Latest / The Chris and Mike Show / #129 - Mark Young - Rock Star to Non-Profit CEO

Transcript

#129 - Mark Young - Rock Star to Non-Profit CEO · The Chris and Mike Show

• 0:00
  One of our songs are back in the day.
• 0:22
  Is that you singing, Chris? Yes, Sir, that's Chris.
• 0:31
  Then I'm a rock'n'roll star. Hey, this is Chris and Mike.
• 0:33
  Sure. I'm Christie's Mike.
• 0:34
  This is Mark Young and we're live right now on YouTube and
• 0:36
  Twitch, so thank you for joining us over there and we're going to
• 0:41
  have a fantastic show cause Mark's a super cool human.
• 0:43
  Like his life resume, Mike is mind boggling.
• 0:47
  Awesome. Thanks for coming on, Mark.
• 0:48
  It's nice to meet you. It's nice to meet you too.
• 0:50
  I wish what he said was true. But it was.
• 0:53
  It is true, man. It's always true, and lots.
• 0:55
  Of why is Siri talking to me? Shut up, Siri.
• 0:58
  It's, it's absolutely true, Mark is.
• 1:02
  True if we say it's just. Mark and I went to lunch.
• 1:05
  I met Mark because I joined the Rotary Club of Mesa.
• 1:07
  Is it the Mesa Rotary Club? Do we call it or is it Rotary?
• 1:10
  OK, so I met Mark there and one of my, my things I decided when
• 1:13
  I joined the Rotary Club, I was going to take everywhere to
• 1:15
  lunch. That didn't really work because,
• 1:18
  you know, it just didn't work. But Mark was the first one I
• 1:22
  took to lunch and, and we ended up sitting there for about 2 1/2
• 1:25
  hours because we have so much in common.
• 1:30
  But his life is just, it's amazing.
• 1:34
  It's absolutely amazing. And we actually, we're supposed
• 1:36
  to have him on a couple weeks ago, but we I triple booked
• 1:39
  this. So he was kind enough to come on
• 1:41
  the day when we had a last minute cancellation.
• 1:42
  I was going to get him on the show regardless.
• 1:45
  Oh, somebody just did you see this Mike?
• 1:48
  Hey guys, looking forward to this episode.
• 1:50
  That's pretty cool. I have a thing that that was
• 1:53
  badass, man, that. Was that was awesome so.
• 1:55
  Right on. Michael, I can't.
• 1:57
  I'm not. I'm going to.
• 1:58
  Butcher his last. Michael Castillo.
• 2:00
  I thought it was. Castillo.
• 2:02
  Castillo. He listens diligently and he
• 2:04
  always chimes in. And I just figured out how to do
• 2:06
  that. So thank you.
• 2:07
  Right on, Michael. And then Michael?
• 2:09
  Thank you. We're going to send you a donut
• 2:12
  in the mail. Woohoo woohoo, like a donut.
• 2:16
  OK, I'll bring you a donut tomorrow.
• 2:18
  No, don't. I'm on a diet.
• 2:20
  Again, OK, so, so because you have such an amazing life story,
• 2:24
  because I know it all, I don't, I don't know where to start with
• 2:28
  you because usually we just do conversations.
• 2:30
  We're not interviewing. We don't like that because it's
• 2:32
  kind of it's kind of boring, you know?
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  So it's a conversation thing. So let's start.
• 2:36
  Out. Let's do that.
• 2:37
  Let's start with this, because this is This is fascinating to
• 2:40
  me, A little bird told me, meaning you while we're at
• 2:44
  lunch, that you dated someone who has since gone on to become
• 2:49
  an epic figure in the rock'n'roll slash folk rock
• 2:55
  genre for decades. Like you tell.
• 2:59
  Decades. And here's the kicker, she's a
• 3:01
  lesbian. Yeah, so.
• 3:03
  So my question is right. Let's tell us the thing.
