From near death experiences to the devastation of homelessness, how and where do we find the will to overcome insurmountable odds? And when we do overcome these challenges, how do we pass that story of survival onto others? Life on the rocks is that place where these stories are heard from those who live to tell them. And now here is your host Kyle Miller.
(00:22): Welcome to life on the rocks guys. I'm so excited to bring you the show, man. These two guys right here are some of my favorite people. Like I met them a little over what? Two years ago? Maybe? Yep. Two ago. Yeah. You guys just killing it. I love your guys' story. And I just wanted to share this with you all. So with that being said, Jeremy, Joshua, let's hit it off, man. Let's get this thing going, man. Thanks for having us, man. We really appreciate it, man. We appreciate it, man. Oh man. No, no. The honor is mine, man. The honor is mine. You got, you guys are just so cool. You always got this like swag and you just like the way you guys talk. I I'm just like, oh man, those guys are cool as. You know, I wanna, I wanna be a other friends, you know, but the more I got to know you, right? The more I got to be around you and understand you two, you guys are like really family oriented. You guys are like really close. You guys are always doing stuff together. And I just wanna applaud that, man. I, and I envy that, that you guys have that relationship with each other and you guys are going on family events and doing stuff. And I just think that's so cool. So man, congrats on that. Thank you for sticking together. So let's get into this story, man. So tell me a little bit about you guys, where you're from, how you guys have come up. What are you guys doing? So what what's up?
(01:38): So we're born and raised in Miami, Florida. My mom was a single single parent who had five kids. It was rough for us growing up like really rough. There were times where we had no food where the water was off and we had bath outside, not necessary bath outside, but take buckets of water and put in the tub bath. And my mom, she worked a lot and our work ethic comes from her growing up. We see her work 23 hour days where she would work at the post office, come home and do hair on the side, sleep for one hour and then go right back to it. So yeah, that, that's how we were raised growing up in, I mean the, the, I guess a key part that he left out was my father was in prison from the time we were four until we were 22. So it was like, he said, my mom was a single mother, five kids and, and she made it happen, but it was rough growing up though from four years old to 24 to 2222.
(02:32): Yep. And, and you guys just at the house with your three other siblings, like you guys, so you guys basically raised each other. Was there one that, that stuck out that like kind of took mom role or dad role or something? My, my older sister she's one year older than us. So we all kind of took on that parent parental to our siblings. Yeah. We had to raise ourselves and, but it was though it transitioned into us being all close now. Right. Is how it was as we, how, how it was as a kid. So you guys, all your, your whole family's close. Just not you two. Yeah. So my all we are close with all our, us two, we have three sisters. We all are close. You know, growing up when you don't have much, it's nothing that you can do, but play with each other and have fun. So yeah. That's, that's true. That's true, man. So like south Florida, like where at where? At, in Florida? Miami, Florida, but not the, not what you see on TV, not across the we south beach. No, we was on the other side, the bridge side of the bridge. You don't wanna be at. Gotcha. What's the, what's that like? I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm a country, right? I live out on a farm. I don't know much about the city, you know? So what's it like growing up there, man?
(03:45): I mean, so we grew up in, in right smack, dead in the middle of the hood. Like every night you hear gunshots, you know, we've seen people get killed before. We've seen some wild, wild stories growing up. And I mean our whole life up until maybe a, our junior year of high school were surrounded and grew up in the hood. But my mom was visionary and we ended up, you know, transferring from one high school in the hood to going to another high school. But as far as like, like I said, growing up in the hood, it was just for us, it was our reality. It wasn't bad to us. It was just our reality. That's all we knew. That's all we saw. So that was normal for us. Like it just like in the eighth grade I almost died. Like I almost got shot. So I got, we were playing football, my hood versus another hood. And a guy got upset that he got hit too hard. He came, he slapped me, we fought. And of course I beat him up. But, but his friend, his friend pulled out a gun mind you we're in eighth grade. And he add it to my head. And by the grace of God, you know, he didn't pull the trigger. And those are the type of things that, you know, we, we encountered growing up.
