The Journey with Mark Astor

Ep. 14 'Nobody Will Outwork Me': How She Turned Academic Struggles Into Success with Kristen Goss

• Mark Astor

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 33:16

What happens when you score 139 on the LSAT three times and everyone tells you law school isn't for you? Kristen Goss proves that hard work beats talent every single time. As the founder of KWG Family Law and Mediation Services, Kristen's journey from struggling test-taker to successful attorney challenges everything we think we know about academic achievement and professional success. Her story reveals how her mother secretly applied to law school on her behalf, how she turned personal tragedy into professional purpose, and why she believes the collaborative law process can transform how families navigate divorce. From taking a four-year hiatus after her mother's death to building a practice that prioritizes children's well-being over courtroom battles, Kristen's path wasn't traditional, but it was authentic.

In this conversation, you'll discover why standardized test scores don't predict real-world success, how personal loss can redirect your entire career trajectory, and what it really takes to help families heal instead of just win legal battles. Kristen shares the moment she realized litigation wasn't her calling, the collaborative approach that changes everything for divorcing families, and why she founded a nonprofit mentoring foster youth. Her insights on turning academic struggles into professional strengths will shift how you think about failure, persistence, and finding your true calling in life.




Contact Mark Astor:

Website: https://mentalhealthaddictionlawfirm.com/

Phone number: 561-517-9405

Email: mark@astorsimovitchlaw.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markastor

TikTok: Mark G. Astor (@astorsimovitchlaw) | TikTok

SPEAKER_00

Look, you want to do as best you can in school, but don't let crappy grades deter you. I always say hard work beats talent, especially when talent don't work hard. I'll take a hardworking person over a talented any day of the week. And that's how I know I've been successful. I'm not the smartest guy in the room, but I'll tell you one thing, nobody will outwork me. It's the journey with drug and alcohol attorney Mark G. Aster. Welcome to the journey with Mark Astor. I'm your host, Mark Astor. I spent a lot of years sitting across the table from people during some of the most challenging moments of their lives. As an attorney, as an advocate, and as someone who understands that the road isn't always straight. What I've learned is that success, recovery, and growth rarely look the way we expect them to. There are detours, hard conversations, and moments that change everything. On this podcast, I talk with people who are willing to be honest about their journey, what worked, what didn't, and what they wish they knew sooner. Today I'm joined by my good friend and colleague, Kristen Goss. Kristen is the founder of KWG Family Law and Mediation Services. Her areas of focus include divorce, child support, timesharing, dependency, wills, and trust. Kristen was born and raised in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She's a native Floridian. That's a rarity these days. Where she received her high school diploma from Fort Lauder Christian School. Thereafter, she earned a Bachelor of Science with a concentration in communication studies and political science and a minor in Spanish from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, where my wife went too. She was a certified legal intern for the Miami Deed State Attorney's Office, and she earned her jurisdoctorate degree with a concentration on litigation from the Thomas M. Cooley Law School. And she's also earned her Series 6 and Life Insurance Services, and she serves as a financial advisor for a New York-based investment firm for the past two years. Nice to see you this morning, Kristen.

SPEAKER_01

Nice to see you too, Mark.

SPEAKER_00

So let's back up a second. You're a native Floridian, so you spent you basically spent your entire life here in Florida. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01

That is correct, yes.

SPEAKER_00

So I want to talk a little bit about, if you're okay with this, your family background, because I came from two parents that didn't even graduate high school. So I'm always interested to hear, especially when I speak to fellow attorneys, what your background was, what your parents did. Tell me about that. Sure.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you for asking. So unfortunately, my parents are no longer here, but I am who I am because of them, and they were amazing. Neither one of them were attorneys. My mom was a social worker and my dad was a pastor, but he didn't get paid for that role. He also worked for the Broward County School Board and he was over the maintenance department until he retired. And I say I equate what I do to them because I oftentimes observed both of them counseling families from a very early age. So I developed a love and a passion for wanting to help families, but I also love rules, policies, procedures, that whole thing, the law. And so family law is what made sense. Cool fact about my mom. She was the first African-American captain on her Air Force base in North Carolina. My mom was from North Carolina, my dad from Georgia. And my mom went to Howard University, obtained her master's degree from there, and worked for the Veterans Administration until she retired as well. Very hardworking, both of them, and I have a little bit of traits from either both of them. And I can't be more blessed or feel more blessed to have had the parents that I did.

