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Has a convenient tenant app for you to do your payments or make repay requests give them a call today A and B properties 217 91988 Quincy you don’t want any part of this now I will have to show you offline the menu it’s not impressive I bet it’s gross they serve
Rice pudding for dessert and I saw it yeah it’s like just it’s just like did you ever see the Matrix when they’re when they’re eating yeah that white why do everything taste like chicken yeah that yeah it looks like that yeah it like looks like that in the
In the yeah oh I’m out uh it’s like meat shakes that’s like what it’s made of looks like you seen that like all the like some of the influencers like Fitness influencers are doing like meat shakes and stuff now meat shakes yeah but like 8 ounces of chicken and then
Like 8 ounces of water and they just blend it until it’s a shake and then they drink it so they get their protein better really true story I’m not doing that so but you do uh but you are pretty fit and you eat a
Lot of meat meat you do you do you have like a carnivore based diet uh other than cookie dough yeah for the most part cookie dough and meat cookie dough but you do you eat more meat or cookie dough oh meat 100% yeah do you do like the
Gram per body weight uh I do a little over that of course you do goal I don’t hit it every day H Curtis suler um owner of Quincy X Company Quincy experience uh you guys uh are doing downtown six Street prominade stuff yep also you are uh the regional leader
Manager of young life with the title yep area director yep uh so Curtis you’re one of my favorite people awesome one of the reasons why you’re on here do you know Tyler Myers was on here a week or two ago yeah so of course we um I’ve
Been dropping Payne shon’s name a lot lately and anybody who’s been listening to a lot of these pods might be like okay stop talking about pain I get it you could give his phone number out and they could just call directly we should call him and just not tell him that
We’re doing a pod put him on speaker and like that might get interesting it’ll be great and he’s always so positive but then so when I have him on eventually yeah you know how he always asks you and I questions yeah so he is he is
Obviously man I talk about pain too much we need to skip over this and go to something else but the the truth of the matter though is there’s a reason why you and I are here and there’s a reason why he’s in the community and he does
Lots of great things but I want to turn the tables on him and Hammer him with questions good luck he’s gonna try to turn it on me yeah very much so he’s very good at it he’s one of the best question askers I’ve ever been around so
Uh your the work that you do with young life y um I’m pretty impressed by that I know you’re a very humble guy most of the time um unless you’re unless you’re doing everything yeah and then someone says why are you doing all of these things so
For example if our listeners don’t know about C they probably do but you’re the kind of person that will um so I want you I’m this going be I’m going to say controversial things about you that’s fine okay so you’re the kind of person that will wake up in the
Morning and you’re I believe you’re the kind of person wakes up and when your feet thud on the ground the devil says oh no he’s up again I hope so and you go you get at it you will either drag your children kicking and screaming or
Willingly to to the gym uh my oldest daughter set her alarm for 3:45 this morning and got up on her own she beat me awake this morning okay this makes sense has everybody in your family been to the gym early in the morning yeah okay I will say not consistently um my
Oldest is in there like she wants to be in there a few days a week um as as a parent I don’t necessarily think that’s the best idea for her five days a week just the way that the stuff she has to do and growing is a you know an
Adolescent like she needs a little bit more sleep so a few days a week I’ll I’ll let her come to the gym with me and my wife and then other days like now you need to sleep okay do you guys do Elf on the Shelf we used to um all of our kids
Have aged out so they aged out they all kind of know so it’s like we got off the hook with that the last couple years were really fun because our oldest like would actually help us which was kind of cool do you think there are any listeners right now that are hardcore
Into the AL on the Shelf I don’t know do you think there are any children listening to this that I also don’t know which is why I’m choosing my words very carefully as to like aged out in things is it bad is it bad that I tell
My children that the reason why we don’t have an Elf on the Shelf um is because the elf is too busy helping out all those other kids and creating mischief and all the other and someday someday when they’re adults they’ll probably wind up getting an Elf
On the Shelf I think that’s okay oh man I mean when you frame it when you frame it that way as long as you’re not telling them it’s like it’s because you’re bad kids he’s not coming like don’t don’t do that no but I think I don’t I’m I’m reluctant to use anything
That’s like too busy I think that’s just such a buzz word in culture I think it’s a lot of like currency we use to like assign value to ourselves like anytime we sit down with somebody or we talk to somebody like hey how are you oh I’m so
Busy like that’s how we respond to each other now and I think it’s just such a bogus way to live is that in this just hurried busy just chaos of life and like I do a lot of things and I know that I do and I’m very I’m also very strategic
In in how I do things and how I add things to the list so I I just really I just don’t like the word busy so if you ask me like hey how are you doing I will never say like I’m so busy like I’m very
Conscious of that like I may say like I got a lot of things going on today or just bouncing from place to place um but I’m never going to tell you like man I’m so busy people who say that they’re too busy I don’t think they’ve got Jack
Going on sometimes sometimes I’ve never heard you say that you’re too busy to do anything yeah I won’t I don’t say you don’t have you don’t seem to have you will not either you either don’t have limitations or you don’t admit that you have limitations well I
Think it’s it’s just how I build too it’s very strategic like I said like where I’m at now I mean started eight years ago and I mean you could even argue that it started 15 years before that you know with just how I how I build and scale things you know from
Becoming like college to becoming an adult to professionalism to all of those things like it’s a whole bunch of different pieces that have that have been you know kind of added into the mix and once you get one kind of automated it’s like okay I’ve got that down now I
Can do a little more one of the first things I first meetings I had when I came on staff with young life in 2016 was with somebody here in the community and i’ I’d seen their name around a bunch and I got lunch with them and I