(04:50): So you had a gun put to your head at eighth grade because you checked somebody too hard on the basketball court. Well then you beat him up. But that essentially what happened, somebody got mad, put a gun to your head on that. But this guy, he didn't tell you this guy who had put the gun to this head, we knew he had killed three people prior to this whole event happening. So when he's pulling out the gun, he's going to use it. And unfortunately he's no longer with us. He died like maybe a year or two year, two years later. So that was, yeah. Again like that situation, it for, for me, it was tough because I sit, I'm sitting there, I see the gun at his head. I'm like, I gotta let my mom know. Like I sit here once my brother die and I didn't do anything about it, but yeah, it was crazy. I'm still, I beat his when I got home, Go out, like you were close. The real, The guy had a gun. Kyle, what I supposed to do? I thought you're supposed to take a bullet for your brother, I guess not
(05:53): Something. Yeah, but here's the crazy part about it. Like growing up in the hood. Cause we started, we started selling drugs when we was in the seventh grade. So the guy who we, who was supplying us with the drugs, we went to his house and we was like, yo, here's what happened. So he came to us with, it was me, my brother. And it was like two other friends, right. It was two of our other friends. He came to the door with like three towels and it was like, why are you giving us towels? Like, look, open it up and go handle your business. So he proceeds to give us towels and it was guns inside the towels. So he was like, look, man, he pulled a gun on you. Y'all gotta be hard. You can't, you know, you can't, you know, represent and you cannot not stand up for yourself. So that was just a crazy experience within itself.
(06:33): So that's nuts at eighth grade. I mean, I was hunting at eighth grade. I wasn't, I wasn't putting, putting, I wasn't asked to go shoot somebody. Yeah. But luckily for us, it's just, you know, the few interactions we did have with my mom, she taught us to, to be people and always do the right thing. So yeah. We sold drugs. And then for us at the time it was out a, but never been those type of people to, to do bad to anyone. So obviously we didn't do anything. We gave him, gave him all that stuff back and I went home and I'm glad I did, but yeah. Wow. Your mom has gotta be amazing woman. I belong. I wanna meet her. Thank you. Yeah. How many people in your neighborhood, how many will make it out of there? We had 30 people that were our age. I would say probably like four, four people would make it out and out of the four we're out of the four and two of them went to NFL. Yeah. Wow. Wow. So out that 30, the four, make it out to make it to the NFL. You become rockstar real estate investors. That that's just, I, I just can't even comprehend. Like I have no reference point to, to that. Like you guys lived, it's like, we grew up on two different worlds, you know? How's your sisters, how's the rest of your family. Are they? What do they do?
(07:57): They're figuring out. Let's just say they're figuring out right now.
Gotcha. You know, it's not, it's not a lot of guidance where we, where we're from. I'll give you a promise. I'll give you a great example. My mom, I love her to death. And this is why you gotta be careful where you take advice from. So when we were in college, luckily we were fortunate enough to go. We had to work three jobs to, to get through college, but somebody told us, gosh, you need to start building your credit. The Dean of the business school told us that. Yeah. So what's school nova. Hold on. You just jumped a whole, like you made we're in eighth grade here. We just, So you made it through high school, played sports. Yep. But the key, the key thing is when we was in high school, we, we went to our local high school in the area we grew up in, in kero city. So from ninth grade to 11th grade, we were playing football. We were doing really well in 10th grade. We were both starting on varsity and our 11th grade year, my mom is just a complete visionary. And, and she told us, she was like, Hey guys, I don't wanna lose you all to the street. So I wanna take you guys to another school. Long story show up. My neighbor knew the head coach at a private school where it was like $25,000 a year to go to the school. Obviously my mom couldn't afford that. So we up being financial aid and we ended up going to this school where it was, you know, a bunch of rich kids who were driving Porsches and, and, and Beamers and the cars that my mom couldn't even afford. So for us, that was an eye opening experience. It was, it was exposure, right? So we ended up getting exposed our senior year of high school to the other side of, of the tracks, the side of the tracks you grew up on.
(09:38): I dunno about that. But we, we, I dunno about that, but i'm messing you, but yeah, so we ended up, we ended up seeing just a completely different side of life and it exposed us and that, and at that moment, our minds expanded because we was able to see like, man, like there's a different way of living. Like you don't have to star at night go, you don't have to live paycheck to paycheck. You don't have to. The biggest thing for us is you don't have to be an athlete in order to make money. You can be a business owner and make money. Cause for us, it's been perpetuated so long that in order to make it out, you gotta be an athlete or rapper. But having spent time at our senior year going to that school and building a relationship with some of the kids and realizing that none of their parents were athletes, they were actually business owners. That's when things, I, I believe really changed for us because coming outta high school, you know, we had some division, one offers to play football and you know, we decided not to play football and just to go to school work and figure out, you know, what life a and like what life ad offer for us outside of sports.