• 3:06
  Was that a George Costanza thing like you turned her to
• 3:08
  lesbianism? Yes, because, because it's.
• 3:11
  Rare. Man.
• 3:12
  I'm trying to get her back on this team but it has been rarely
• 3:16
  come back. Right.
• 3:17
  So, so I'll let you share that story because that was one of
• 3:20
  the most fascinating things, one of the most fascinating things
• 3:22
  that we talked about that day at lunch, you know, a couple months
• 3:24
  ago. So, so go ahead and Mark Young.
• 3:26
  There were, you know, grew up in Leavenworth, KS and there was
• 3:29
  this, this group of the artsy, you know what I mean?
• 3:31
  The choir, drama band, people that, you know, it was fun to
• 3:35
  hang out with. So we all hung out together.
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  And one of the people in that group was Melissa Etheridge.
• 3:42
  And so we were good friends. We, you know, the, my current
• 3:48
  wife and her were best friends and this other dude and I were
• 3:51
  best friends. And so, you know, we did went to
• 3:55
  dances together and all that. And then her and I dated when I
• 3:58
  was a senior and she was a sophomore at high school.
• 4:01
  And, you know, I mean, it was going fine, I thought.
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  And then on my 18th birthday, she showed up at my birthday
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  party. So my my mom had rented the
• 4:13
  local pool for my 18th birthday party.
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  We never did stuff like that, you know, big deal.
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  And I invited, you know, both my friends.
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  And so we were having a pool party and she showed up and
• 4:23
  said, I'm going to break up with you today.
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  And I was like, jeez. And then she's like, because I,
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  you know, I'm a lesbian. And so, you know, I mean, it's
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  bad enough that she's breaking up with me on my 18th birthday,
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  but you gonna throw that on top of it?
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  Yeah. And then I felt, you know, like,
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  somehow it was my fault. I I wasn't exactly sure.
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  So I went and hid, went and hid in the locker room and just
• 4:50
  bawled like a baby. And what I remember about that
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  is, you know, on the on the stereo in the locker room was we
• 5:01
  were as cold as eyes, that foreigner song.
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  I just kept thinking like, oh, that is so true.
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  She just tore my heart out. So I know why they wrote that
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  song. And it was for you.
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  It's for you. And yeah.
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  So, you know, we're, we're we're friends now.
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  It was funny, you know, I was going through a bunch of stuff
• 5:20
  here at home and I had always teased my wife that, you know,
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  she was after you, not me. I you know.
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  And. My Jeanette was always like, no,
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  no, no, no, no. I was digging through this box
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  of stuff and I found this big stack of notes like you pass in
• 5:36
  school and I read through them and I handed them to her.
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  I said you need to reread these with what we know now and you'll
• 5:44
  see that I was right. And sure enough.
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  Wow, so she was she was dating you to get to to Jeanette to get
• 5:53
  to Jeanette, right. Yeah, that's epic.
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  Totally rock'n'roll lifestyle, man.
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  So used. I felt so used.
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  So yeah. See that part?
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  That part I didn't. That part you didn't tell me.
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  So that was fun to learn that part of it.
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  Well, you know, it's rare that we get a story from our side.
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  Yeah. Right.
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  Where we got used. Yeah.
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  And you literally got used. Me too.
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  I love it. So yeah, it was, you know, it
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  was in 1977, right? So there wasn't a lot of
• 6:29
  understanding about I really, I felt responsible somehow.
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  And then this group we hung out with, many of them went on to do
• 6:36
  some pretty amazing things, but turns out all of them except
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  Jeanette and I were gay. So we hurried up and got
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  married. So I would have too some in the
• 6:47
  water over here. I'm not sure what's going on.
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  I haven't laughed, I haven't laughed this hard in the 1st 5
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  minutes of a show forever. My jaw was hurt.
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  Agreed. Yeah, Yeah.
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  How do we follow that story up, Mark?