Was like dude how do you do all of the stuff you do and this quote I will like carry with me to the day I die he said the more you do the more you realize you can do but for a lot of people we have to then confront the fact that we
Haven’t done a lot before that and the regret that can can come up from that I think can be too overwhelming for some people to bear like you have to if you’re going to admit like hey I can do more you also have to look in the mirror
And then say like I haven’t done a lot so far and I’ve wasted a lot of time and that dichotomy is something like looking back be like man I’ve messed up so much I’m afraid to do anything else so they don’t versus like man I’ve
Messed up a lot I’m not going to let that happen again now is where everything changes I’m going for everything and that’s kind of the space where where I like to live do you internally think that you do a lot no you don’t think that
No and I know that sounds crazy but I it just is does your wife Laura think that you do a lot I think at times for sure do your kids think that you do a lot at times but I also think it’s it’s in how we communicate with our families too
Because I coach my kids sports I’m at most like nearly all of my kids games like I’m still heavily involved there so it’s not like I’m an absent parent you know I’m at pretty much everything I went skating with my daughter this week at her school just because she asked me
If I would come roller skate with her so like I just went into the school and skated and that was fun you roller skated again didn’t you just do that two weeks ago yeah you did it twice yeah you’re too big for roller skates that’s not true them I much better the second
Time okay so have you ever heard this idea that uh there are no bad dogs just bad bad dog owners yeah okay are there any bad kids no so in your line of work you and I have talked about this before well we’ve talked about things we talk
About stuff but so there are no bad kids what I’ll say initially we’re all products of our environment and we’re all products of the choices that we make based on the environment that we’re raising in and things like that like we choose for sure
But when you have kids who grow up in a very specific type of environment whether it’s you know super affluent and awesome and every opportunity is you know like afforded to them they can do whatever they want versus the other end of the spectrum that’s you know very socioeconomically depressed and all they
Know is that lifestyle like kids make choices based on that you know we have like students we’ve experienced in Young Life who come from just incredible stories of abuse who grow up and end up in jail because that’s all that they know is that lifestyle because parents were involved
In one thing or another and that’s all kids know but I even and even then then like I don’t put that on the kid like that’s a product of the environment and kids it’s such kids are so impressionable and like when they’re when they’re young when they’re in that
Window of you know birth to to 12 years old when they’re like brain is developing and and really building a subconscious and if you know a ton about like brain science and all that I’m a nerd so I look into all this stuff to figure out like how kids develop like
They’re a blank computer when they’re you know in elementary school in junior first part of junior high and people are just shoving information in that that becomes like the subconscious and that’s what the filter that kids run things through what do you think about so I I
Believe that that blank slate you know um the old U Latin lat tabula Rosa where you’re writing on them I’ve also heard this other paradoxically or or a dichotomy of this is kids have ax o imately 400 personality traits just because of their DNA and like long um just due to
Their genetic code yeah and you how do you I mean you’ve you’ve how many kids have you worked with I are we talking dozens hundreds hundreds if not approaching thousands yeah if not that many by this point I mean what I get to do in the summer I mean I interact with
Hundreds of kids every week so it’s I mean 3 400 different students that are at our camps that we go to every summer so and I’m there for a month straight on some of those trips do you do you see any evidence that um you know marrying
This idea of the kid there’s probably something where yes they’re blank slate and yes they are who they are and they’ve got their own internal battles right yeah where where maybe they uh feel a certain way probably because they’re father or their grandfather maybe felt that way too just genetically
But then you can write over the top of that too yeah I think we can do it as adults too and like if we don’t address it with kids and we don’t teach kids to really I don’t know process that part you know especially guys like we don’t
Talk about like oh just it just is what it is get tougher you know and I think that’s that’s a mindset we yeah so I think you know with with students and even with adults like we have to be aware of why we are the way that we are
And that takes a a pretty significant Deep dive into like what how did I grow up what was my life like what what really did affected me affect me who are my influences why do I do the things that I do and most people will write
That off and be like this is just how I am and they never grow but there are the others who are like okay why do I think this you know I think my wife is great at telling me like hey wait why do you think why did
You think that and giving me a different perspective and I try to be I’m not always perfect at it but I try to have a posture of learning within that of like okay wait why did I say that why do I do that I’m like oh that’s because this is
Is you know how how I grew up or thing that my dad said or my grandfather said so like that’s where I picked it up how did you grow up now I’ve heard you talk about your grandfather’s Farm yeah and I’ve you’ve done you’ve uh I mean so you
You do so many things okay you hunt I do you roller skate evidently not well but I do um and so there’s like dozens upon and dozens I actually um actually thought about bringing a list of all of like you’re kind of like I didn’t do it
No no no I’ve got other things on my sheet here like yeah that you know some some little rabbit holes that we can go down for fun yeah because it’s fun yeah but how did you grow up where where did you grow up I actually grew up in
Pittsfield so 40 45 minutes from here I hated Quincy growing up Sports rivalries you know sakis q&d that whole thing um actually even qhs too I remember remember playing in a sophomore tournament basketball up here when I was sophomore in high school so really Quincy honestly is the last place on
Earth I wanted to live um and now I can’t imagine living anywhere else so grew up um had a good childhood I mean for the most part There Was You Know trauma like anything else within it but nothing that was like incredibly out of the ordinary that I haven’t seen other