SPEAKER_00

You have siblings?

SPEAKER_01

I do on my dad's side. I have four siblings who could be my parent, three sisters and a brother. Unfortunately, our relationship is not the best, as you can imagine, in blended family scenarios. My father's first wife passed away in 1978 and of a brain aneurysm, actually, at 40 years old, and very shocking. And two years later, his first wife's sister introduced my parents, and my mom was nine years older than my oldest sister, and from there they're your part. I was my mom's only child.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Humble beginnings. I love that.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

So at what point did you say, okay, I'm gonna go to law school?

SPEAKER_01

I knew I wanted to be an attorney, I'd say in high school. I did the volunteer, a lot of volunteer work with teen court at the courthouse in high school. Uh a lot of the Fort Lauderdale, Ohio colleagues of mine, I met a lot of people there. But again, true fact. So I'm not really a good test taker. I I must say. Welcome to my life. So before studying or getting private tutoring for the LSAT, my score was a 139, which is very low. And I got tutored, my score was a 139 after tutoring. I took it about two or three times and it was a 139. So I said 139 it is, and applied to the law schools throughout, including University of Miami. I was not accepted in the University of Miami, but Nova, I don't know if you recall, they do, I don't know if they still do, but they had a conditional program at the time.

SPEAKER_00

I went through it. I was a summer conditional student. Yeah. Okay. I had lousy LSAT schools, great grades.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

And I got in through the summer conditional program. Yeah. Do they still have that there?

SPEAKER_01

I don't know. So I went through that program in 2007, around that time. And I didn't pass one of the courses and came home and was like, oh, I'm such a low life, I'm a loser kind of thing for the day. But what I was going to do was apply to their marriage and family counseling division and get my master's and doctorate in that. But as you can imagine, I don't know if this was something that was discussed when you were there, but I overheard other people who were going through the same conditional program. If all else fails, Cooley is an option. And so I would share this with my parents, including my mom. And lo and behold, when I'm getting an acceptance to Nova's program for marriage and family counseling and getting an acceptance to Cooley, my mom had applied to Cooley for me. She's like, Emma's like, what? What is this? Thomas Cooley up in Michigan. Michigan, Lansing, Michigan.

SPEAKER_00

I'm glad that you shared that because I was a horrible test taker too. I had phenomenal grades. I went to Michigan, which is one of the top universities in the country, and I bombed the LSAT.

SPEAKER_02

You think too much? Is it A or B? That's what I do. Overanalyze.

SPEAKER_00

So here's what I for people that are going to watch this, look, you want to do as best you can in school, but don't let crappy grades deter you. And I'll talk about what you thought about the law, but I know I was basically in the top 40% of my law school class. I was just a few percentage points from being in the bottom half of the class. And you and I are both entrepreneurial lawyers, which we'll talk about in a second. But I always say, and I told this to my stepson who played college hockey, hard work beats talent, especially when talent don't work hard. I'll take a hardworking person over a talented any day of the week. And that's how I know I've been successful. I just said, I'm not the smartest guy in the room, but I'll tell you one thing: nobody will outwork me. Yes. That's how winning's done by outworking somebody and all your competition. So I I appreciate you sharing that. Because I just squeaked through the summer conditional too. I didn't get any A's. I got the two C pluses. That was it. I got in by that much. But it was a big deal in my family because no one had ever graduated high school. So the idea of going to law school was a big deal. Anyway, okay. So you end up at Cooley. Did you enjoy law school? I hated law school.

SPEAKER_01

It was a great experience. I'll say that. It was my first time living somewhere else. And so I was able to experience that and actually see snow and never had never seen snow before. But a lot of things did happen. I got married after my first semester of law school. So my first two years of marriage was long distance. My mom had gotten diagnosed with cancer towards the end of that first year. So that was very challenging. Law school sucked in a sense where it was very challenging. As you stated, working hard, I by no means graduated at the top of my class. I worked hard and I was actually on probation. I think they had probation the first semester, just because going to law school is different from anything else. As undergrad, dean's list, provost honorable, all of that. But law school is just a different ball game and a different way of thinking and different way of training. And so I definitely had to adjust. And it was challenging for sure. Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's funny. I took one of my very first, I think first semester I taught. I took a torts class. And the professor said to us, I think, on one of the first days, he said, We're going to turn on the switch. We're going to teach you how to think like lawyers, right? Which is what you were talking about. But here's what they don't tell you. Once it's turned on, you can never turn the bloody thing off.