(10:43): So you guys turned down offers to play D one sports. So yeah. Let me, let me kinda add a little bit more reference to that. The most, most of our offers were from the Ivy leagues and the Patriot league. Right? Okay. So it, it, it to go there, you gotta have, you have to have great test scores. But you, they reduced the test scores for you a little bit. Right? Right. For us, we had to take, we took the S a T and the a T you know, those interest jams, I think four times each, and we still couldn't get the qualifying scores to get. So we truly believe didn't happens for, for a reason. So we was going to tutoring, we was going extra help. We was trying to get those test scores and we just couldn't do it. And, you know, we just told our coach at the time, who like, who was like a father figure to us, Hey, you know what know we're not gonna even go to college. We're just gonna go work because that's all we knew. Like in my family, graduate high school, you go get a job. You college, wasn't really something that was ever talked about.
(11:41): And my mom, she told us like, Hey guys, if you wanna go to college, you're gonna have to figure out I can't give you no money. So for us, we went to him, it's like, Hey, listen, man, you know, we can't afford college. We just gonna go get a job. And he told us like, gosh, you know, there's financial aid. You can work. You, you can work and make money, go to college. So he convinced us to go. And that's how we actually ended up going. If it wasn't for him, I know where we would be at right now. Wow. Okay. So you were trying to get the, the grades didn't make it. So you go to college just for school. You've been exposed to this stuff. You've seen the other, other side of where, you know, the opportunities and POS just PO not even necessarily opportunities, but just possibilities. Yeah. Yep. You know, that's all, I think that's all, some people need is just oh, that can, that can happen. Like show people that this can happen and, and that's all they need. So you guys definitely took advantage of that. You shared a story when we were, we were together last time, a couple weeks ago. And about your mom and about all these kids driving the Porsches and yeah. You know what, share that with me cuz I thought that was so cool.
(12:48): So and going to the high school, the football coach made all the football players spend an evening together. So I spend a night to build comradery and everybody had to stand up and act and tell the entire team why you play football, why you here? And the importance of, you know, being a part of this team and all the kids. So it's like, oh, you know my mom and my dad is never there for me. All they do is work. They give me money and they don't gimme anything else outside of money, no support anything. So man, him at the time I'm broke kid from the hood like bro, you got, you gotta you driving school in the poor se Beamer, you got your own wing at your parents' house where you know, that's not, you know, life is good. Like I'm sharing, I'm sharing a tiny eight by eight room with my brother and we can barely turn around without hitting each other. You got a full win, like what? We had a Ford Explorer that did not have any AC in it. Right. South Florida.
(13:49): So that, so I go home next day and I said, mom, like they complaining about their mom and dad not being in their lives. But they got everything that they, that, that, that, that I would want. And she challenged me. She asked, well, she asked us a question, a few questions. Have I ever missed any of your recitals or any of your attendant shows? I mean presentations or anything you had at school? Have I missed a football game? I, Mr. Track, have I missed basketball game basketball game? I'm like, I keep saying no, no, no, you are always there, mom. Like what? Like get to the point. That's the that's, that's the point I'm always there. So you don't know what it feels like for me not to be there. You don't know what they always feel like for their parents not to be there. You, you, you know what, you know, what love and support is they don't, they just know what getting money is. Right. And that's that's, that was a huge eye opener for me about know what kind of parent I wanna be. So
(14:42): Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Both my parents, but they never missed a game. I mean, I, I played college football, small D two school in West Virginia Fairmont state, but, and it was like five hour drive to get to, to the home games. And then, you know, they traveled to every game and every game, every weekend they were there. Wow. And that's every, every time and like never missed one game until my, my junior year, my dad missed one football game and because he had to work and he couldn't get out of it and he was on call and just stuff was going bad, so he couldn't leave. And but he, he wanted, he was calling my, he was calling my stepmom, like what's going on? What's the game, you know, he's he was just there. But I, I remember that feeling like, oh wow, he's not here.