Kids experience and Thrive through I think it it does affect us all differently you know and for me for a long time I didn’t understand how a lot of that did did affect me you know and and to even the point again of like my wife Laura like asking me question like
Why do you do that like I was sitting in um right before I went to the gym I was sitting in front of our we got like a 5 foot by 5 foot picture window in our living room and I had a blanket over me like over the heat vent on the floor
It’s like all the heat like the furnac is blowing on me and I’m like reading my reading my Bible in the morning before we go to the gym and doing that she’s like why do you do that and I was like why do I do that like it’s such a weird
Thing like I don’t do you know anyone else who does that like sits and puts a heat vent puts the blanket over the heat vent um no well I did when I was a kid okay I did when I was a kid because we
Didn’t have a lot of heat in the well we had heat in the house but there’s something about even like the really oversized um vents yeah where if you know where the boiler is and there’s a straight shot maybe you’re getting that like the warmest air yeah like just
Because you just know you’re not going to go to the far end of the house to do it you know where the spot is where you can sit so honestly I as a small child I did do that and our kids just recently figured out that they could stand there
In the kitchen cuz our kitchen’s cold but yeah so you’re sitting there so you build a little fort or whatever I’m just sitting there like my phone um going through my Bible I’m doing that and Laura’s like why do you do that I’m like great question I don’t know but then it
Like clicks it’s like we didn’t have heat in the upstairs part of our house when we grew up we had like the big registers where heat just like would go up there like on really really cold days in the winter um we had Forest a furnace like downstairs two-story house but like
Me and my brother and my sister then would like sleep like we would have like a camp out kind of in our dining room we’d all take like a heat vent and like lay on the floor in there like growing up and we put our feet over that like on
Those super super cold nights it didn’t happen all the time but it happened sometimes I remember like sleeping like that so it’s like there’s some level of that’s comfortable that’s safe that’s warm that’s like like wired somewhere in the back part of my brain that I never
Really thought of like oh this is just what I do do you think kids uh these days like the new generations where I think over time uh there’s this idea that the rich have gotten a lot richer and the Very like the poor have um there’s always going to
Be the poor yeah well that’s a controversial statement um but I’m saying um what I’m trying to get at is this idea of I think there are children that don’t even know what you’re talking about in terms of they have a lot yeah they have a lot so they’re not going to
Remember oh I remember when I would wake up when I was a young kid and my room was always perfectly 72 degrees Yeah and I had the designer sheets and things like that do you think there’s an advantage to not having it super comfy and because I don’t know I think have
Kids gotten soft have I gotten has Society gotten soft I think culture has but I don’t blame like any one thing for that it’s just it’s the nature of how we have grown like I mean it’s two days shipping on anything like when I go we
Go on vacation or if I go to camp in the summer I don’t worry about like oh I better pack that because it can be there in two days like oh I forgot a belt awesome Amazon like $9.99 send me a new belt cool like sometimes it’s there
Before I get there because I can order one day shipping if it takes us you know more than a day or two to drive somewhere like it’s it’s all of us and for us to like vilify like one group and say oh kids today like I know some incredibly hardworking
Kids like they’ll work circles like even around me honestly the reason that part of the reason I am the way I am now is because we had students who were pushing themselves and I’m like if I want to keep up with them I better get to work
Like and that’s like a a side we don’t often see we see the worst of the worst when we see the news and we see kids college age students younger adults whatever we see the worst of the worst we don’t see the kids that are busting
At work in two and three jobs paying for the cell phone for their family because Mom and Dad can’t work because Dad’s not in the picture or mom’s not in the picture we don’t see those stories and those are probably more popular than the ones you see of kids acting up and doing
Silly things on the news is it is it long-term in terms of the betterment of society or for an individual for a kid growing up to have some level of adversity is there an advantage to it I think there’s an argument for that because you have to figure out how to
Overcome but you also have to have the awareness that you can and I think a lot of people operate with such a scarcity and defeatist mindset that they see something hard and they’re like man I just can’t do that and T around to walk away you know like there’s an analogy I
Think it’s Ryan holiday who says it and the obstacle is away like we walk up and you see a rock in the middle of the road a big stone that you can’t move most people are going to turn around and be like well I’ll go find a different way
To go around this and they’ll walk back days if they have to but there’s a few who are going to be like okay where’s a big stick I can use as a lever and pry this thing out of the road you have to have the awareness and the belief in s
That I can overcome this and we we’re not a resilient culture anymore like you can see that in everything that we do you know like dude chat GPT is ruining the world like we’re losing the way like how to think it’s so easy like everything has gotten so much easier
There’s a fascinating book called The Comfort crisis that talks about like if you get into like the biology of humanity we’re went we’re built to endure the extremes like we’re built for adversity like we are like we’re built to be Hunters gatherers like all of those things like to go like it’s why
Fasting is such an effective way to diet it’s why you cold plunging and sauna are taking on like such in we’re seeing such incredible growth in like cardiovascular health because of that and there’s tons of science behind that it’s not just my opinion what’s the thing with the sauna
I I heard something about uh so the heat the the sauna develops and produces the heat shock proteins do you do do you do heat and then cold yeah or do you do how how do you do it like okay if you had pardon heat and cold okay do so is there
An advantage to going from cold to heat to cold um I would have to look at like data on on that I don’t know I know for me it’s not practical the way my setup is at home so you do heat and then do a cold after I just got a cheap popup
Sauna that I actually borrowed from someone because they suggested how hot does it get uh I don’t go by like it I don’t think it has a total temp readout on it I go until my heart rate gets like 125 130 and then I go in the ice okay