SPEAKER_01

That's so true.

SPEAKER_00

You're always constantly analyzing everything, right? It's annoying. Yes. So I'm with you. And for me, that was a struggle too. That I could I just couldn't understand. Like, what's the point of this whole constitutional challenge thing? And so I'm with you. And I struggle too. So I appreciate you sharing that with me. So I did notice one thing. You had been an a certified legal intern with the Miami Dade State Attorney's Office. Yes. I was a certified legal intern with the Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, so you can relate.

SPEAKER_00

And honestly, that was between my second and third years of law school. And I'll be honest with you, after the end of my second year, I didn't even think I wanted to go back to the third. I was like, I just was did not get it. But that ignited my passion for being a lawyer and especially being one of the courtrooms. Talk about that experience.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, yes. I was in the domestic violence unit, and they have a very robust training program there at the state attorney's office. So as a certified legal intern, which you can appreciate, you're able to speak in court as long as you are speaking with another attorney involved.

SPEAKER_00

You can pretty much do everything the lawyers can do.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. I could never forget this though. I was giving an opening for a trial, and the public defender objected. To this day, I couldn't tell you what I said. And I know now that he objected to throw me off because he's all she's not, she doesn't even have her law degree yet. So let me just object. And he objected. And immediately after he objected, I was like, so you will have to find this person guilty. And I sat down. I am appreciative of the exposure, the opportunity, as man can appreciate. There are a lot of cases that go through the state attorney's office, and just the structure that they have, the training that they have, being able to pick the brains of the attorneys and chief and all of that was a great experience. So wouldn't trade it for the world.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I did it because I was like, no, I really should get a little bit of trial experience in law school. And being a certified legal intern is the way that you can get real-world trial experience without actually having to graduate law school. For me, I remember being in my first trial and saying, okay, this is where I'm supposed to be. Forget all those appellate briefs and all that other stuff, constitutional challenges. I'm supposed to be in court and trying cases. Was that ever a career path as a prosecutor or even a public defender that you thought about pursuing?

SPEAKER_01

So I'm glad that you asked me that question. And I'll say this: my concentration in law school was litigation because I was under the impression that as an attorney, that's what I had to do. I had to go to court, I had to litigate, I had to win. But for family law, did it make sense to me? And I'm a very logical person. And I was just like, okay, I'll do it because this is what I'm supposed to do, until I discovered that there's this other alternative called the collaborative law process. But I didn't find out about that until years of practicing and being on my own. I got trained in 2020, right before the pandemic in collaborative. And ever since then, I was like, ah, the light bulb turned on for me. And I said that this is exactly how, if possible, families should be proceeding when it comes to family law matters.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. So you pop out of law school. When did you open up your own law firm?

SPEAKER_01

So backtrack a little bit. I graduated in 2010. My mom passed two days before I graduated, was devastated, knew she was passing. She had been diagnosed with cancer. And so from 2010 to 2014, I took a hiatus from the law. I didn't want to have anything to do with the law at the time. My dad had dementia. And so I ended up going into financial advising as you indicated. I had my series six life insurance licenses. So I did a lot of that working for a New York-based firm until 2014. I took the bar, didn't pass it the first time or the second time even, but I took the bar, got licensed in uh April of 2014, worked for someone for two years, a solo practitioner, doing every everything from secretarial work to attorney work, and then went on my own June of 2016. So I've been on my own for just about 10 years now.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. And I'm glad that you shared that experience with the bar because I took the California bar three times. Uh-huh. And I failed it three times. Which is how I ended up back in Florida. I had hoped to open up a criminal practice. So I had a good friend of mine who'd been a public defender in Dade when I'd been a prosecutor in Palm Beach. He'd gone out to California and said, I'm going to take the California bar exam. It's my third time taking it. Why don't you take it and we'll open up a criminal defense practice? Plenty of business in Oakland, California for criminal defense lawyers. And the third time he took it, he passed. And I ended up taking it three times and couldn't get past it. And then my career took a different path. But again, I think you're just a classic example of just refusing to take failure for what it is. It's not the end, it's part of the journey. So I I commend you. I know people that took the bar exam and said, I'm never doing that again. Takes what I would call the word I use is grit. You gotta have grit in life because life will put you down.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, so you said I'm gonna open up my own law firm.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Which you did how many years ago now? Ten? Yes. Okay. How'd you pick family law? Because I haven't gone through a divorce, that's the one area of the law I would never touch.

