118. Renee Vee Founder of Mighty Minds Academy - Igniting Positive Mindset in Children and Adults

On today's episode Colette interviews Renee Vardouniotis (Vee) founder of Mighty Minds Academy, a haven for igniting potential and nurturing excellence in the hearts and minds of children, teens, and parents.

Renee Vardouniotis, a graduate of Penn State University and holder of a master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology from New York University, brings two decades of experience as a Speech-Language Pathologist in elementary schools. Her journey from dedicated professional to accomplished Mindset Mentor reflects a commitment to empowering the next generation through transformative and compassionate mindset mentoring.

Tune in to hear her story and how we can all empower the next generation through innovative approaches to learning and positive mindset work.

Episode Highlights:

03:00 Renee's story and her feelings of being misunderstood and wanted more from lif
05:57 Children act out when they feel unheard
07:53 Importance of setting boundaries for children's development
11:50 Daughter struggled in college, values communication & trust
16:03 Teen son growing, pandemic delays teenage nonsense
18:05 Parenting norms are case-specific and challenging
20:02 Social interaction and technology regulation in children
26:29 Developed mindset program geared towards understanding capabilities
28:35 Understanding the mind leads to happiness
31:58 Financial education is important for kids and parents

Follow Renee:

Website: https://mightyminds.us/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/renee__vee/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/renee-vardouniotis/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/renee.vardouniotis

______________________________________

Connect with Colette:

Instagram: @wellnessbycolette

Website: Wellness by Colette

Thank you for listening to the Limitless Healing podcast with Colette Brown! It would mean the world if you would take one minute to follow, leave a 5 star review and share with those you love!

In Health,
Colette

Transcript

Colette Brown [00:00:00]:
Anyone who has children, especially teenagers, knows the struggle is real. Is there a way to reach a child who seems to have built walls around their relationship with you? Is there a way to reach them and help cultivate their inner love, confidence, knowledge and power? How do you effectively speak to them? Is there help? If you've asked any of these questions, you'll want to list in close. Today we have on the creator and owner of the Mighty Minds Academy, who's also partnering with fifth Degree Academy, author, public speaker, mother, wife and dynamic, beautiful friend of mine, Renee v. Welcome, Renee.

Renee Vee [00:00:42]:
Thanks, Colette. That was so nice. I'm so happy to be here with you.

Colette Brown [00:00:47]:
I'm excited. We've been talking about this for a while and it's actually happening. I think that the timing is so crucial when it comes to children and what you're doing and intervention work and helping to preventatively keep kids from that distance and going down the wrong path. I think it's so timely. It's always timely when it surrounds kids. So before we get into that, I just want to get to know you a little bit more. So take us back to a time in childhood that was very impactful for you and possibly set you on the path to where you're at today.

Renee Vee [00:01:28]:
So I don't know if there's one moment that I can think of, but I could definitely say that I always felt misunderstood and not aligning myself with how my family was wanting to raise me. I was always going off and doing my thing and wanting to be more, do more, have more. I was born like that. I can remember all the way back to being very young and just always wanting, like looking at people that had this and this and say, one day I'm going to have that. And my family is wonderful, but they didn't value that stuff where it's very kind of traditional upbringing where you're just do well in school and go to college and live right down the street from your parents. And I broke that mold several times growing up, but I wasn't proud of it at the time because it wasn't celebrated. It was the opposite where I felt like an outcast and I felt like, why am I so different? And why are our communication lines with my parents? Why are they crossed all the time? I don't understand. And to this day, sometimes that's the case.

Renee Vee [00:02:41]:
Now that I understand what was happening, looking back, I understood that I was this square peg trying to fit into the round hole and I didn't need to. It just felt that way because who are you influenced by when you're young, it's your family, it's your schooling, it's the people that you're being raised around.

Colette Brown [00:03:03]:
And you were raised in New York.

Renee Vee [00:03:06]:
So I was raised in king of Prussia, Pennsylvania, which is not far from where I live now. And this just goes along the lines of what I'm telling you is that I left college and I didn't move back home. I went to grad school in New York City, and my husband and I had met a couple of years before that, but he lived in New York, so I ended up settling in New York, getting my first job, getting my own apartment on Long island. My parents thought I was nuts, but I knew that I did not have a place in Pennsylvania for me. Like, I had a home, I had family that would support me if I went back. But I felt like I wanted to expand and I wanted to learn new people. I like change. It's weird, but I enjoy change.