And it’s gnarly but like what it’s done for like my cardiovascular health is absolutely insane like changing nothing else have you done that recently mhm okay I do it I do that if few times a week um I try to sauna pretty pretty often um my brother two three times a
Week my there’s a lot you know uh do it yourself build your own saunas for your home I’m all over the is a huge market right now and it used to be it’d be not difficult to get one it’s very easy to get one you can have Amazon I mean I’m
Telling you dude we got to be careful like with Amazon by the way love it our sponsors properties not Amazon like& properties is Sal of the Earth Amazon maybe evil empire not sure maybe maybe I don’t know um but speaking like J like you you you talked about um chat gbt
Yeah does any of that uh freak you out a little bit or or do you welcome it both like I think when used correctly I think or used like in positive ways like it’s it’s like anything moderation and do it the right way you know but so many
People and like I I know people who do it like like just I can just use this and spit up my whole paper for school I’m like that’s awesome but like what are you like really learning right now and that’s where you know critical thinking and just the ability to think
Deeply like we’re losing that we don’t sit and Ponder we don’t wander anymore we hate being bored we hate the sound of silence we don’t like being alone with our own thoughts we constantly have to be entertained and click through things it’s why Tik Tok is so huge and all of
Social media really and I’m like the one of the worst at it because I just love Instagram like I just think it’s great most of my stuff is like leadership and personal development content or you know science-based stuff but you know we don’t we don’t just sit and think and so
Much of how we develop and the awareness that I’m talking about that we need to grow comes from sitting in silence you know it’s interesting that that you’re not uh like you’re you’re a social media guy and an antisocial media guy and you are kind of like a conundrum a little
Bit where yeah you’re hot and cold you’re up and down you’re left and right I mean you you you have a duality about you and it so for example like Facebook I notic that you do post on Facebook but it’s also lead but but it’s it’s usually
Almost always lead by example type of posts because this is what you do yeah this is your way of life okay you’re not going on there saying look at me I’m cool the rest of you suck right you are saying look at what is possible look at
My support system look at how we build families look at how we build other people’s characters up look look how we build children look how we build adults right your message is very positive so this idea that you know it I mean if somebody were to say who uses Facebook
And social media for evil and who uses it for good they would turn to me and say Frankie you use it for evil and Curtis uses it for good I don’t think you’re necessarily evil I think you like to have fun I do you poke the bear a lot
Oh I wrote one about T Taylor Swift today saw that oh you did by the way Taylor Swift does anybody in your family like Taylor Swift uh Loosely Loosely oh so like you’ve got you’ve got quite a you’ve got some girls in your family my kids are awesome though yeah
But I mean they’re not they’re not going bonkers are they swifties I mean they have an appreciation for music but they’re all musicians okay they’re all musicians well real real quick the like the Taylor Swift thing if if people are don’t want to talk about it anymore and they’re if
Everyone’s really mad that Travis Kelce really cemented this for her no I’m kidding I don’t think it’s that worse no I don’t think it’s that worse I mean she’s brilliant um what’s up like with Time Magazine uh Hitler won that award once Stalin won it twice that’s a dangerous comparison I’m not comparing
Taylor Swift to those guys but I’m saying it’s not Time magazine’s point I’m not defending them I probably don’t like Time Magazine probably I probably don’t like those kind of Publications but um just a personal thing but I’ll say something positive about Taylor Swift generically speaking I I don’t think that Time
Magazine just puts people out there that they think are the best people in the world yeah they’re taking a look at it like who is making a global impact to the point where this person’s a household name yeah and this person is doing huge things on some level yeah so
With Hitler he’s doing huge things in a really bad way with Taylor Swift is she’s a um she takes kind of the Feminine Mystique and kind of brings it to the surface and says oh look what I’m doing um she’s making a million dollars per per show yeah and somebody said
Something like uh well you know if if Taylor Swift had a concert here near Quincy a lot of people from Quincy would go and it would be good for the economy I’m thinking to myself I’m like every single person who buying tickets just got poor and she got richer so that’s a
Fair trade I guess yeah but uh if you had to pick somebody here I’m going to put you on the spot if you had to pick somebody for and you can’t say your wife L Laura okay so Laura she would freak out if I did that anyway I mean she
Likes it and doesn’t like it yeah it’s both she’s like okay give it a rest and yes I know you love me I get it Al so chill out yep um but you guys have a great marriage um who would you pick for person of the year considering the
Planet yeah that’s that’s a that’s an unfair question cuz I’m putting you on the spot yeah and I I really don’t know um I don’t follow a lot of like hype on social media like it’s just not what I fill fill my head with I think there’s just some I think there’s some
Fascinating people that are out there I do think like one thing in defense of like Taylor Swift winning this um I think that her stance against the music industry overall and like having to fight to get her music back cuz she doesn’t even own the rights to her
Original music like they sold that without without like you know Consulting her or even offering her the opportunity to buy it like it just sold and she doesn’t own any of the originals and she went to war and actually re-recorded all of that stuff to get it back essentially
So I mean what she has done for artists in general over the last several years is something that just absolutely fascinating and to somebody who loves music like I have just a deep appreciation for that I think she’s also she’s largely written all of her own
Songs and built a lot of that on her own which is something that’s very unique um with the exception of probably a lot lot of heavier rock music especially like in the pop scene like there’s multiple writers and things and she’s always been very very true about like I I do this
Like I write these songs which is cool so I think and what she’s done just to to take the concert thing and put it in a movie theater too to be the first one to do that you know to really make concerts available because concerts are crazy expensive right now unless you’re