SPEAKER_01

Going back to my parents and KWG stands for Kristen Walker Goss. My maiden name was Walker, and the legacy continues. But again, I observed them helping families, counseling families. I grew up in a very safe household, loving household. And I can imagine, I can't empathize, right? Because I I'm not that child that went through divorce with my parents or myself. But I really sympathize with the children, especially because most parents, they're just at their wits end. They've been through a lot. It's a very traumatic experience. But unfortunately, when children are involved, the children get sucked into it and they can grow up very traumatized. I remember this was a few years back, an adult. He was in his 30s, and I was telling him about the collaborative process. He's I wish my parents had someone like you to represent them because he had no relationship with one of his parents. I believe it was his mother because of the divorce. He remembers very vividly when he was a child, his parents going through a divorce, and it traumatized him to the point where he was married, but he never wanted to have children. And that is something that I think is very hurtful. And I again, my heart goes out to the children who have to go through that. And if there is a way to be able to help the parents see past that, help them resolve legally, and also help them be able to co-parent and have their children grow up in a life that they can love both parents but love them in different spaces, then I would love to do that. So I think for me, the center of everything is what's in the best interest of the child.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Do you like representing one spouse over the other? Some lawyers were like, I only represent the husband, I only represent the wife. Or you're like, listen, I'll take anybody.

SPEAKER_01

So it's interesting you said that. I feel like it's a 50-50 with me, but one thing that most have in common is they tend to be the breadwinners, but just differently. So if it's the woman, they're the breadwinner winner, they're type A personality, logical. They are very driven. Their spouse is the opposite, just nonchalant, complacent, has the capacity of earning six figures, but just is a dreamer, just never had to do it because the wife was the breadwinner, the go-getter, and she's just tired, tired of doing it all, including taking care of the kids as well. So that's on one side. And then on the other side, it's the breadwinner male who was tired of getting taken advantage of. They feel that they're being used and abused and their niceness was being taken advantage of, and they just want quality time with the children. There are a lot of fears centered around that and not wanting to continue to pay for a spouse that is not appreciative, but they also want the quality time with their children.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. I want you to explain what is the collaborative law process?

SPEAKER_01

So it's not a bunch of us sitting around in a table holding hands, singing kumbaya, and everybody's getting along. That's not it for sure. It's actually been around since 1990. It started in Minnesota from a guy named Stu Webb. And California is so much further along, not surprisingly, but it's been around in Florida in a statute since 2017. So almost 10 years. It is an alternative process of proceeding with the divorce. So instead of filing in court, you can go the collaborative route. And that's basically everything being private, confidential. The attorneys, each of them, each of the spouses has their own attorney. So I would represent one spouse, another attorney would represent the other. And we enter into a participation agreement. It outlines the do's and don'ts. The spouses are going to be transparent, open, and honest about everything. And there's a disqualification clause. This scares a lot of people, but I account it to holding yourself accountable. And I call it the accountability clause. And it says in the event that the process breaks down for whatever reason, the spouses have to fire their attorney. So I would be fired and they take whatever issues that are unresolved to court. Over 82% of cases, this is statistically across the board, have ended in full resolution. And I can attest to that because my collaborative cases, majority except for one, has ended in full resolution. And the one that didn't end in full resolution, the professionals, me, the other attorney, there was a facilitator, mental health professional involved, and a forensic accountant, we all said we're done. And we fired the clients. Essentially, for that, it was my client who was just not transparent. And it became very apparent. And we had the ethical obligation to say, we can't do this. We cannot, this is not collaborative.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. So if it's not a bunch of people sitting around a table singing kumbayah, tell me what it is. Like, what does it look like?