(15:25): And that was the first time that I'd felt that of it being different. Yeah. So I, I kind of ha I had the same thing and still like, even now, like I go, go play I don't know, pick up basketball game or something. He'd be like, where where's your game. I wanna come see it. You know, you know, I'm like, OK. Yeah. But yeah. So just having that support is just massive. So you guys grew up without basically your dad or, or mom, you guys grew, grew kind of on your own, but they were always, your mom was definitely always there for you. Yeah. That's, that's cool in those key moments. Yeah, definitely. That's so cool, man. All right. So now we're in college, what's happening in college. How do you, what you guys do move from there? We doing it. We are working a lot to the point where one time, like legit almost died, again, another experience. So the house, my mom house had gone into foreclosure while we were in college. And you know, we were, we were living at home. So we, we were commuter students. So we had to pick up an extra. We had, at that time we had two jobs each and we had to pick up another job. So we would wake up in the morning, go to one job and then work like, work until five o'clock. And then we had the, the set, the third job that we picked up. Cause the other job was on the weekends. We would work from like nine until like three in the morning to sweeping floors at a, what do you call that? You like, stay there, like stay fair. So at your body gets exhausted. So one night we was driving home and we would take turns driving. It was my night and I'm driving and I wake up cause I didn't realize I had fell asleep at the wheel and I'm like, wait, I was just in this lane.
(17:07): How I getting in this lane? I don't remember getting in this lane. So I'm like, hold on, I'm slapping my face. I rolling the window down while he's asleep. So I'm driving. And then the next time I get I'm back in the other lane, I'm like, wait, hold on. I, I think I'm gonna sleep again. And I ain't wanna wake him up because when it's his turn to drive, I'm sleeping. He bet not wake me up. Right. So the last time, while we almost like I'm driving, going 80 and we were this close to hitting the wall. So he woke up, he like during wake up and at that point, obviously we both woke up to and we were able to make it home. But you know, we had to work a lot to, to make it happen. So you guys had just been grinders and hustlers and like hard workers your entire life then? Yeah, we saw, I mean, we saw it from my mom, from she, she displayed work ethic every day. Like every day she was working every day, she was trying to do something to get money, to support us. Yeah. So then what led you guys down into the real estate game? So we out of college, well, first college was a great experience for us because we really got exposing college, two different business owners, different opportunities just to really expand our mind. And while we were in college, we started one business that failed and then we started another, hold on, don't skip over that. So we, that business that we started in college, while we working the jobs, we put 20 of life savings and student loans to fund that business until we realized we need to shut it down. So we put 20,000 in it. We ran it for like a year and then we realized this isn't a good idea. So we stopped doing it. And then we made it pivot. And then we started doing promotion, new marketing, like printing logos for companies and organizations around the org around campus, on hats, hoodies and t-shirts.
(18:47): And we was doing okay. And then we met a guy and long story short. He offered us an opportunity to open up a cleaning business with him. And we opened that cleaning business. And within, within 18 months we had grew and we sold that cleaning business. And then right after we did our first real estate deal, cause what happened was he was having a kid. We heard an ad on the radio. He convinced me to go and spend his money. Cause I wasn't trying to do that. So before we ever did the real estate deal to make a long story short, we had spent $70,000 in mentorship before we ever did one deal. So the first we, we spent 55,000 on one mentor and it was, we learned nothing on credit cards that was on credit cards. And we, we learned nothing that mentorship like absolutely nothing after spending. Well the, yeah, go join your, we joined our, we met a local mentor. We paid them 15 to 70 in total. Yeah. One that really helped us understand real estate and basically was life changing figure in our lives. So we spent 70,000, we did a real estate deal. Our first deal was 19,500 and we were off to the races then.
(19:59): Nice. Yeah. So You wanna share what you sold that company for? Oh yeah. So when we listed the company, we had listed it just over, oh, just over a hundred thousand dollars. And we had got, we had got an offer for just over a hundred thousand. No, it was like, yeah, just north of a hundred thousand. OK. Less, less than a offer. Less than what we listed it for. But at the time we didn't know any better. So we turned that offer down, trying to get the asking price. And then while we were trying to sell the company for, we had took our attention off of the cleaning company, cuz it was kind of on auto pie pilot, but it wasn't, but we had put it on all pilot just to focus on real estate full time while we're focusing on real estate, we're not focusing on the cleaning company, we start losing customers. And at that point once, once we made that 19,500, we called the broker like, listen, bro, you got what we to sell this company. So we went from potentially selling the company for just north of a hundred thousand to only selling it for 20,000. Because at the time we were motivated sellers, we were very motivated sellers.