Renee Vee [00:03:49]:
So for me, it was very. I was 22, Colette got an apartment. My parents helped me out, but I was on this mission to just expand. Went through the whole working, get engaged, get married, buy a house, all the things, and I did it all. And I'm an overachiever in that sense. We had a beautiful home. I had two beautiful children, and then I was feeling, like, unsettled.

Colette Brown [00:04:13]:
And before what you're doing now, you were a speech pathologist, is that correct?

Renee Vee [00:04:17]:
Yes, I still am. I still have a license. I'm still practicing on occasion. It's something that I don't want to ever stop completely doing because it is my craft, and it's really where I feel like my communication skills have helped other people have communication skills, and that ties into what I'm doing now very closely. So for me to have that knowledge of even developmental milestones and things like that for the students that I work with, it helps in the age groups that I'm with. I know how to interact with them. I worked in schools for 22 years. So for me, it's like I understand, I guess, their level, if you want to call it, of vocabulary and where they're supposed to be and what they can understand and if they can't, if maybe they have special needs or something, I understand that, too.

Renee Vee [00:05:05]:
So I can modify things. So it's really like a beautiful combination of the career I chose as a 20 year old to the career I've completely changed over to in my early forty s. So it's coming together really nicely, but, yeah, so I am a speech therapist I still have my license, I still have my certification, and I still like it. It's just I felt, again, like I was meant for more.

Colette Brown [00:05:32]:
Yeah. And what do you find, then, in that correlation between speech pathology, where you have this whole different mindset of communication and also maybe behavior of children? Because do you find that the two, if you get somebody to communicate in a certain way, they feel heard, understood, they feel more confident? What is that link between the two?

Renee Vee [00:05:57]:
So the communication part, the behavior part, a lot of times, our kids are acting out because they don't feel heard. And I guess we have to think of both worlds. So we think about a child that has special needs. They might have behaviors because they are, at that point, not functionally able to tell people what they need or what they want. But then on the flip side, you'll have typically developing kids that can communicate and are more than capable, but they're not being heard by their families. So it's like this world of how do we bridge those gaps? How do we bridge the gap between a child who is telling their parents, I want x, y, or z, or I can do this, and they're shooting it down? That's just right there. That really diminishes self esteem and self image. So, behavior wise, I think it's so important to follow through with everything with your kids.

Renee Vee [00:06:53]:
If you give them an empty threat, if you don't do that, I'm taking your phone away. If the kid does it, that's their warning.

Colette Brown [00:07:01]:
Right.

Renee Vee [00:07:02]:
So if the kid does something, you have to take the phone away.

Colette Brown [00:07:05]:
Action, consequence. Yeah. Correct.

Renee Vee [00:07:08]:
So what I found when I was working in the schools, a lot of that, because I was trained with children with autism and behavior modification. So very early on in my career, and I learned, I took from that, what we were doing with that clientele and just following through with them, and I applied it to when I started working with typically developing kids, and it works. It's like magic. But sometimes what happens is either we don't learn that kind of stuff, so we don't want to upset our children, but they need consequences. It's a part of life when they don't have consequences. We're building little monsters.

Colette Brown [00:07:50]:
We've seen that in adults, right? Yeah.

Renee Vee [00:07:53]:
And it just continues. It continues, but it's detrimental, Colette, because without those boundaries, circumstances where your children might not like you for a hot second, that's our job, is to keep them safe, to do that. So it almost like. It's complicated, right? It's very complicated. But if we don't instill those boundaries, those rules when they're little, then as they get older, it's just going to be that much harder for them to even function in society because that's just not realistic. So I think a lot of times parents and teachers even will coddle children. And I'm not judging anybody, I'm just pointing out what I've noticed. But then they get out into the real world or they change schools or they move states, they're not functioning properly because they're so used to one way of being.

Renee Vee [00:08:47]:
So it's really kind of a disservice when you think about it, when we don't instill consequences and we don't address behavior the minute it happens.