SPEAKER_01

Yes. So it looks like getting real. I've had collaborative cases that have had safety concerns involving the children, domestic violence issues, alcoholism, all of that we unpack. I'm not a therapist by any means and love the process because it's very supportive. I can focus on the legal aspect. The other attorney can focus on the legal aspect. If our clients have any legal questions, we answer those, we address it, we provide them with options. But as I indicated earlier, you can bring on a facilitator who's usually a mental health professional or a psychologist. They are collaboratively trained and they facilitate the process. The process is very streamlined. We have agendas. So let's say today we're going to focus only on how we how are we going to uh talk, let's talk about the parenting plan. What is time sharing gonna look like? But in that setting, other things can come up. Someone can say, I don't want my spouse to have the children. And in court, what that looks like is okay, let's file a motion. In the collaborative setting, why? Why don't you want the other spouse to have the children? So it's really understanding not just the surface, but the deep core seated rooted issues and interests that our clients have. And that comes it takes a lot of questions, a lot of working together with the professionals. We could even bring on child specialists, which I've had in in certain circumstances, even someone like you at Unfortunately, mental health and people not addressing concerns that come up. Oftentimes you can imagine within the last few months, I know of four cases that have ended in a murder suicide. One spouse filing for a divorce, one spouse killing the other spouse and then turning around and committing suicide. It's more often than not. And I think that mental health has a lot to do with that and not addressing what's underneath the surface. So it's a lot of digging and it's a lot of working on what really is the true interest and what really is the true concern of both individuals and coming up with a game plan not only for today, but moving forward in the future. It's really empowering for the spouses who are involved and it's positive. All of the experiences that I've had that ended in full resolution turned out positive.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Client comes to you, or potential client comes to you. Do you have that discussion with them up front? Listen, this is how I how this is how I want to, I like to handle my family law cases. Because obviously, if a client come potential client comes to you and says, stick it to her or stick it to him, I don't want them having the children. Now you are in an adversarial process. So how do you figure out which cases you want, which cases you don't want, which cases may or may not be a good fit for you?

SPEAKER_01

Great question. So I do litigate, and some of my collaborative colleagues may disagree with me, but I don't believe that every case is a good fit for collaborative. You have to be committed, and that's including the professionals. You have to be committed to the process. That's what it takes. I am bound, and every family law attorney is bound by the ethical obligation to basically break down all of the options to a client when they come to you. You can do the traditional route, this is how it looks. You can go collaborative, this is what collaborative is, this is how it looks. You can decide to mediate, this is how it looks. And uncontested, this is how it looks. There are pros and cons to different things. Not everything is a good fit. If someone were to come to me and say, hey, I want to stick it to them, I ask a lot of why questions. In the first initial discussion, and I know that you have a similar way of practicing. We don't talk about the law, the initial meeting with someone. I want to understand what their interests are, what their concerns are, and we go from there. Because on the surface, again, someone could say, I want to stick it to them. But what they may be saying is, I'm tired of feeling like I'm feeling, and I don't know what other way to do it or how to proceed. And it may be that they're open to moving forward in a collaborative way, but they just don't know how, or they've never even heard of it.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. What do you do in a situation where one party comes to you and you have this discussion about the collaborative process and they say, Yeah, you know what? I like the idea of that. And then the other spouse hires a lawyer that just likes to fight and rack up a bell. What do you do in that situation? Because obviously, especially with collaborative, you've got to have two lawyers that are willing to participate. And if the other lawyer is telling the client fight just for the sake of fighting, that's a problem, I would think. No?

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. And it does happen. What I tend to do is if they are the ones that are going to be initiating, because there it's a little bit different depending on if they're initiating or not. If the other side has already hired an attorney and it's filed, even though the attorney is a litigation attorney and you know, when you've been practicing in the area and the area is so small, you're like, okay, yeah, this person is likely not going to want to proceed forward collaboratively. But it doesn't hurt to reach out, say, hey, the spouse has retained me and would you be open? So the worst they could say is no. So that's how I would handle it if it's already filed. If it's an initiation that my client wants to do, what I typically say is if there are a lot of assets that need to be addressed, why don't you reach out to a forensic neutral who can have a conversation with the other spouse who hasn't been retained, who hasn't retained an attorney yet? Perhaps they can have a conversation because a neutral person who's not an attorney, opposed to me reaching out to the other spouse, would be a little less intimidating, I would think. And maybe the spouse would be open. Or let's play reverse psychology. And I don't want to give this secret, but like you sent an email to my client, hey, this is what we discussed. And I advise that this would be the best route because of X, Y, and Z. And you indicated that your spouse is interested in these issues, and for these reasons, your spouse would likely benefit from proceeding collaboratively as well. Here are a few recommendations and let me know your thoughts. And then they can forward that to the spouse.