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  We, well, Mark's going to follow the story up with this now there
• 7:03
  was a, there was a, I'm going to call it a company slash
• 7:06
  organization in Chicago, right? That that that had elite the
• 7:14
  elite of comedians through through years and years.
• 7:18
  And John Belushi was 1 John Candy.
• 7:22
  John Candy Chris. Barley, Chris.
• 7:25
  Barley right. So the this was Studio City.
• 7:29
  Is that what it's called? No Second city comedy Second
• 7:32
  City. Second city.
• 7:33
  OK, so this like who's who's come through those doors, right?
• 7:37
  Like anybody, he wanted to break into comedy and like, what's a
• 7:40
  seventies, 80s and 90s somehow went through there, right?
• 7:42
  If you wanted to get if you wanted to get on the map, you
• 7:46
  had to go through that kind of like actors had to go through
• 7:49
  the whatever that school is in New York.
• 7:51
  It's it's I'm drawing a blank now.
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  Juilliard musicians had to go through Juilliard actors had to
• 7:55
  go like you had to have something credible to go
• 8:00
  anywhere. So let's touch on that story,
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  Mark. OK, so, so we had a band, you
• 8:08
  know, I'm just out of high school there were, we had an 8
• 8:11
  piece band doing mostly covers of pop tunes with horns, right.
• 8:16
  And so we're playing a gig in Westport in Kansas City and I'm
• 8:21
  having a good night. I was the front guy.
• 8:23
  Everybody, every musician of the band was a better musician than
• 8:25
  me, but I was the front guy. So 100 lbs heavier.
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  So I weighed 310. Our lead singer was wore size 0
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  pants. She looked like Pat Benatar,
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  little tiny thing. So we were, we were funny before
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  we ever played a note. And so I was having a good
• 8:42
  night. It was having a lot of fun.
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  This lady walks up to me and said, hey, we'd like you to
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  consider auditioning for Second City for SCTV and or, yeah,
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  Second City. And I went, yeah, yeah, yeah,
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  'cause you know, you guys played, you know, people come up
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  and tell you all kinds of crap, you know, hey, we want to sing
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  you, you're the best band ever, blah, blah.
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  Yeah. And so in the van, you know, we
• 9:07
  we got pregnant, had her first child, we went back on the road.
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  That was a dumb move. And because we took the baby
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  with us and came home and I said I'm going to call this number to
• 9:18
  see if it's a legit. And I called and it was legit
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  and I chickened out. So I didn't go to that audition,
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  but here's what I think is also true.
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  Think about all the fat guys that came through there and
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  where they are today. They all be dead.
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  They all be dead. That's right.
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  So I think I avoided that, you know?
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  The being a coward, the curse, the.
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  The second The Curse of the fat guy.
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  Right. Yeah.
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  So, you know, so that was interesting too.
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  So now also now, now. So then he gets in, he has a
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  baby, right? They're on the road, they're
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  doing a sound check and he looks over and sees the babysitter
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  holding their six week old and he's like, something's got to
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  change. So they stop the band.
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  He moves home and does what Mark?
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  I don't know what you mean. Oh, I got a job.
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  I got to tell you why. When I decided that we needed to
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  come home and I looked at the baby, we were doing a cover of
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  the song Too Shy. Shy.
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  Which that alone should have been enough of a reason for me
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  to quit the band and come home. Right.
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  I'm not going to argue with you. Oh, yeah, It's pretty terrible.
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  And. Dodge a goo goo.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's good, man.
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  I'm. Not sure I.
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  Could have remembered that band name.
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  Good. Hush, hush.
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  You are and I hotel. So I came home and then I took
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  this. I took this short job doing
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  newspaper advertising and then got hired as a youth pastor at
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  the church I grew up in. Like they grew up and I started
• 10:49
  going to when I was in high school, I started going to
• 10:51
  church because a friend of mine said, hey, you got to come join
• 10:54
  the youth choir because there's eight guys and there's 30 girls.
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  I went, yeah, sign me up, whatever that is.