(20:59): You wanna get out and get into this? Yeah. We wanted to get out once that, that, that first real estate deal was proof of concept. Once we saw that, okay, this is real. We can, the deal that make, you know, almost $20,000 on one deal, Hey, let's get rid of this cleaning business and go all in on the real estate. Right. Right. So how do you go from the hood? Right. And that's, I mean, that's what I'm using your words. Do you do that to like having Theus to write a $55,000 or to put a $55,000 on credit card to first mentor, like, Hey, I'm gonna do this. I mean, for us, one thing about growing up in the hood, they teach you gonna always bet on yourself. And for us we say, we bet on ourselves. So I don't know if you ever been to some of these seminars, they, they tell you to go to the back of grow. They teach you how to increase the credit card limit on your credit cards. And that's what we did. And then they, they sold us cuz they have like the best salesman in the world selling at these seminars. And we increased limits on our credit card. We went to the back of the room and we swiped that credit card because for us, we was like, man, I know what this guy standing in the front of the room to do it, we could do it as well. So that was one of the benefits of growing up where we grew up. Like you just, you have ultimate confidence in yourself, the ultimate utmost confidence. Wow. So we just always believe in ourself.
(22:19): So that is a, I mean, if we wanna look at it, I mean that's a positive coming out of there is like, I mean there's a lot of people right now in life. Like that's the biggest problem is that they won't bet on themselves. They would never do that. They would think that's too big of a risk. And I, I can't, I can't do that. I don't have the right training or I don't have this and I don't know how to afford it. And I don't do this. You guys, I I'm gonna do it. Yeah. I mean, for us man, growing up in the hood, like it, it was, it was, there were several benefits. That was one of 'em. Another one is like, I, I know how to go without a lot of people. If they were to go broke, if they was to lose, you know, money on the deal, they don't know how to handle that. For me, I've been that I've been broke. You know? So if I need to, if I need to start over, I can better. I better. Yeah. I know I'm gonna go faster because I, I have the knowledge and another thing is we've been figuring it out since we were kids like basically raising our ourselves, figuring out how we gonna eat food at night. I've been doing this as a kid. So it's nothing new as an adult for me. So I think the way we grew up was a huge benefit for us.
(23:19): Absolutely dude, oh man, I love this man. And you guys, you guys are awesome. I love it. So you do your first deal. You got money in the bank. Proof of concept is good. Like let's do this thing. How do you guys grow from there? What do you guys start doing? We do a few more deals, but let me put into perspective. We are in Miami, in south Florida. So once we start making a little bit more money, I don't regret any of the decisions that we made. But when we start making money, we live in Miami. This is the entertainment capital of the world. So I, we start going out. We start having a great time. I mean Cal, when I say a great time, I, what you're. So instead of investing the money back into the business, we were just living the, the good life. Let's put it that way. Right. But then once we started meeting more mentors and you know, getting the right guidance, people started telling us, Hey guys, you need to reinvest your profits. And then, you know, use the cash flow that you get to go out and, and, and, and, and entertain yourself and have a good time. So we would just me on that hamster wheel doing deal out the deal, but then taking the money and just having a good time with it until maybe like a few years ago, when our mentor was like, look guys, like, that's not how life is. That's not how business is cash flows, your pay for your fund. But, but the answer, the answer to the question, our first year we focus primarily on wholesale.