Colette Brown [00:08:57]:
Do you think that's a fundamental behavior issues, is lack of consequences? Because I think historically growing up I've seen some families with extreme boundaries and following through and the kids still acted out. So maybe it was a physical punishment, but the mental side was not cared for. Is that a possibility?

Renee Vee [00:09:19]:
Absolutely. I've saw it with some of my high school friends. Their parents were so strict and everyone's got to do what they got to do. We only know how to treat our kids. It's really a level of awareness that I'm proud to say that I have now. I now feel like I understand a lot of that stuff now. But back then when I was noticing the people acting out or it was because as a mom, the more rules we put on them, the less our kids want to follow. They want to rebel.

Renee Vee [00:09:48]:
They're going through these motions of being in between dependent and independent. There's a fine line. But I noticed that the type of restrictions people were putting on their kids, it really reflected in that acting out behavior because they were rebelling, opposed to following the rules. And my dad told me to do this, so I better do it. They're like, screw you, I'm going to do this because I feel encroached by you. Like, I feel like you're helicoptering me, you're on top of me. I feel like a lot of kids these days, now we're talking. That was like 30 years ago.

Renee Vee [00:10:23]:
Kids these days seek out. I noticed they're okay with it and I also think it has a lot to do. They have cell phones now, so they have communication at all times. Getting a phone installed in my bedroom when I was a teenager was like a gift. But I had to be off the phone at 930 at night, even on a weekend. And I had a curfew and all these things and it didn't go over well with me. All my friends were staying out till midnight. I didn't want to go home at eleven.

Colette Brown [00:10:49]:
Yeah.

Renee Vee [00:10:50]:
So I think it's about learning your kid and learning what makes them tick. And understanding that the fine line between putting up the boundaries, disciplining and letting them be who they are and learn from their mistakes. And I think a lot of parents now are just cleaning up the mess. What do they call them? Lawnmower parents. Like they're lawn mowering. They're getting the grass out of the way for you. They're paving the way for you. And they're over involved.

Renee Vee [00:11:14]:
And that's okay. It's just not how I'm raising my kids. I want them to be independent. I want them to learn. And I am here for support. But I don't want you to need me.

Colette Brown [00:11:24]:
Yeah, right. And depend on you. I've never heard the term the lawnmower parent. I have heard the term the helicopter parent where it's just that constant hovering. You just don't give any autonomy to the kids. And I think, case in point, my daughter, my oldest daughter is in college. And her freshman year she had one of her roommates. Grew up in a home where it was just so controlled.

Colette Brown [00:11:50]:
And she got to college and it was not good in so many levels. And my daughter is like, mom, thank you for raising us the way you did. She had no freedom. And it's really sad and in that moment because you never know when you raise kids. Yeah, I've got great girls, but they're going to go out on their own and what is that going to look like? And so she is out on her own and we still have that communication. And not to say at all that I'm the perfect parent, but I do say that one big thing for me is communication and trust. And let's share. You got to tell me.

Colette Brown [00:12:28]:
You got to not be afraid. There's things that you might do that you've messed up. But don't be afraid to tell me. Be afraid not to tell me. Because we'll find out.

Renee Vee [00:12:38]:
Exactly.

Colette Brown [00:12:38]:
I'd rather know. Yes.

Renee Vee [00:12:41]:
And I can't help you unless I know.

Colette Brown [00:12:43]:
Yeah. Okay, so let's break it down into a couple of pieces of advice. Like parents that are just starting out, what are ways to cultivate that communication, relationship autonomy? Those that are maybe like elementary school where they're just starting to get 4th, 5th grade and they're starting to be like, yeah, I'm getting into my own. And then what about those teens who might feel like they're far removed. What are some little bits of advice you can give to different demographics here?

Renee Vee [00:13:15]:
So it's so funny because I have children, both the fourth grader and the teenager. So I'm dealing with all that right now. I am so blessed. I have to tell you, my kids are amazing. And I want to pat myself on the back for that because I raised that. My husband raises them, too. But I have put work into myself in order to understand maybe why I was called the black sheep. But someone told me that was a bad thing to call yourself.