• 11:00
  I want that. And we went on weekend trips and
• 11:04
  stuff, you know, But you know, I turned out to be one of those
• 11:07
  guys that became a believer. So, so I after the band thing
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  and all of that, I went back there to to run youth youth
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  group there. And then I stayed in ministry
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  for about 30 years. How old were you at that point,
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  Mark 21. Wow.
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  Yeah. 22 See. See life resume man, his life
• 11:27
  resume is cool. So you're you're a Baptist
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  minister? American Baptist, Yeah, I have
• 11:33
  to say American Baptist because how come otherwise you get, you
• 11:37
  know, lined up with some of the crazies.
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  There's a billion, there's a billion versions of Baptist.
• 11:43
  American Baptist used to be Northern Baptist and they split
• 11:49
  with the Southern Baptist over the Civil War.
• 11:51
  So it was the Northern Baptist and the Southern Baptist.
• 11:53
  Northern Baptist became American Baptist and that was a part.
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  It was a group of. I was a group of.
• 11:58
  Was a part of. Gotcha, gotcha.
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  And you did that for 30 years? Yep. 15 of them here in
• 12:05
  Scottsdale. I didn't think we were doing
• 12:08
  Jesus work. So I quit, became an English
• 12:11
  professor a little bit, and then that school closed.
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  I've had that effect. It seems I get involved in
• 12:21
  something and they either turn gay or I close it down.
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  So, yeah. And then we had placed an intern
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  over United Way and she said they needed somebody to work
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  over there and went, OK, I need a job.
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  And I've been there for 11 years.
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  So. So you currently work for the
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  United Way? Yeah, I work for Macy, United
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  Way and then this Azura. So it's 2 nonprofits, they do 2
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  separate things, and I'm the president and CEO of both of
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  those at this point. Wow.
• 12:49
  Very. Yeah, it's physical having
• 12:52
  having the CEO of the Mesa United Way on our show, Woo and
• 12:55
  that that's credibility. I am telling you right now,
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  yeah, that's a big deal. I'm familiar with the United Way
• 13:01
  because the company I work for, that's their charity of choice.
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  What does your other charity do? Oh man, this is a long and very
• 13:10
  boring. But that's OK.
• 13:11
  But that's OK. That's why you're here.
• 13:13
  OK, then every If I'm curious, everybody else has to.
• 13:16
  All right, if Chris is curious, that's why we.
• 13:18
  Do that I know, I know what it is.
• 13:19
  I know what it is because I know Mark, but I that's.
• 13:21
  Back and let Mark. Tell I'm going to I'm going to
• 13:23
  sit back and just enjoy the show.
• 13:25
  This. Come on.
• 13:26
  Depending on who's listening, this might get me in trouble,
• 13:29
  but it won't be the first time, nor him or I so Oh good, there
• 13:33
  we go. United Way is kind of like the
• 13:39
  Studebaker, you know, I mean, kind of like Blockbuster.
• 13:43
  It's still living in its glory days of the 70s and 80s and
• 13:47
  times have changed and they have not.
• 13:49
  Thank you for saying that. Well, it's just true.
• 13:51
  I feel the same way. I'm I'm very familiar with what
• 13:54
  they do. And unfortunately, they came and
• 13:56
  gave us a presentation that was very it it turned me off because
• 14:02
  somebody asked a question about where their money was going.
• 14:06
  And the lady got really rude. She said, you know, we have a
• 14:08
  board of directors, we have to pay.
• 14:09
  We have ACEO, we have to pay. There's money that has to be
• 14:12
  paid out before anybody gets any money.
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  She literally said those words in front of like 1000 employees.
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  First, she should be fired. And she might have been.
• 14:25
  That's that's that's insane. Yeah.
