professional setting, and to go explore what's going to happen in my 50s. I was praying on the verse from Thessalonians 5:11, which is, “Encourage one another and lift each other up just as in fact you were doing.”

I saw that affirmation, “Just as in fact you were doing.” I thought, “I do that. I do encourage people.” I love encouraging people. That gets me excited to see that I can take something dark and make it light for someone and encourage them. That became the name of my company, then I started focusing on the things that are important to me. First, it was the investments. I started investing in companies that I believed in their mission and their purpose. I'm a self-funded, small family office, so I use my own money to invest in companies that I think I can make a difference in and believe in what they're doing.

I've been blessed with twenty different companies now that I have involvement in and ownership. I loved that side of my entrepreneurial mind, then there was the healthy living side. Some of those brands and companies cross over into the healthcare space. I'm blessed to be partners with an icon in the health insurance industry. Larry Dust, from Key Benefit Administrators has nearly $3 million lives under management.

We have some great products. I get to work closely with Larry and refer him out to companies that he changes organizations' lives. He has six patents that are proven to get employees healthier while driving down the cost of healthcare. I'd love to spread that message to more people. Through my website, people can reach out to me and I can make those introductions.

Beyond that, I started thinking about encouraging adoption. One of my kids is adopted. I've always said, “I don't remember which one is adopted,” but I've got a file that proves it from the courts. I love talking about adoption as an alternative to an unplanned pregnancy that it's a beautiful gift that we were given by a birth mother. She was a mother and she is a mother. She chose to place her baby in a loving environment that was better for that child. She thought of our son before she thought of herself. She made an amazing decision, and that changed our lives.

I love talking to pregnancy support agencies. Anyone I can who wants to talk about the topic of adoption, I love that opportunity. All of that led then to me getting into to the point of saying, “I got to put this down on paper. God had it on my heart about writing a book, telling our story, trying to give people hope, see resilience, and reframing thoughts.” We spent a lot of time in therapy in those tough years and were blessed to share that message.

In Encourage LLC, Johnny, what do you folks do? Do you share this message, encouraging other people in these certain areas? Is there some consulting or some coaching? You have a book that people can read. You have your website, and you're on a podcast, but is this a sharing of an awareness of these different areas? If someone's interested, “I want all these areas and find out more information,” what does that look like?

Encourage Leadership, the one I didn't touch on, that's my public speaking arm there. Certainly, the books in that, all the board work that I do for public companies, private companies, not-for-profits, and then consulting. This Psychologist, Dr. Barbara Fordyce, whom we saw when Nicholas, Mary, and Peter died, we got so close with her because we had that many sessions. She and I have formed a partnership together. We work with companies on mindfulness and reframing the thoughts of employees and leadership to steer companies in the right direction. We love to tag team that. She brings all of the psychological data and facts to the table as she says, “I bring that to life,” with 30-plus years of large company and small company leadership.

I want to dive into that then I want to talk about adoption a little bit. I've owned a business for several years now. Some days, I feel like, “I'm equipped. I'm ready to lead and I'm ready to go.” Some days I'm like, “I am not adequate to lead it all.” My mind is jacked up. Do you have any tips that you use as you're constantly leading? Sometimes it's just a lot. It's heavy on you because you're always leading all the time. Some days, you don't maybe have it in you. Were there any tips that you get yourself ready to lead, to encourage, and to keep pouring into people? Talk to us about that.

I was blessed to lead and be on the executive team. We had north of 10,000 employees. You were on stage a lot, whether you were doing store visits in the corporate office. Your presence is known and people in a variety of roles have clear expectations. For me, as a guy who’s diagnosed with anxiety, I'm a worrier. I worry about things that I don't need to, and I worry about things that I do need to. They're not all irrational thoughts. A lot of them are very founded. I have a history based on why I have those thoughts, and sometimes one sneaks in that I don't have to think about.

You asked for some tips, and a couple of things come to mind. First of all, one of the most impactful things that I've ever read was I was reading a book that researchers were out looking for the hundred happiest people in the world. Those hundred happy people could define their happiness on finances, charitable work, health, giving, family, whatever and however they define happiness. They all shared one thought and one common theme.

That was the concept of don't believe everything that you think. When I have a thought in my head and my head isn't in the game to lead and I know I need to, I can step back and say, “What are the thoughts racing through my mind?” Some of the thoughts that have led to anxious, continued thoughts in my mind, literally because I had the thought, I didn't need to believe it. Let alone believe it then act on it, engage in more thought, and spiral down.