Renee Vee [00:13:39]:
So I call myself like the rainbow glitter sheep, that I'm just different. And it's not good or bad. It's just I've known it since I was very young and I felt really stressed. So now we could carry on the habits of our families and pass them on to our kids. And most people do. And there's probably things about me that I've learned from my parents that I still do. But I think my goal was always to make sure that my kids felt heard that if my son wanted to put black nail polish on, okay, like, he's not hurting anybody, I don't know. And I've always been really open minded in that sense because I think I felt like I wasn't able to express myself the way I wanted to.

Renee Vee [00:14:23]:
And no one's fault. I have great parents. I feel, like, really proud that I put in the work to understand that I don't need to carry on the paradigms from my ancestors. I can blaze my own trail and be my own type of parent. And it started when my kids were very little. I would do things differently than my sister did or my mom did. And I didn't have a set dinner time for them. They were, like, appalled that I didn't have a set dinner time.

Renee Vee [00:14:49]:
And I was like, when they're hungry, I feed them. So it's like mom shaming. But it's funny because my family is so loving. But the lack of understanding of why it was okay to do it my way, totally okay. So I think when I started putting in the work with myself, it then spread like osmosis to my kids because I don't react. I respond anymore. I used to react a lot. I think we do that for several different functions.

Renee Vee [00:15:20]:
But I think changing that, just tweaking that a little bit, has helped with my communication with my kids because they're not scared to tell me things. Because my reaction is never going to get above this voice level unless they do something really wrong.

Colette Brown [00:15:36]:
Give mommy a minute.

Renee Vee [00:15:37]:
Yeah. And I think that has helped bridge our communication. Even my daughter, she's like a little snack queen. She loves snacks. And she'll go into the cabinet and take a snack and run away, and I'll say, mila, you don't need to hide that from me. Why are you hiding that from me? I don't ever tell you. I'd say, wait till after dinner, only have a bite or whatever. But she definitely is more like hiding things.

Renee Vee [00:16:03]:
Or her friends come over, they run, and they get the glue, and they're making slime, and they run back, and they spill on the floor, and they run and they try and clean it up. And I'm like, just let me know, because if you mess it up, if you mess up my floor, I'm going to be more angry at you than if you just tell me that you spilled something. I'm still working it out with her. My son as a teenager has. I think the pandemic has helped out with a lot of delaying the teenage nonsense with him. Like, where I was at 15 and where he is at 15 are totally different. And I'm happy because he's really grown into this responsible human that cares deeply about his sister, his family. He's a good friend, and I'm just hoping that he sticks with the right crowd, because that's really what it is.

Renee Vee [00:16:53]:
He's not hanging out with me all the time. It's important, but he's very open with me. He'll tell me about x, y, or z that got kicked out of the grocery store for stealing gum or whatever, and I'm like, I hope you're not, like, hanging out with these people all the time. I hope you understand. His mom, it was so stupid. He had $2, and I was like, all right, good. He's not trying to test the waters.

Colette Brown [00:17:16]:
Yeah. So you're saying basically, check in with ourselves, do the work, and understand the dynamic of how we were raised and how we want to make that a little bit different. And you might have been raised in an amazing family, but I think even so, there's always growth that we could do. There's always tweaking that can be done, and it's hard, especially, as you said earlier, with today, the technology is 24/7 it's at their fingertips. And what do you feel that plays into the self image they're always comparing. And what do you recommend for kids around technology? Is there a certain time limit that you implement with your kids, or do you let them self regulate what do you recommend?

Renee Vee [00:18:05]:
My recommendation is going to be case by case. I don't think there's an overarching rule of what? Our kids were born with cell phones in their hands. So it's like, where do you draw the line between what's normal for them and not normal for us? Or allowing them. As long as they're doing their work, as long as they're socializing, as long as they're respectful, they're not looking at inappropriate things. Where do you draw that line? It's really tough. It's really tough because we were raised in such a different world. I feel like you have to gauge your kids if they are doing the things they're supposed. This is my Renee's opinion, because this is how I've been raising my family.

Renee Vee [00:18:49]:
It doesn't mean it's right. But I feel as if, because I'm trying to understand the world that our kids are being raised in. I'm very lenient about the electronics. My son tends to go into the room and he's on the Xbox with the friends, but he's talking to his friends.

Colette Brown [00:19:06]:
Yeah.