• 14:28
  You know, I, I, I was the head of the state of Arizona highways
• 14:32
  for a couple of years and I must have said two things. 1000 * 1
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  is there's one block Buster left in Bend, OR and we don't figure
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  out what the hell we're doing. We're going to be the, the
• 14:45
  national office is going to be in the building next door
• 14:48
  because we're, we're, we're out of touch with how people want to
• 14:53
  give money. And, and the second thing is
• 14:56
  quick examples of how of how, how we're out of touch.
• 15:00
  Yes, yeah. So like in the 80s, right, or
• 15:03
  70s or whatever, pre Internet, people trusted the United Way to
• 15:08
  know all of the nonprofits in a community that were doing work.
• 15:11
  And really regular folks had no access to that information,
• 15:15
  right. So they'd know of the Red Cross
• 15:17
  and Goodwill and Salvation Army, but they trusted that United Way
• 15:21
  knew the other 80 people, 80 groups that were doing work.
• 15:25
  So they collected money in the business, gave it to United Way.
• 15:28
  United Way put together community groups to distribute
• 15:31
  that money. That all made sense until people
• 15:34
  could go and find places to give their money completely on their
• 15:37
  own, right? You can go online.
• 15:39
  I care about cats with one eye. I type in cats with one eye.
• 15:44
  Here's the nonprofits that deal with that.
• 15:46
  I give my money directly. People want to give money
• 15:50
  directly to things that are making a difference, not an
• 15:53
  umbrella organization that then determines how your money is
• 15:56
  going to be spent. I choose to give my money to a
• 15:59
  Children's Hospital when they're asking for money.
• 16:02
  St. Judes.
• 16:03
  Yep. And they do great work.
• 16:05
  And 100% of my money goes to those poor kids who can't help
• 16:08
  themselves. That's right.
• 16:09
  That makes me feel good. So that's just my choice with my
• 16:12
  money. And that makes sense.
• 16:14
  And then United Way, like our United Way, doesn't do this.
• 16:17
  We still run those campaigns. But you can give your money to
• 16:21
  whomever you want. That designated giving, right?
• 16:24
  They did start that with our chapter here.
• 16:26
  They did that. Yes, a lot of them give our
• 16:29
  money in our county, Yeah, a lot of a lot of you and I always
• 16:33
  have eliminated that so that they remain having the choice.
• 16:36
  That makes no sense to me. If as long as the place you want
• 16:39
  to give it is a legitimate 5O1C3, we ought to be able to
• 16:42
  help you do that, right? So the nice thing about the
• 16:46
  United Way campaign is you can take a little bit of money out
• 16:49
  of your paycheck every every pay period, right?
• 16:53
  And that that accumulates and, and that's a good thing that
• 16:56
  they do, but they haven't updated that they haven't made
• 16:59
  themselves to be about anything. And, and it's aggravating to me
• 17:04
  anyway, so we stopped. You're fine.
• 17:06
  That this is all really interesting to me because it's
• 17:09
  personal to me and I'm always careful to tell the people
• 17:14
  around me because I'm also involved with our union, right?
• 17:17
  This is my opinion. I just choose to give my money,
• 17:20
  like you said, a lot of people do to where 100% of my money is
• 17:24
  going to the 'cause right? I don't dissuade anyone from
• 17:29
  giving to the United Way. I actually encourage it.
• 17:31
  If you feel good about it, do it because doing something is
• 17:34
  better than nothing, right? And United Way does a lot of
• 17:36
  good stuff. I mean, and and you know, even,
• 17:40
  you know, if you're giving the money to Saint Jude's, some
• 17:42
  portion of that money is going to admin, some portion of that
• 17:45
  money is going to back office folks.
• 17:47
  You got to have that as part to run a nonprofit.
• 17:50
  But but yeah, it gets it gets really, it gets really screwy.
• 17:56
  And then we were allocating the money to other nonprofits who
• 18:00
  quite boy talking about getting myself in trouble.
• 18:03
  Quite sincerely. I didn't think we're doing a
• 18:05
  very good job. Right.