Going to punk rock shows well so we’ve got some mutual friends that went to one of her shows and they reported kind of back to me I so how is the show in this and I won’t say who it is because I’m outing him as like this dude who t
Concert Swifty he’s he’s not but he went with his daughters he goes Frank let me tell you something I have seen so many different shows and I’m not a Taylor Swift guy I will tell you this it was unbelievable it was you the energy and the light show and the feeling and the
Production of it is something that I’ve never seen before and even if you see it so there’s a Netflix there’s like a Taylor Swift like reputation tour thing on Netflix and my kids are all about it see that’s see that’s how I know teror Swift’s music is good is because I have
Little eight seven four year-old and they know they know nothing about music and they love it there’s my like little jab yeah because like it’s not Pink Floyd right it’s not M or it’s not radio head mine are all want to go to punk rock shows oh yeah okay so how many so
How many punk rock shows have you taken oh gosh kids too my uh all of we went to a family show to a band called The interrupts a little while back which is awesome there a female Le band from California that’s fantastic um just just a killer band they’re actually pretty
Much I think everybody in the band is family at this point so um it’s kind of cool but um really yeah a great show that was the first show first punk rock show that I took my oldest daughter to that just like me and her went to and
Like she got to meet the lead singer and like sang with her cuz she came down like we my oldest daughter’s only been in like the front row at shows which is just set a standard that I just I’m never going to be able to keep up but it
Keeps happening so we’ve got like our favorite spot at the pageant when we go she knows right where to go when we get in there and locks it down to where front row oh because it’s ga yeah so it’s whoever fights to get that spot
Right okay we we go I we’ll go way early we’ll sit in line for hours just to hang out um to get into see our favorite bands and it’s just such a cool thing like I always want I I’ve Loved music since I was a kid music got me through a
Lot of things um you know being a I was born in 82 so Nirvana and early 90s and all that and growing up in small town like listen to Country until the first time I heard Nirvana and like everything changed and you know went through like
The whole mid 90s which is the best ERA for music oh man just unbelievable and being able to grow up through that right like Junior High to high school oh like being a kid yeah because uh so I mean you’re you’re at the the the back end of
Gen X and um I think you and I have talked about this but this term xennial which is like you’re old enough to know all about about the old stuff and young enough to to bridge the gap to the new and that continues because we had great
Music oh for sure so I was born in 77 so like if you look up if you go to um if you go to the Internet and look up xennial there’s GNA be a Wikipedia page about it and it’s going to say 7782 yep there’s this like this fiveyear time where
So who is really hold on I just lost the name I mean my my grandparents I remember listening to my grandparents music m i mean old stuff yeah like paty Klein yep okay and then my parents music was it was either you know it’s either stones or Beatles or Elvis it’s one of
The three yeah pro pro probably but then they were young enough having kids to where now they’re in the 80s and so I’m you know I’m listening to Duran Duran my father and my mom and dad are listening to Boston okay and Durand Duran in Fleetwood Mac okay and so is there some
Zeppelin in there sure is there some is there some Beatles in there sure but then we’re but we’re deep in the 80s yeah and Michael Jackson comes out and then game changer that’s the game changer and I’ve said before but I wasn’t allowed to touch my father’s uh
Turntable okay ever so he’s got all of the albums and I can look at the albums but I’m not allowed to take the vinyl out right and you know I he had a collection about this big which is big enough yeah a vinyl that’s big enough
Right lot it’s a lot in 82 and ‘ 83 I thought it was the world I thought here’s the discography of the world this is what this is this is everything and now I know it’s not true but it’s still feels like everything in some weird way
Yeah but my father let me take the Thriller album cellophane off take the take the vinyl off put it on the table he instructed me very carefully had a really nice Pioneer turntable from Singapore that he bought when I think when he was in Vietnam wow and which I’m
Wearing his jacket you know very cool right so we’re we’re sitting there and he allows me to put on and the very first track on Thriller is want to be starting something and go listen to that I mean Michael Jackson depending on what you think about Michael Jackson yeah but uh the
Music didn’t hurt anybody no so bad joke but um but so your love of music what what’s it like living in Pittsfield in the 80s and did you abandon country music and move into the punk rock I I would I wouldn’t say I abandon
It um I push back even now like I push back pretty hard against like ’90s country and even a lot of like more popular country now because it’s terrible uh it I’m big on like Nirvana is a great example and I used to get like made fun of just because I would
Like I want to hear like artists are passion about what they’re doing like I want to I want to hear that emotion as they’re singing like I want it to I want it to feel real I don’t like autotune like I artists make mistakes like I play
Guitar and do that stuff I make mistakes all the time and I think that’s just a part of music like Perfection and autotune and like punching in punching out as you’re recording things I just think is so inauthentic and like the authenticity behind it is is the part
That makes music beautiful to me so like and I’m a nerd when it comes to it too so I mean I when I first I remember the first time I ever heard Nirvana I remember the the video that it was and my dad was click through channels I was
Walking down the stairs at our house in Pittsfield like I literally remember it this vividly was it was it bleach or reading in like 90 that came out like they did that show in ’92 so it had been shortly after that when it was on MTV
And it was aneurysm it’s the first song I heard I’d never heard anyone scream like that I was like what is that go back and I remember this like super vividly and it wasn’t long after that like I remember going to Walmart and I bought you know I I don’t know talked to
People figured out what their first album was because they were blowing up then and bleach was their first album and I bought all of their albums in order because I’d look at the years on them when they’re at Walmart and like bought all of them in order up to that
Point and like when I really got into them like Kurt died so it was like okay now what and that’s where like Green Day enters in like the chat and the whole bunch of the punk rock stuff because I would research and like listen to interviews with artists back then