(24:43): Then year two, we start doing lips because we tried the wholeseller deal. And because we couldn't make $25,000 on that deal, we, the guy was only trying to let us make 22,000. We end up, we end up flipping the deal. So year two became our focus on recaps year three. We, we start focusing on rents. Then year four, we, what we start fo we did our, we start focusing on the development project, small development project, and then year five is just now just all putting it together to, to grow and scale the company. That's kinda, I, that that's, that's our trajectory as far as real estate goes. What a lot, what a lot of bumps ands along the way. Oh, I'm sure. What would you say? Like in the business aspects, what was the worst decision you made with some of the money that you made? I mean, besides the party and stuff, I mean, cause that, that stuff goes pretty quick, right? Yeah. Especially down here one night, one night, gimme an idea. What'd you spend one night on, at a part at a club,
(25:42): One weekend I'm to say this, but one weekend we spent 60,000. No, it was, it was a week. It was a week like Tuesday to Tuesday to Sunday, we spent about 6,000, but it wasn't, it was like between, it was like four people between four people. So A, I won't never that week. Hey, listen, we did this stuff for life experiences. Right? We're never gonna have memories, right? It's like, you didn't, you didn't spend it on Coke or whatever, and you're never gonna remember the whole thing. You spend it on the experience and now you have that memory for the rest of your life. So when you're, when you're 80 years old and this is what I wanna live life and do, when I'm 80 years, I'm sitting there in the, in the recliner and my, my joints don't move and all this stuff and I'm just beat to hell. I just wanna look back on all those things and all those fun things that I did. And I was just living it. You know, I just wanna be like, man, and just reminiscent because I dunno you read that book. Was it zero? You read that one, right? Yeah, man. I, that, that book, if you guys listen and read that book, that that was an awesome read. You're gonna have those memories for a long time. Yeah, there it is. Iowa zero. Great
(26:57): Book, bill Perkins. And it really puts things in per on how, you know, you might wanna live. Your life, really opened my eyes on some things It really did. But besides that that's, it that's really, it. That's what all we really blew money on because growing up down here, that's what our culture is partying, having a good time and not us never having money. We never was really able to experience that. So I think we went through a phase of, I need to experience this. I need to get this out in my system. So now I, if somebody, if somebody wants to go out, it's not really a big deal. Well, I do it well, I don't, I've already done that. So I say that's really the only thing, the only way that we've actually blown money was, is parting a little too much other than that. Nothing else. Yeah. That's what you saying? No, you, you was asked the question was, you know what, besides that, what, it was a bad decision we made the business, correct?
(27:51): I think, I mean, there's a few things partnering with him. I think there's a few things though from just our entrepreneur journey, one, hiring people too fast and not really understanding who you're bringing and in that's number one. Yeah. Another thing is not hiring a mentor fast enough. Yeah. I think if we were to hired a mentor faster, a mentor to help us scale because we had a mentor to help us understand the business, but a mentor that helps us understand how to scale. That was another mistake. I would say that we made anything else you can think of. I think those two are really, I think those two are really, really key. I think definitely the mentor, because one of the things that, you know, we learn now and we, we truly believe is not a core value, but like something that we stand on is how do we collapse time? You can make more money, but you can't make more time. So be so much further alone in life. If you just invest in yourself and hire somebody, that's that that's already where you're trying to get to. So I wish, I wish we would've done that earlier, but you know, that's the only, I think that's one of the biggest mistakes we made. Cause again, part of our nature is to figure it out. And that's what we've been trying to do for so long until we realize like, man, just collapse time and pay somebody. Well,
(29:05): Well that's, that's how we've been raised. Like I'm the same way, right? Hey, figure it out. You can do it. You know how it's the, it's what mark always says. It's the who not how I'm the who to help you with the how. And I was always asking the question and this is where we gotta think about what questions are we asking ourselves in our mind? And when we're doing things, the right question gives us a better answer. Right? And we can say, how do I do this? Then? That just says, well, that relies on me to do this. But if I say, who can help me do this, then I'm gonna, I'm looking for something completely different. And I think a lot of people just get stuck in the how, how, how, how do I, how do I do this? And they never get past that.
(29:43): And so that's helped me in my business. I've been able to hire some people, been able to bring people on and help grow my, my company. And it's definitely a game changing question. And that's, that's all it is. That's a, that's, that's what we're aspiring to do. And, and to get better with is just those questions that we continue to ask ourselves when we're sitting at home, like, what do we want to create? And actually did you guys, and this is, I think about this. I always knew I was gonna be a millionaire. I always knew that I was gonna be successful in life. I remember a story. It was me and some guys, I you know, playing BA ball with Chris long, the, from the St. Louis and the DN highway long son. Yeah, we, we were, I, I grew up with him.
(30:38): We played ball together until we were 18. And we were, we were sitting out there in the outfield one day and it was just like, what are you gonna do when you grow up? They were having this conversation with a couple guys. And one of the guys was like, well, his dad owns a business here in town. And he goes, I'm gonna take over my dad's business and do this, this and this. And guess what he's doing that another guy was like, oh, I might be a teacher. Another guy was like this saying these other things, Chris, I'm going to the NFL. And I said, I don't know what I'm gonna do yet, but I know I'm gonna be a millionaire and it's not gonna be a nine to five and it's not gonna be a going into the office and doing that stuff every day and working for somebody.