• 18:06
  So if you're doing homeless work and our numbers of homeless
• 18:09
  folks are more every single year than they were the year before,
• 18:12
  where are the innovative ideas about how we're going to fix
• 18:15
  this thing? It's not the way we've been
• 18:17
  doing it. And so we stopped allocating
• 18:21
  money. We started our own programming
• 18:23
  that I am getting to the Azure part.
• 18:25
  So we do five programs and and then I after COVID, I started
• 18:33
  digging into who our clientele were and our clients come from
• 18:37
  all over the Valley, from really in some instances all over
• 18:40
  Arizona. But by United Way rules, I could
• 18:43
  only raise money in Mesa and it seemed unfair to me that Mesa
• 18:48
  residents were paying for these services for and we couldn't ask
• 18:51
  anyone else to help out. So we started a second
• 18:54
  nonprofit, which is Azura. We took all of those things that
• 18:58
  we do and we place them under Azura and gave them their own EI
• 19:01
  NS so they can raise money anywhere while Mesa United Way
• 19:05
  cannot. So Macy not away raises money in
• 19:09
  Mesa. We make sure that the money that
• 19:10
  we raise stays in Mesa for Mesa people and then Azura can raise
• 19:15
  money anywhere to support that other programming.
• 19:18
  That's awesome. There you go.
• 19:20
  That's awesome. I love it.
• 19:23
  It took a little while to convince me another way, folks,
• 19:25
  that it was awesome, but it worked well and the.
• 19:29
  And the other really cool thing. Oh, go ahead, Mark.
• 19:31
  Go ahead, Mike. Oh, I'm.
• 19:32
  No, no, no go. Ahead, go ahead.
• 19:34
  No, that's why I was saying. Lead down to a different path.
• 19:37
  I wanted your opinion on what you thought that they could do
• 19:41
  to do better, right? We're not bashing the United
• 19:43
  Way. Doing something is always better
• 19:46
  than doing nothing. If they're doing great things,
• 19:49
  I'm not saying they're out there like, you know, coaxing kids
• 19:52
  into devil worshipping or anything.
• 19:53
  They're not doing anything bad. I just, I agree with you and I'm
• 19:56
  glad I heard it from somebody who's on the frontline that my
• 20:00
  opinion was vindicated, right? I what I've been pushing United
• 20:05
  Way to do is to be about. Something what is it that we're
• 20:09
  trying to fix? Let's be united around that.
• 20:11
  Is it literacy? Is it homelessness?
• 20:13
  Is it foster care? Is it veterans?
• 20:16
  Is it a disease? I don't care what it is.
• 20:19
  There's a lot of things to be tackled.
• 20:21
  United Way should be about one or two or three of those so that
• 20:24
  people can get to specifics as opposed to, you know, I used to,
• 20:30
  you guys know, you know, anyway, I used to do a campaign at a
• 20:34
  place in Mesa, pretty conservative older people and I
• 20:38
  got to ask every single time. Do you guys fund Planned
• 20:41
  Parenthood? Well, we never have and we
• 20:44
  haven't, but they, but other United Ways do because every
• 20:47
  United Way gets to choose how they do that right?
• 20:50
  Which is that's all good because we're like a franchise, but that
• 20:54
  Lady was like, well, you shouldn't even be a part of a
• 20:56
  group that does that. It's like, hang on a minute, you
• 20:58
  know, I mean, relax a little bit.
• 21:02
  So if we could be about some specific things that we'd like
• 21:05
  to see and put all of the effort that we do as a United Way and
• 21:09
  all of the influence that we have into changing a problem as
• 21:13
  opposed to handing out the money for other people to change
• 21:16
  problems, that would give us legs For 10 years.
• 21:20
  It's just been, it's just been a downward slide.
• 21:23
  So, and I feel the same way. I just, I feel like it's a, it's
• 21:27
  a sinking ship, you know? And because of.
• 21:31
  What you said earlier, people want, they know now they're
• 21:35
  educated, they understand charities.