Because you could hear like okay who influenced you and like for Nirvana it was a lot of Queen but like it went all the way back to the 30s to Leadbelly 12 string guitar just Delta River like Red River stuff yeah and that’s that’s who that’s who uh I was like that’s Kurt
Stuff biggest inspiration and if you get into that stuff like it’s it’s when they would drag recording equipment to prisons and record people and put it out and if you dig into this stuff like it’s some of the the craziest stuff but it also became some of like the biggest
Hits in the 60s too came from like re-recordings of this stuff like um is that House of the Rising Sun by The Animals everybody knows was actually a Lead Belly song like but you don’t hear that song ever like where did you sleep last night that Nirvana did on unpluged which is my
Favorite song on that whole thing was Lead Belly like just such a great song and I will chase the history of the bands that I like back to their influences just to the minia so that gets me into some pretty pretty crazy bands um as you as you go back through
Like punk rock stuff and like my parents growing up like my dad listened to a ton of Springsteen riding around so like that’s what he listened to my mom listened to Queen um and then whenever we went on road trips to family or whatever it was always like those Cruis
And Classics albums a lot of Billy Joel and and stuff like that so it’s a it’s a weird mix of music that I grew up on between like rock and pop and like all of that I the countryside of It kind of came from my grandparents I remember
Kenny Rogers on eight track listen to The Gambler and stuff like that and Johnny Cash live at fallson prison um a lot of wh and Jennings early stuff like that little Hank Williams and is I’ve dug deeper into music and just really just myself like I’ve got just a massive
Appreciation for Old Country so like I love Hank all the way through like Hank four is making music now for in the strange band like love that stuff it’s weird but I love it um and it’s just like the mess that music can be because it doesn’t have to be as overproduced
And cookie cutter the same thing the same thing the same thing that’s radio friendly like I I don’t list the radio really at all it’s all either my Apple music account on shuffle Spotify or um XM if I want to listen to like some newer stuff that’s out there you play an instrument
Couple a couple I play guitar and bass okay I knew you played bass I didn’t know you played what six string like regular guitar yeah uh so sometimes you play at Madison Park yep do you ever play anywhere else uh not really I used
To okay to play a little bit do you play at home yeah do you play with the kids uh we’re working on that so my oldest daughter I want to jam with her all the time like I just absolutely do she will listen to the radio and figure out how
To play music on her own on piano and just it’s infuriating how just gifted she is because she’ll just be sitting down and playing I’m like is that 30 Seconds to Mars she’s like yeah it’s the kill I’m like how did you learn that she’s like I just listened to it and on
Piano yeah see that’s a beautiful thing so if if she’s playing piano which piano is a really neat instrument because it’s a percussion instrument yeah she’s in percussion junior high so you’re playing a strength instrument but to have piano and bass guitar together I mean I don’t want to say that’s all
You need I mean it’s gon to take a lot for you guys to get a horn section yeah it’s or it’s gonna take a lot to get I’ve got lots of effects on electric guitar we’ve got a drum set in the house too so oh but I mean with all of with
All the synth stuff do you have any like apps where you do do you have anything where you can like put in a beat yeah and then maybe I pretty much have a studio at my house like it’s a yeah I’ve got a mixing board and all that stuff
That I can it’s stuff that I’ve just put together over the years it’s nothing I’ve spent like a ton of money on cuz don’t have a ton of money to throw at it so I can pick something up for cheap I just always have my eye out so we we
Pick up something here and there and then we build you know what we have so we got piano and amps and I actually just got another amp that I picked up for a little bit of nothing that’s awesome um I borrowed one from a buddy of mine and it was like you’re never
Getting this back and he’s like I need it back and then I found another one um very similar to it actually the same one just a newer model that I love can we get Young Life to buy the Y so we can reopen the pool uh that’s out of my
Hands well uh um didn’t you go over to Colorado like recently or talk to a big a big wig over on Colorado can you talk about that or no because because it’s this young life is a huge organization yeah like really big yeah it’s one of the biggest nonprofits on the planet
Like it’s huge do you know I mean off the top of your head do you know how big it is I mean not annual revenue I know that like the impact is 2 million new students a year around there I mean I mean how many okay well what yeah okay
That’s bigger than than I thought it’s massive like it really is is it in every state yeah in the United States oh yeah young life is in every state it’s in 110 plus countries like it’s huge and you’re the area director yeah of and what what is the area generally speaking Quincy
Just Quincy Quincy I’d say Adams County um we do a little bit outside of that but not much but I mean you really couldn’t do any a bigger space than that that’s a lot of people yeah I I would never leave our space anyway we have the most ridiculous facility outside of a
Young life owned property yeah it is pretty nice yeah got confirmation pretty much on that a couple weeks ago from some people who are in town that are more heavily involved with higher level Young Life stuff so do you this is kind of this I I don’t know if I should have
Asked you this before I asked the question but that’s what I do you know what I do I ask questions I just won’t answer it if I don’t want to yeah you’ll say pass say Frankie be quiet just stop um what what would Young Life do if if
There was a mom or dad or guardian or friend that knew of a a youth and just needed to to talk to somebody how easy is that to get done just to connect to somebody just to connect super easy like how how they do it I mean you call our office message
Our Facebook page or Instagram page what what’s your Facebook page called Young Life Quincy Young Life Quincy y l QC y if you in it’ll pop this is kind of like a you know the term safe space I can make fun of that term but it’s not really funny when you’re talking about
It in a genuine way right you know like I think young life is a true safe space like my home is a safe space you know I mean we have the wall in the in the building that like every kid who comes in there has an invitation to sign and
It’s got I mean if it doesn’t have a thousand names on that by now I would be shocked like it’s just names on top of names but it says young life and then like like the title underneath that is this is home and it’s a spot where every