That takes to part two of that is when you recognize a thought asking yourself. To me, clouded thought is what impacts our ability to lead because we can't be present for others. We can't be walking into a room or walking into a warehouse, manufacturing facility, retail store, or whatever it might be, and be present and mindful that people are looking to you as a leader for some sense of affirmation and acknowledgment. If my mind is totally clouded in thought, I don't even see those people then. I'm like on a beeline straight to the other end of the room that I need to get to. I'm disrespecting people along the way. I need to clear out those thoughts from my head.

One of the things that I do is ask myself, “What basis do I have to believe that that thought is a fact and that it is true?” If I can't prove in my head that it's true right away, I know I can dismiss it. I was trained to do this through various cognitive behavioral therapies, which is to literally do nothing with that thought. It's counterintuitive to me because I want to process every thought. I want to understand the genesis of it. Where did it come from? Why do I have it? What do I need to do with it? How am I going to get rid of it? The ability to just dismiss a thought in one ear and out the other, not getting stuck in your brain, takes some training. Those are some things that I do to ensure my head is right for me to go lead and make an impact on others.

I love that, don't believe everything that you think. I was doing that. I had some thoughts in my mind and I was like, “That's a lie. It’s a plain lie. That's not real, which is something that I've made up.” Thank you for that. I've written that down. You folks write that down, don't believe everything that you think. How important is impacting others' lives? I know it's important to you because this is why you're doing Encourage LLC. It sounds like you're investing in companies that you believe in that are impacting people's lives. You talked about happiness, and happiness is a buzzword out there. There's a podcast on how to be happy and articles. There are classes on how to be happy. It's just this crazy thing now. How much of being happy is about other people and pouring in other people and impacting other people?

I'm going to lean into this one hard. It's all of it. Self-gratification and self-happiness are pretty lonely. For me, the thought of impacting others in a positive way, whether it is somebody at a restaurant who is serving you, somebody at a store, or somebody that you run into, I've watched others do it so much better than me. I look at it and I say, “I got to be like that person.” I don't even know them but I saw that and I was blessed that I got to see that interaction. I need to bring more of that in.

When we talk a lot about our authentic selves, I don't even know who my authentic self is. I don't because I have grown over the years and been impacted by people that I love and respect in so many ways that I've brought that in. I brought their energy and their happiness in. Even when I think about a greeting, I don't think years ago my greetings were happy enough. They weren't welcoming enough. They weren't engaging enough.

I catch myself sometimes now even doing that. I have somebody that comes to mind and I say that she gives the best hellos. It's literally at hello, the Jerry Maguire line, “You had me at hello.” That's how you want to impact people. You could start an interaction off right or wrong from that point. To me, impacting others and creating happiness or encouragement in them is what lights my fire. That gets me focused and excited.

IDP 83 | Encourage Others
Encourage Others: Impacting others and creating happiness or encouragement in them is really what lights my fire.

I've been trying to train my brain that every day is to take the focus off of myself. It's like, “Who am I going to serve today? Who am I talking to today that I can serve, that I can be about them and to make their day?” One of my favorite things is we don't get people's names very much anymore. I'm trying to train my son when the waitress comes up, the first thing that you say is, “What's your name?” I'm trying to train our kids that, too, because it's so important. If you can get their name, it's how to win friends and influence people.

Dale Carnegie.

The best word in the dictionary is their name. That's just a way. How do you greet people? Is there a special thing that you do when you see someone? Number one, I sent you the outline for this episode and I loved your response. I'm so looking forward to talking to you. I was like, “It's great. He's excited to be on the show.” Thank you.

I was because you were very thoughtful with the message that you sent me. It was like, “This is pretty cool.” For me, I love when you said about your boys and the experience we were talking about before the show began that you did with your kid. My youngest and I were talking about a work correspondence.

I’m super proud of that kid in so many ways, academically, athletically, his heart, and all those good things. He was writing a work email as he was starting his career. I joked with him. He said, “Dad, what do you think of this?” I said, “Open your heart up a little bit more. That is an acceptable answer. You could hit send, but do you want to hit send? Let them know a little bit more about your personality and who you are. I know you're in accounting and finance, but they're people too on the receiving end of that, and they're an accounting and finance.”

I talked to my kids about that when they were younger, the boys especially. I would tell them that their sister, Bella, who was in between Bo and Stone is going to learn how to be treated by men in her life, 1) By the way that I treat her and 2) By the way her brothers treat her. I said to them as little boys, “Fellas, God has put a big responsibility on you. You have a big sister and a little sister here that you are going to be teaching a lot to in terms of how she's going to look to boys and men in her life.”