• 21:37
  You're right. In the 70s and 80s, they gave to
• 21:39
  charities and they thought that those people were doing what was
• 21:42
  right. Well, we found out that there
• 21:44
  was some pretty illegitimate charities, right?
• 21:46
  Absolutely. The March of Dimes, you found
• 21:49
  out only a dime of your, you know, the other $0.90 went to
• 21:52
  operating expenses. I got a whole list of them,
• 21:55
  right? Oh, yeah, there's a huge list.
• 21:56
  Not in that list. They're in the good list.
• 21:59
  So I just wanted to hear your opinion.
• 22:02
  I don't think you said anything that got you in trouble.
• 22:04
  I, I think that that's what they need to hear, right?
• 22:07
  It won't be the first time I've been in trouble.
• 22:09
  So no, I really think that that's what they need to hear.
• 22:11
  I've told them that myself when I don't donate to our particular
• 22:15
  program, I'm like, here's why. I'm not trying to be an asshole.
• 22:18
  I'm just giving you my opinion as I mean I I give, I give my
• 22:21
  money to the things I believe. In.
• 22:24
  Right. And and that's what we ought to
• 22:27
  be doing, right? I agree anyway.
• 22:30
  Yeah, see, see. And, and, and what I do
• 22:34
  historically, which is why I liked Rotary, instead of giving
• 22:37
  money, I give my time, right? So for years I was valuable,
• 22:41
  right? So for years I was on the board
• 22:43
  of directors for Resurrection St.
• 22:44
  Ministry, which, which owns Stuff Thrift Store, which is all
• 22:47
  about homeless feeding homeless and seniors and community
• 22:51
  outreach in the veterans store, things like that.
• 22:53
  And then because I was a, a volunteer at Pasta Cristo, after
• 22:58
  about 3 months of being a volunteer coordinator, they,
• 23:00
  they, they kind of like you are just volunteering.
• 23:03
  They kind of said, well, you need to be a coordinator because
• 23:05
  you're just too good at this. So I'm like, that'd be great,
• 23:07
  you know, So I ended up having four nights a month that I did
• 23:10
  meal coordination and that kind of jazz.
• 23:12
  And then about a year after being a coordinator, then they
• 23:16
  twisted my arm to join the board.
• 23:18
  So I joined the board and, you know, was doing all these things
• 23:21
  and I can't really go into detail of why I'm no longer
• 23:24
  there on the show, but you know. It's a good story.
• 23:30
  When, when, when you you see something happened that
• 23:35
  shouldn't happen and then you don't keep your mouth shut
• 23:38
  because we know if you, you both know me, I don't keep my mouth
• 23:41
  shut. I wouldn't allow it to be swept
• 23:45
  under the carpet. So I was asked to leave the
• 23:47
  board. I said, that's fine.
• 23:48
  I'll just go back to work ordering.
• 23:49
  They say, no, you won't. You can't do either now you're
• 23:52
  done. Oh, OK.
• 23:55
  Well, that's good. I see how you are.
• 23:57
  And yeah, I, I've ran into people, I've run into people
• 24:00
  that actually have, were, were on my nights of coordinating,
• 24:03
  which is kind of cool. And the first thing out of the
• 24:06
  mouth is, Oh my God, I can't, I haven't seen you in over a year.
• 24:08
  And it's it's just not the same. It's not the same without you.
• 24:12
  It's a cluster. There's no flow.
• 24:14
  There's it's thank you. I like that.
• 24:17
  I appreciate that. But that's so good for sure.
• 24:20
  Right. So, so the timing of Troy, Troy
• 24:22
  Campbell, which I'm trying to get Troy in the show Mike, but
• 24:25
  but he's a little skimmish because he works for ASU and
• 24:27
  he's afraid he would say things like Mark and get in trouble.
• 24:31
  He's got more worries than me. That's for.
• 24:33
  Sure. Yeah, Troy's another superhuman.
• 24:35
  Like I met him in an open house in Tempe years ago.