(31:15): I know, I don't know what it is, but it's not gonna be that. And so I, I had that always in my head from it's probably, I don't know, 10, 11, 12, something like that. My dad would hand me books of like, cause it's all mindset, right? It's all figuring out what, what you can do. He'd hand me a book and he'd say, Hey, here's a book on jobs. Right. you know, read this and you can see what you wanna do when you, I looked at the book and I was like, does not me at all. I, I don't want a job. I remember walking out we were hanging out with family one time and my my grandma's sitting there and I, I told my grandma to Graham, so I'm gonna make $500,000 in a year. And she kinda went okay, buddy. You know? And it's like, but I knew I, I was gonna do it. So, I mean, it sounds like you guys are the same way. Like, you know, Hey, it's, it's, it's on me. I'm gonna bet on myself. I'm gonna make it. I'm gonna make it. Or I'm gonna die.
(32:11): Anything that you said is key. Even, you know, it sounds like even some people in your family didn't even believe you or believe in you and your abilities. So that's why sometimes one, you gotta be careful who you tell your dreams to. And then two, like he said earlier, you gotta be careful who you get it life from. Because like, I love my mom to death, but I can't go to her advice about running a business. She's never done it before. I can't tell her, I wanna start a business because as a parent, it's your job to protect your kids. You don't want your kids to fail. So my mom, her first nature is to say, I don't know how to do this. So I may steer him to go left. And even though he should be going right, but I I'm steer him to go left because I don't want him to go right.
(32:49): And get hurt because I can't parent him when it comes to running that business. So what you said is super key. You just one, you gotta be careful who you tell your dreams to, and then who you, and again, talk about talking, just talking to that point, talking about how we grew up again. I love my mom as well, but I remember in college, like going back to that story, we never told the Dean said, go, you need, you guys need to get your credit, right. You need to, you need to build your credit. How did you do that? Get a credit card, charge it and make you pay it off. We go home and tell my mom, well, we getting the credit card. Oh no, that's a bad idea. You don't need to do that. Blah, blah, blah. But she's speaking from her experience and she's putting, she's projecting what she went through and her experience on me, my you that includes close. And those that mean that, that, that love you and mean, well, because sometimes they may think they mean well, but in actuality, they may be hurting you. If you take,
(33:39): They're only coming from their, their own experiences. And that's what everybody's projecting out, right. From their own experiences, how they got hurt, how they don't have, maybe don't have confidence in themselves. So then they don't have confidence in you. Right. You know, it, it, it, whatever it may be, it's just like, if you, in your heart of hearts, if you know, if it's gonna be this, then make that. Have I, I, my wife likes to tell this story I was making. Cause I went, I went to Memphis university of Memphis after school. I wanted, I thought I was gonna be a strength, conditioning coach. And so I was working with a football team and that's where I wife now. And I think I making like six a to be. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. She obviously married me for the money. And but at that point, right, like she goes, well, what do you wanna be? And I, and this is to the point I had, I had tried to do the strength conditioning, but I hated, I hated going in and basically babysitting these guys. Some of these guys had freakish, freakish at politic ability. And like, they didn't wanna work out. They didn't wanna do anything, but, and, but they could play ball. And I, I, I would just continue to like, always question, why am I doing this? Why am I here? Why am I in this situation? And I, and I, I, I realized pretty quickly that, that wasn't the, a, the lifestyle that I wanted and B a, it wasn't the money that I wanted. I couldn't make the money that I wanted in that, in that profession. I, I knew I was gonna be like 40 something years old and finally making, you know, 150,000 a year.
(35:11): And I was like, that is not for me. And I have zero life. And so I like, I, I'm a lifestyle guy and I just wanna be I like to go on vacations. I like to go skiing. I like to do all that stuff. And I, I don't want anybody telling me I can't do it. So I was like, this is not the profession for me, but make a long story short. We were on the phone with her and she asked me, what do you wanna be when you grow up? And I told her same story. I told the guys when I was outfield, I said, but millionaire. Yeah, that's it. And she was like, OK, but you, you just, you just dropped a huge gem. And we talk about this all the time. You realize what you don't want. I think we, so in life we focus so much on what we want and we don't focus on what we don't want. And once you start focusing what you don't want that made your decision much easier for you to say, you know what, this is not what I want. And were you able to use that, that comfort and that security? I think I was also able to like, you know, I, I'm looking at people in the future, in the life that they have. I was always like watching the older guys, older people. I was always looking up to those people. And so now I think in life, I'm looking at the older guys now in heck. Now I'm what 30 now. And I can look back on some of the younger guys too, and they're, they're creating life. And I take from their life and I, and I go, wow, maybe I can implement it that in mind and grow, grow my lifestyle or my, you know, my relationships or, or whatever. It may be that I'm admiring of this person and implement it in my life. But I'm always like, Hey, is that guy happy? Is this guy really like his life? Or is it all fake?