SPEAKER_00

So let's go back to collaborative law for a second. Because obviously, having gone through a divorce, if at least one party wants to fight, the thing can drag on for literally years.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. So the quickest case that I've had ended in 30 days. It wasn't uncontested by any means. The longest was eight months, and that had everything in the kitchen sink. So that case would have easily lasted three, four years if it was litigated.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. So once everything is agreed, I presume there has to be a case initiated with a judge, right? Because you need a judge's order to basically terminate the marriage.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. But privacy is really key. And this is something crucial that a lot of times interests the family because they don't want their business out there in public. Because you can see divorces filed, right? And so we would file a joint uh petition just saying, hey, irreconcilable differences, they want to get a divorce, a joint answer and waiver. And then within the settlement agreement, that's something that can be confidential and private as well. They can waive their financial affidavits so their financial information is not either on the public site. And then we prepare paperwork. You don't even have to go to a hearing depending on the judge, as long as certain documents are notarized and signed and they're in agreement. We submit it and then the judge signs off. It could be very private and confidential.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. What happens? So obviously, which is great because nobody likes to add their adult laundry, but what happens obviously? You have an agreement that talks about alimony, child support, visitation, all those things. If one party does not obviously comply with the agreement that's been entered, what happens then?

SPEAKER_01

So it's happened. I have one that's about to actually come back to the forefront. We, if everyone's on board, we can come back to the table collaboratively. If it and I know that sounds counterproductive, right? Somebody's not abiding, but it could be a communication situation or perhaps everyone needs to just come and refresh. That can happen. And I've had a case where that's happened. In another case, the other spouse is just checked out and communication is not there. So you can file, or I wouldn't be able to file. I could counsel my client and say, listen, the other side doesn't respond, or if they're not complying, then you can file. I can direct you as to what can be done. Perhaps that would get something going, a fire underneath the ex-spouse's foot, and we can come back and revert back to the collaborative process and have a conversation. It doesn't always work out. Then whatever issue, if they're not abiding by the agreement, would be litigated. Worst case scenario. But I wouldn't be the attorney doing it.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Let's switch gears for a second. I want to talk about your involvement of the community because I know you're pretty involved in the community. Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01

Oh gosh. So much to say. I do have a nonprofit. It's called Kids Demonstrating Worth. I founded it in 2003. And have you heard of the movie Antoine Fisher?

SPEAKER_00

I have. What to refresh my recollection? Well, that's about.

SPEAKER_01

It's a true story based on a boy that ended up in foster care. His parents just were not able to parent him and came from very rough beginnings, didn't have a future. He ended up going into, I want to say the Navy. And his superior that he met in the Navy ended up becoming his mentor and really changed the trajectory of his life. And so that was an inspiration. Something else personally that happened with a very close relative. We were around the same age, that involved, I would say equate it to trafficking at this, where what we're dealing with now. And stemming from not feeling love, this person didn't feel loved. This person had very low self-esteem. And so it prompted me to want to open up this nonprofit, which is mentoring foster youth. And basically the idea is regardless of your background and where you come from, with the proper guidance and direction and the mentorship, the sky is the limit. You can become anything and anyone that you want to be. I have three girls, and two of my girls are in Girl Scouts. So we do a lot with that in the community. Working with Missions United, I love the veterans program there and what they stand for with education and housing and ensuring that veterans have the support that they need. So I do a lot with that as well. So just anything that comes up, and it especially when it comes to veterans issues, children's issues, count me in.

SPEAKER_00

If there anybody in the audience who wants to talk to you or find out more about what you do, how do they find you?

SPEAKER_01

You could go on my website, www.kwglaw.net. I am also on YouTube. I have a podcast called Civility Wins, the Family Law Edition. And that is at Kristen Goss5925. At Kristen Goss5925. So check it out. Subscribe, share, would love that. I'm on Instagram, KWG Law. I am on Facebook, KWG Family Legal and Mediation Services, LinkedIn, Kristen Goss. I love it.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you for coming on. I'm so glad.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you for having me. Yes.

SPEAKER_00

You're welcome. And for the folks who are watching this, if you want to find out more about what we do, our website is mental health addictionlaw firm.com. That's mental health addiction law firm.com. Or just Google my name, Mark Astra, and I think we have about a thousand videos on YouTube. Until next time, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you in the next podcast.