Renee Vee [00:19:07]:
He's not games in a closet by himself, not to the world and not being social. So I feel like there's a couple of different ways we could look at it. Is that is social. He's 15, he can't drive, so he's here as long as he's getting his work. I have a very kind of, like, loose rule. I trust you till I don't trust you, and I'll let you do as you wish. As long as your grades, you're maintaining your responsibilities that I'm asking you to maintain as a kid. Right.

Renee Vee [00:19:34]:
Tidy up your room as much as possible. I don't even fight that much. My rest of my house is very tidy. I let them have their rooms be. We go through it and they enjoy it, like, going through the stuff and organizing with me. And I love that. That's one of my favorite things to do, is go through and donate things and recycle things and throw out things. And they love it.

Renee Vee [00:19:55]:
I don't know. It's a hard answer for that one because it's kid by kid, family by family.

Colette Brown [00:20:02]:
I would also say just a dialogue about that, that I think it's one of the things that helped kids through the pandemic because they were talking and associated with classmates. And for those that are really strict about technology, sometimes I've seen that have a detrimental effect today because that is the way that they communicate and it could pull the kid away from a social dynamic that they could have been in, I guess for good or bad. You can look at it two ways, but it is a way that our kids are communicating today. So that has to be somehow regulated to where they do have the interaction. And then it is a case by case basis, as you said, on what you feel is appropriate for your family and for your child.

Renee Vee [00:20:51]:
But definitely personal. I know people that are really a half hour screen time every night. That's wonderful, but I just don't feel strongly about that. It's definitely a personal. Everyone's different, how we're raising our kids, but there's no rule, I don't think, or what's right and what's wrong with screen time. Where are those rules? There's none. They're imposed by us. I don't know if it benefits our kids.

Renee Vee [00:21:16]:
We do want them to be creative, right? We want them. But my daughter is being creative on her iPad. She's making pictures. So it's almost like, where do you. The technology is only going to get more. It's only going to be more the way our kids have laptops at school. They have iPads when they're in first grade. I'm of the mindset of being flexible with it because it is their generation, what their generation is doing.

Renee Vee [00:21:46]:
So it's almost go with the flow.

Colette Brown [00:21:49]:
Yes. I know there's been many a time where I'm on technology and I'm just like, I don't even know what to do. And they come over in like a half a second and there you go. Slow down.

Renee Vee [00:22:01]:
What did you do?

Colette Brown [00:22:02]:
30 seconds to explain to me what they did in a Nanosecond. So there is that. That is where the future is going. And if they really love technology, maybe get them into a coding class. Right? Get them into something where they're really productive and they understand what's going on, and they can understand the ability for people to infiltrate your network to show the dark side of what could happen and who's on the other side. So, Renee, tell us about mighty minds and also about your affiliation with the fifth degree academy and what you're doing to help families today.

Renee Vee [00:22:43]:
Oh, I love. This is like my favorite topic. So a couple of years ago, I had a revelation. I had a mindset shift. I had a paradigm shift. I was feeling unsettled and wanting not knowing what that meant.

Colette Brown [00:22:55]:
Right.

Renee Vee [00:22:56]:
What does this mean? I don't know if I can do my career, my nine to five anymore. But what does it look like to do something different. I don't know, because I've been only doing this for as many years. So anyway, I got contacted by somebody. Gosh, it was universal. I have no idea. It was alignment like you couldn't believe, because someone reached out to me on LinkedIn and I just entertained a phone call with this human and ended up investing in a mindset program blind. Like, I was like, swipe, I need something and there's a reason why this person called me.

Renee Vee [00:23:31]:
So I ended up learning, gosh, concepts that I had never learned before. I studied the brain in grad school. I never understood that there was parts of our mind that control 95% of our behavior. And for me that was so profound because I never thought about that stuff before. I never thought about how we learn language or how we can sing a song from 1980 and know it like it was yesterday that we heard it, but we haven't heard it since 1980. There's so many programs in our minds, and every time my mentor would say, this is not taught in schools. Our kids need to learn this. And it got me thinking, being on that side of education in the school.

Renee Vee [00:24:21]:
What are these kids learning?

Colette Brown [00:24:23]:
Math.