Kid no matter no matter what culture would say divides them they belong and we’ve had I mean affluent kids super poor kids um every part of town you know every ethnicity in there any orientation or identity you can imagine like we’ve had those students in there and it’s a
Place where there is no division it really is and we’re we’re absolutely absolutely true to that and that’s one thing we tell kids like we fa we’re a faith-based organization we’re not a church and we are sharing the gospel with kids but we do that in a way that’s
Ultra relational like I was at you know with meeting with our Junior High kids today and it’s a little bit late getting here cuz I was finishing that up but well no you said you’d be at 405 gu are 405 so I don’t know how how how late you
Are I felt late scarely on time um but you know I was sharing you know sharing what we we do a thing called the talk at the end which is real life and faith and where those two things intersect and we’re talking about like you know from
The faith part of it like Jesus crucifixion like payment for sin and like we all deserve punishment and stuff like that so like to start that conversation that’s heavy stuff right for Junior High kids we’re talking you know with them of like you guys ever messed up and any anybody ever like
Cover your butt when you should have got in trouble and I shared a story out of from my life and I’m like I’m I know you have these stories where somebody like probably covered for you to keep you from getting in trouble I have them um
So I just told the kids one of those stories true story from my life where I’m relating this to kids and that’s how we really that’s the tail into of the night but we have that talk that’s real life and faith and where those two things intersect and then after that
It’s like before you leave like I want you to know like this is a spot where you fit in no matter what no matter what the culture culture would say divides you what you think divides you this is your spot and when you put your name on something it changes
Everything so there’s a wall upstairs like we want you to go up there and sign your name on that wall because this is your place and what we’ve seen is like I’ve been volunteering with young life or on staff with him for 10 years now
And I cannot I mean I could tell you dozens and dozens of stories of lifechanging kids because their name is on that wall I sent a girl here in town um actually just got her law degree I sent her a picture of her name and she C
Like messaged me back was like man I wrote that really big kind of like just egotistical me I was like no you just knew you were going to do big things like you knew you were built for something bigger so you signed your name that big and now you’re living into it
Like I hadn’t talked to her for a while I know she hadn’t even thought about her name being on that wall but I sent her that and like and I’ll do that to kids all the time when we’re in the building of like I’ll on their birthday or
Something if it pops up in in our database that it’s their birthday I’ll just send them a picture like hey happy birthday still remember when you put your name up here those little things you know and it’s it’s a ton of just what I do in the core of who I am like
Just letting people know that they’re known you know that’s the the core of young life is just showing up like we show up in kids lives because we believe Jesus showed up in our life that that’s the core we go and we do because we
Serve a God who came and went and does so we just we do that we live out our faith and how kids respond to that’s how our kids respond but right now we’re at a deficit as a culture of adults showing up in kids’ lives like we want to know
What’s wrong with kids it’s adults they don’t have people showing them how to live life they just don’t we have parents who don’t do anything with their kids they view their kids largely as a liability or as you know a a distraction or deterent from doing what they really
Want to do and kids know that kids feel that yeah it’s it’s you know you know there’s kids that maybe they uh maybe their parents are checked out and they they need help but there are kids that have two parents absolutely nuclear family everything’s perfect on the outside but it’s not there there’s
Problems for sure and there’s so do you guys still do do you still do that camp yeah we do camps every summer where do you guys go uh this we go to a lot of different ones Young Life owns over 30 properties in the US that are just phenomenal um they’re more like
Five-star Resorts they’re not like you’re what you’re thinking like a church camp or something they’re ridiculous uh so our high school students are going to a camp called Timberwolf Lake in Lake City Michigan this Summer and our Junior High kids are going to a camp called castaway club
Which is in Detroit Lakes Minnesota so those are the two camps our our main group of students are going to our Teen Mom group young lives will be going to Timberwolf also at a different a different Camp week um we’ve got a program for special needs students
Called Capernaum that will go with our high school students to Timberwolf also so we’ve got like as in the biblical capernum yeah that’s what it’s the that’s what our special needs programs named after yeah okay um how do so without having like you know hundreds or thousands of people like rush to call
Young Life tomorrow yeah and say Hey I want my kid to go to all these camps because that could be like you know we do have a limited number of spots like we’re allocated that we get um just because the organization is so big and
Camps are we can only do so many weeks of Camp a summer so we get allocated spots um we’ve got more we have more availability to go this summer than we’ve ever had before um which is super cool like our our camp numbers have gone up every year because the impact of
Young life in Quincy continues to grow um largely that’s because of our volunteers so we have an incredible volunteer team who serve at our schools um they Mentor students in Quincy public schools they go and they hang out with kids you know they they pick up students
Or students will meet them like can I just go grocery shopping with you like how many of us like hate going to the grocery store yeah like literally one of our leaders like student text say hey what are you doing like I’m going to go to Walmart like cool can I meet you
There and just walk around the store with you and they just went shopping like that’s that is the level of like relational deficit we’re operating at where kids just want to hang out with an adult who pays attention to them so much that they’re willing to go walk around
Walmart for hours because because parents don’t want to go shopping with their not all not all parents some parents I need to qualify that some parents don’t want to bring their kids shopping and then if you never bring your kids shopping which I by the way as a as a