(36:42): Does he have too much stress? Does he have this? So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm looking at those things and kind of trying to mold to where I want to go as well. So it's it's been fun guys. The this whole, this whole thing I love, I love your story. I love your journey. I love, I love what you guys represent. And I mean, you, you guys are the epitome of American spirit, right? You guys, Hey, it's on me. I'm gonna make it happen. And I'm just gonna keep, keep pushing forward. Dude. I love It. That's that American that we need get back. Absolutely. Absolutely. Guys, if you're listening to out there, like if you're sitting there and you don't think that you can, you know, start a business or create something that you want in your life. I mean, look at these two guys, they came from the hood, they came from a single mom who was there, you know, never, never there. She showed up to the games, but like she was always working to provide for you guys. Yeah. I mean, so you gotta think how awesome some you guys, I mean, how lucky you guys are too with that, you know, with, with that support, because it could have easily been, you could have been the guy that that shot some, that the two guys are now dead. Yeah. How many of your friends are dead?
(37:55): A lot. That's why my mom transferred is in high school. So go ahead. When we were, when we were in high school, it was like for a, a, a 60 day stretch. Like every other day, one of our friends were either getting shot or killed. And every day we would come home every other day, we would come home and be like, yeah, mom, such and such got shot or such and such got killed. And she just made the decision, like, like I can't lose you guys to the streets. So that's when she, again, like I said, she's a visionary and that's when out a different opportunity for us. Yeah. Outside completely outside of our zone. And my mom understood in to grow. I gotta get outside their zone. So we went from, at our high school, when we at ke city, the school in hood was 3000 black kids. OK. We transferred to a school with rich white Jewish kids and I'm outta or anything. But I wanna show you the, I wanna show you the culture shock that. And it was just, wow. You know, it was a completely different experience for us,
(38:56): So the more, more of that story is if you want change, if you want change, you gotta be the change and you can't be, you cannot be afraid to get uncomfortable. That's really what it takes to get outside the comfort zone. That's awesome. So where do you guys see yourselves in the future? Where do you see yourselves in 10 years? What do you guys doing? Oh, definitely like completely like spending more time with the kids, completely hands off in business, creating and helping and serving more in the community. Cause that's something that I'm passionate about. Just really giving back and helping the next generation, because there's not a lot of people. And I look back at, at our life and especially what we grew up from there was really nobody that really came back to help the next generation to talk to the kids and say, Hey man, I made it out. I didn't sell drugs. I didn't play football or know it did I rap, but I was able to make it out.
(39:43): Right. So that's kinda how I see it for myself, for me, that a huge impact. Nah, for me, similar as well. And I wanna, I'm actually thinking my reaching out to, to my college. Cause I, I do want to teach and, and go back and, and show kids a different path. Yeah. Are in college that went to college for whatever reason and showed them like, Hey guys, I went to college and I was able to not work a job and do something and not do what society says. So for me, I definitely want to figure out how I mentor to the masses and help them understand that society norm. So just that societal norms, you can create your own norms and you can do your own thing. So bring up my time to be able to preach my message, which is you create your own path on letting anybody create for you. Yeah. That's awesome. So where, where do I listeners find you guys
(40:33): On? I would say, I would say the best places on Instagram at math twins. That's M a T H I S T w I N S on Instagram. So at math is twins or Instagram, shoot us a DM. You have any questions. We wanna help as many people as we can. And our life's mission is to impact people. So that's something that, that we're very passionate about and wanna do. So absolutely guys, if this, if, if this story connected, these guys are two total rock stars I've hung out with 'em both that great guys. Are you guys still on 75 hard. Oh, that, that was over. That was listen. I dunno if I can do it again though. It was challenging. It taught me a lot about myself, but I don't know if I wanna do it again. Absolutely. It is difficult. Discipline discipline, but discipline creates the freedom. Right? Correct. So the but guys, thanks again. I really appreciate it now. Thank you for having us. We really appreciate it was an honor that you even asked us. So man, thank you so much. Thank you, Kyle. Absolutely. Guys. I'm blessed. You guys wanna connect with him? Check him out on Instagram and then take care.
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