Renee Vee [00:24:24]:
They're learning about the wars and all the things which are really important, but they're not teaching them who they are or what they want. Understanding what makes a human tick. And it's not learning about wars. It's important to understand that. But it's learning who you are and understanding the power of your thoughts and understanding that you could set goals. Even as a very young child. You can figure out what you want to do and monetize that when you get older and not have to go to college and get into debt and all these things. The world has changed since the pandemic.

Renee Vee [00:25:00]:
The world has completely shifted. People having a job is not guaranteed anymore. A lot of technology is taking over jobs. But my fear is always going to be that our school curriculum, our traditional school curriculum is not going to meet the needs of what society is today. It's more about understanding the law of attraction. Understanding, that's an actual law, that it's not made up. It's as real as gravity. And it could change everything once we understand that, how it works and how to make it work for us.

Renee Vee [00:25:36]:
Our intuition, building up our intuition, understanding that fear is meant to keep us in our little comfort zone and not bust out and do things that others will think are nuts because of the fear of what they'll say. So there's so many foundational skills that I was learning as a 40 whatever year old and saying to myself, oh, my God, I can't believe I went all this time and didn't understand this or didn't even know it existed. This vocabulary was just so different than what I was used to. It sparked a thing, and I was like, I need to be the one to bridge this gap. I need to be the one to help these parents, help these kids understand the power that we have as humans. We can be, do, or have anything, and that's not taught in our schools. They'll say it, they don't mean it. Yeah, be an astronaut.

Renee Vee [00:26:29]:
But there's never any seriousness to it where you say, okay, what are the steps to learn about being an astronaut? Do you love science? And taking our kids into that path of learning more about what they think they want to be, and if they don't want to be it after a couple of years, fine, you pivot. But how else are we supposed to know? So I developed programming based on all of the stuff I was learning in my mindset program, and I put it into bite sized pieces and really understandable content for someone who could maybe has never learned anything with mindset. They could come in and listen to my lessons and understand what's going on and utilize the applicable activities to help them generalize it to their lives. Because a lot of times we take these courses. We take course, right? How many courses have you taken? And you leave, and it sounds so great at the time, and then you just walk away and it's like it never happened. These mindset programs that I've developed are really geared towards repetition, right? Like how we learn everything is through space repetition. Instead of plugging in war of 1812, we're plugging in optimistic thoughts. What's possible for me, I want to set this goal and really having that form new programs in order for people to understand what they're capable of.

Renee Vee [00:27:52]:
So that's what I've done. And it's been a labor of love, because we're on this path together, is really seeking out, wanting to make a difference, wanting to help others, wanting to change mindset, because the statistics are out of control with the teenagers, the suicide, the depression. We weren't born to be depressed. We weren't born to have anxiety. But what we're learning now, especially through what I've learned through, I've struggled with anxiety. I'm not immune to any of this. No one is. But when you learn what it feels like and learn some techniques to handle it, it can change your whole trajectory because you're not keeps people saying, oh, just be happy, you're going to be fine.

Renee Vee [00:28:35]:
Just be happy, you're going to be fine. That's a croc. It's not that easy. But understanding how the mind works, understanding what drives you, can align you with the behaviors that are going to be conducive to reaching that goal that you have. And the anxiety magically goes away because you're on your, you're on your path, you're doing what you were meant to be on in this earth as your purpose, your passion, and taking it and running with it. And that is what my hope is for all the families that I work with, my own kids, my own husband, my own family. It's my wish for everybody to really enjoy life. We're only here for a short time, and if we're depressed the whole time, we have to find out ways of addressing the depression, anxiety and all that stuff because the band aids aren't working.

Colette Brown [00:29:26]:
Yeah. And I think that it's beautiful that you're trying to get them to start early. Parents help your kids early, and it also means that it doesn't matter what your age is, there's ways that you can reconstruct, think differently, learn how to understand yourself and your reactions and just life in general. So it's never too late to do that.

Renee Vee [00:29:49]:
Never ends. We are meant to grow forever. We're not meant to just happen. Be like I lived my life. No. The only people that say that are the ones in the graveyard. I know a 95 year old, I have a great aunt who still is loving her life and still understands what's going on. It's a choice.

Renee Vee [00:30:11]:
There has been so many people in our history that have started in their, made themselves a beautiful life in living their purpose and their passion. And they live longer. Guess why? Because they're living their purpose and their passion.