They were amazing to her and good examples to her, but it was very intentional that my wife and I talked to them about that. When you mentioned your eight-year-old with a greeting, that's so smart. I love that you're doing that. That's being a good dad because otherwise, when they don't learn it young to try to turn that on later in life, it is harder. There’s so much of what we can learn as a child that the concept of the book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, is there's a lot of meaning to that. Those greetings and the way you interact with people, I was probably a little too intense with my kids on that because I wanted to make sure that they showed respect constantly. I can be a little over the top at times and I probably was on the top.

I can too. The last question is when I look at Encourage LLC, you talk about healthy living, leadership, investment, and adoptions in there. A lot of times, when I'm talking to business leaders or someone on a show, they have some of these other things, but this is a little bit different. I know you're very passionate about adoption. Can you talk about why is that so important? It's so important that it is in your four departments of Encourage LLC. It's on your heart. You think it is a huge need, a huge blessing in your life, and for other people, it can be a blessing in their life too. Talk to our audience where maybe it's not even on the radar now but how important is this to you, to them, and to these children?

Certainly, unplanned pregnancies are a hot topic out there in the world. As somebody who is strong in the belief of giving that pregnancy the opportunity for life, I think about the life that my son has had as a blessed life that could have been a tough life. There are thousands of couples out there who would love to adopt a baby. I know that a lot of people think about pregnancies and think, “This isn't the right time in my life. I can't afford to be pregnant now. I can't afford the medical bills.”

There are couples out there, and we were one of them that supported somebody during a pregnancy. We paid for everything, even paid rent and food to ensure that she was taken care of during that time so it wasn't a financial burden to her. That whole conversation out there on life versus choice, the topic of adoption isn't brought up enough. Both sides need to recognize that adoption is an option that's out there that does not have to be a burden. That pregnancy does not have to be a burden financially, career-wise, and in a lot of ways.

There are so many people who end up keeping a child that their heart might not be into keeping. That's okay if their heart isn't there. If they're not at a stage of their life where that baby coming in is truly a blessing and is going to be the greatest thing, there are other options that are out there. I'm so thankful for those people who brought that baby to life. Know that the first decision in parenting can be what is best for this child.

IDP 83 | Encourage Others
Encourage Others: The first decision in parenting can be what is best for this child.

If you don't have that stable environment, there are lines of people out there who can't have children or maybe have and still want to bring another baby into their home. I want to increase the awareness of the conversation because even now in the news and all that's going on in the talk of pro-life and pro-choice, you don't hear about adoption and enough as that other option that it's not aborted or raising a child that you're not prepared to raise.

IDP 83 | Encourage Others

That's so important. This is a faith-based show too. People and I myself are pro-life. Let's talk about adoption more. Let's put our money where our mouth is too and let's step up to help. That's number one. Let's step up as Christians and as believers to step up into that, talk about that more, and bring more awareness around it. Is there a way that we can help make adoption easier? We've been talking about adoption, but the complications of it sometimes versus an abortion, you look at the difficulties and the complexities of adopting versus aborting. It's crazy. Can we help make adoption more available too and easier?

That's right. There are so many couples that want to do that. I've spent time in neonatal intensive care units and seen babies that have not had a parent visit them in weeks or months. Those nurses are getting those babies healthy to return them to the couple that haven't been able to visit. Maybe some for legitimate reasons, at times. There's always that, but in my experience and in a lot of experience in talking to those nurses, they're not legitimate reasons why someone's not there.

It's a lack of interest to be there. Adoption is a great opportunity for that couple, single mom, single dad, or whatever, and also for that baby. The thing there is we got to increase the awareness and discussion. You can contact me on my website and I'd love to engage in that dialogue. I do a lot of public speaking and I'm honored to get into that topic more.

Sounds good, Johnny. Thank you so much for being on the show. Guys, if you're reading, go check out Johnny's book, Life is Hard but I'll be OK. I got them from Amazon. Is that the best place, Johnny?

Yes, Amazon. Barnes and Noble's online as well. If you could, if you enjoy it, leave a review. Even if you don't enjoy it, that's okay too. I'd love to see the reviews. They're meaningful.

Sounds good. Check out your new organization Encourage LLC and your website, Johnny.

Encourage33.com.

You folks check that out. That's a wrap, Johnny Sirpilla. Thanks, Johnny.

I appreciate you. You're making a difference out there, so thank you.

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