Father of three kids I understand this very much so but sometimes I’ll pick like one kid I’ll I’ll whisper in my wife SE her I’m like hey I’m gonna go to hi um I will take one kid which kid do you want me to take she’ll say um oh
Take so and so he or she’s been terrible today and needs something I’m like okay I’m like hey don’t make a big deal about this like like Valen put your shoes on don’t let the other kids see you put your shoes on meet me by the car in
Three minutes I’m going to go to the bathroom I’ll be there yeah you know and then you zip away cuz I don’t want to take three kids to to the store but there are kids whose parents don’t ever take them anywhere because of life right and so you you’re saying that you’ve got
You guys have kids at young life that say please just let me walk around with you at a store that kind of like melts my my hardened heart a little bit ttis when your kids get bigger you can also divide and conquer which gets you out of
The grocery store even faster oh give them a cart and I take a cart well just no I wouldn’t give them all carts cuz they just go crazy but you send them after individual items and they just like scatter through the store yeah ter sheet yeah go get all right cool see you
And they bounce and go get that cool go get two gallons of milk awesome they run and grab that and bring it back and then you’re just punching through your list and you’re in and out super quick last question bring it um Camp I really what
Is the most fun thing that you guys do at camp and something funny or hard or maybe something maybe something bad happened that had a good ending or something that um cuz when when you go you go for a week or two you are off nobody sees or hears from from you when
You’re gone like the last time you went I mean I didn’t I had things that I I had things to ask you but I’m not going to bother you when you’re at Camp not cuz you wouldn’t respond but just know you’ve kind of told me in the past
You’re like yeah when I’m there like I don’t look at my phone like I’m just there I’m super present wherever we go so cuz we take we take kids phones so they don’t have their phone for a week either like when we get there we turn in
Phones we put them in a big like uh Tupperware tub and then they’re up for the week so kids don’t have their phones when they’re young like kids shouldn’t even have phones but anyway yeah so that so um my favorite one of my favorite just like Camp memories is actually
Watching in Colorado the camp we were at out there where I was actually at um watching the sunrise Over the Rockies from a hot tub at 30° below zero one winter we were out there I was out there for a a leadership conference type thing but like it’s it’s a Young Life Property
Like kids get to watch this in the summer like 30 degrees below zero sitting in a hot tub at Young Life Camp watching the sunrise Over the Rockies absolutely one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in my life kids get to watch the sunrise Over the
Rockies when they’re out the camp our kids were out there a couple years ago and got to experience that too it’s just stunning watching that happen wow um my favorite absolute favorite Camp moment though um we had a student several years ago um again on the lower end of the
Socioeconomics spectrum student was in foster care um had largely disengaged foster parents um you know how foster care system works they get a stien to check because he’s there um kind of did whatever he wanted uh but we do fundraisers to help kids go to Camp because we’re a nonprofit obviously
We’re all locally supported um so we do fundraisers because our camp budget actually exists outside of our operating budget so we fundraised that money in in addition to our operating budget so we had some fundraisers we were doing we were selling Crispy Cream Donuts this
Kid came up to me he like C is like I really want to go to Camp man I have no one to sell Donuts to like I have like literally no one like I like no one I know has money like I’m in foster care
Like I don’t know what to do I was like you try you sell one box of donuts I will take care of the rest of your camp like I’ll find somebody to sponsor you to take care of it you try I will drive you to deliver whatever you whatever you
Sell I’ll take care of it I’ll drive you around we can do it dude end up selling like boxes of donuts which is awesome he paid for like $100 of his Camp trip which is great super excited that he did that I drove him all over town because
It was literally one end of town to the other people he found to buy donnuts which was super cool but we go to camp that summer and it was actually timberwolf and when we pull in uh the guy that started Young Life had this
Idea that if you pull up to a young life camp and say wow there’s a really good chance you’ll say Wow to Jesus while you’re there that’s the quote from him and that’s that is the extent these camps are built to they’re like nothing you’ve ever seen um everyone should go
To get on YouTube and look these things up they’re ridiculous we pull in The Circle Drive at timberwolf and this kid stands up and looks out the window of the bus and then looks at me and Sprints through the bus was like are you kidding me this is what
We get this is where we get to live for the next week and like the one of the biggest and just most impactful hugs I’ve ever experienced like I’m getting chills right now just thinking about it like that moment of like this kid who should have never been there everything
Stacked against him and he gets to go and experience this like in his life has taken some turns since he’s graduated and and become an adult this has been six five years ago now six years ago now um but you know when we have these kids and we have the
Opportunity to impact I’m like I know that that memory is going to stick with them you know forever like that camp week and you know kids consistently say like you know Camp is the best week of their life I met somebody this week she like I remember when I went to camp in
North Carolina I was like what like you’re in Quincy now like where where were you and we had this whole conversation that senator around Young Life Camp because it’s that big of an impactor on kids and we get the opportunity to take kids from Quincy High School students and junior high
Students and teen moms to Camp every summer um it’s something we take very seriously um because we know the impact and the Eternal impact that can happen there too you know a lot of our kids don’t get to do stuff like this and we want to make sure that every kid who
Wants to go to Camp can go to Camp Curtis Seer yeah man thanks man yeah dude talk to you soon thanks for having me always cool am properties is Quincy’s largest apartment rental company with hundreds of units available they offer short-term and long-term rentals with one up to four bedroom apartments am
Properties meets the needs of its tenants with care compassion and a quality of service that exceeds expectations amb properties also has a convenient tenant app for you to do your payments or make repair requests give them a call today A and B properties 217 91988 Quincy
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