Colette Brown [00:30:27]:
Yeah. You have to live purpose and passion, that's for sure. So, renee, let's talk about how people can reach you and what you're offering right now and just how do people get in touch with you? Because you're just such a dynamic person.

Renee Vee [00:30:43]:
Thank you. I think right now my website is, as we're speaking now, is going to be launched soon. So I'm going to say to go to www. Dot mightyminds us. And my socials are always a popular place for people to reach out to me. So it's rene. So if anybody that's listening to this wants to learn more or even have a conversation with me, I love it. I love talking about this and how I can be of service to people that are struggling or not struggling and just want to learn more.

Renee Vee [00:31:17]:
And I'm also involved right now with the fifth degree academy, which is Tim Story and Dave Williams have started this very like minded mission that I have, and I've joined forces with them to try and really have families learn what school didn't teach you. And we have a bi weekly call where. And right now, I don't know when this will air, but right now we're giving out scholarships for families to join us and to be a part of this community and learn the five pillars. It's family finance, freedom, financials, freedom, finance.

Colette Brown [00:31:58]:
Okay.

Renee Vee [00:31:58]:
The five f's, you can look it up on the fifth degree, but it's really like the five facets of life that are huge. And learning a lot of what they do is financial. It's a lot of financial education for kids to learn how, and parents, too, because I need help with that. It's understanding finances and things like that and how to be responsible as a young person to learn how to invest or how to save or how to make money. Even financial education is so important to them, and I'm so blessed to be a part of that. It's building just like I'm building. So it's really cool to have partners. We have the same mission and the same goals to really impact families.

Renee Vee [00:32:41]:
So the fifth degree academy, it's amazing, and I'm so proud to be a part of it. And my curriculum is up in their app, so if anybody joins, they can see what I do as well.

Colette Brown [00:32:53]:
Amazing. I love that, Renee. And one of the questions that I ask all my guests towards the end is if this was your last message that you had to broadcast out to the world, what would that be?

Renee Vee [00:33:06]:
My last would be follow your dreams. Follow your dreams. And not in that frufy, fluffy kind of way. It's expand on yourself when you figure out what it is that you love. Do everything you can to keep that your path. And don't let anyone else tell you that you can't do it because you can.

Colette Brown [00:33:29]:
Such a good message. And like you said, it sounds simple, but that's pretty deep when you can truly tap into what it is that you love. And what a better way. If you're confused or you want some help with your kids, reach out to renee on Instagram, too.

Renee Vee [00:33:46]:
It's renee. Double underscore vee.

Colette Brown [00:33:49]:
Okay, renee v. And I'm going to put all this in the show notes as well so you can link to her and learn more about what she's doing in this world, and the fifth degree academy, which is very impactful as well. And they do have some live events coming up. Renee, it's so good to have you on today. Is there anything else that we missed that you would like to add?

Renee Vee [00:34:11]:
We're all in this together, and it's so important for people to have a place to go, and I think that's what we're providing, the community, and we are getting together in LA at the end of March. I don't know when this airs, but for the aspire tour, which is Tim's tour, tim's story, and then on that Sunday will be a fifth degree academy event that families will be invited to in lA, march 23 and 24th of this year. Okay, so I will be there. Tim will be there. Dave will be there. Tim's team will be there. We have a man named aziz who's doing something similar in Canada. So we've all bonded on this mission to really make an impact.

Renee Vee [00:34:56]:
Ricky mendez is part of our team. He's awesome.

Colette Brown [00:35:00]:
Yeah.

Renee Vee [00:35:00]:
And Joseph mendoza, who's tim story's right hand man. So we kind of work together, and I'm excited to actually be together live, because, as we know, it's a beautiful thing to be able to talk on Zoom, but it's better to be in a place together where you really feel that energy.

Colette Brown [00:35:17]:
Oh, yeah. That's amazing. Okay, so that's good. And tag me on stuff, because I want to share it with my audience, because I think it's so important and crucial that people are helping their children and themselves, because when we're better, we can help those around us even more. So, renee, thank you so much for your time and sharing with us today. It really means a lot. I appreciate you.

Renee Vee [00:35:40]:
Thank you for having me, and I appreciate you so much. And anytime you call me up, I'll be on.

Colette Brown [00:35:46]:
Yay. All right. And everyone else, until next time, be well.