• 24:38
  He loved how my approach to things and I sold him this house
• 24:41
  and he's championed me ever since.
• 24:43
  And then he started, I I started seeing him post Rotary.
• 24:46
  I'm like, dude, what is this? Honest to God.
• 24:47
  I thought it had to do with automobiles.
• 24:49
  Rotary. Oh sure, you know, makes sense.
• 24:53
  Right. And he's like, no, it's this.
• 24:55
  And it's I'm like, oh. And as soon as he said
• 24:57
  volunteers, I'm like, I'm in. It's right up.
• 24:59
  It's right up your alley. Yeah, so.
• 25:01
  But that's also why I do not talk about where I work because
• 25:04
  unlike Mark, I'm not on the board of directors and I don't.
• 25:08
  They don't need any advertisement.
• 25:09
  And you can get in trouble that I've never said their name on
• 25:12
  this podcast and I never will. And you?
• 25:15
  I'll tell you where. I work after the show, Mark and
• 25:17
  I, you know, and I end up in that bucket.
• 25:19
  So I, I was talking to some folks yesterday and it was
• 25:22
  somebody that I've worked with for 10 years or so.
• 25:25
  And she was introducing me to this other lady.
• 25:27
  And the lady asked me a question.
• 25:29
  I don't remember what it was. And I was kind of him and hawing
• 25:31
  around about it, you know, because I don't know this other
• 25:35
  lady. And the woman who knew me said,
• 25:37
  just tell her like you normally say stuff, just say it blunt and
• 25:42
  honest. And, and I, I went, OK.
• 25:44
  And I think, you know, life would be easier if we would just
• 25:48
  do that and then still care about the other person, even if
• 25:51
  we disagree. You know what I'm saying?
• 25:52
  Wait, here's what I always say. Say what you mean in the nicest
• 25:56
  way possible. That's right.
• 25:58
  I'm not trying to hurt your feelings.
• 25:59
  Like when we started the show, there was constructive criticism
• 26:03
  that Chris and I would give each other.
• 26:04
  It wasn't. Hey, man, that sounded like shit
• 26:07
  the other day. If we don't pick it up a little
• 26:09
  bit, this is never going to take.
• 26:11
  It was like, hey, man, we need to get you a new microphone.
• 26:14
  He would say you need to talk more.
• 26:16
  Come out of your shell, you know?
• 26:18
  Yeah, it was constructive. If everybody talked to everybody
• 26:21
  that way, it would be a beautiful world.
• 26:23
  I agree with you. I agree.
• 26:25
  We and, and everything would be better, right, if we weren't all
• 26:27
  living in our own little fortresses and, and thinking
• 26:31
  that everybody that we talked to is somehow an adversary.
• 26:37
  You know, I mean, there's, it's, it's just kind of sad, you know,
• 26:41
  I, I, I felt that in church world, right?
• 26:44
  It's like, I don't know, we, the church I was at here in
• 26:47
  Scottsdale, we had a great arts ministry, a Blair college
• 26:52
  ministry and no divorce recovery ministry at all.
• 26:56
  A church right around the corner from us had a great college
• 26:59
  ministry and a church right up the street had a great divorce
• 27:02
  recovery ministry, but they both had terrible arts ministries.
• 27:05
  So I went to both of them, said, hey, look, we'll send our
• 27:08
  college kids to you. We'll send our, you know,
• 27:11
  families that are going through divorce to you and you send your
• 27:15
  dancers to us because I, you guys ain't dancing right?
• 27:18
  And there was no way, no way that was going to happen.
• 27:22
  It's like I thought we were all on the same page.
• 27:24
  I don't get, aren't we on team God?
• 27:27
  Aren't. We.
• 27:28
  Apparently to be right, I would, you know, you kind of hope, I
• 27:32
  guess. So.
• 27:34
  Chris knows I have my own visions on that, but I think
• 27:37
  that there's an an organized, organized something.
• 27:40
  It's just that's hard. I haven't been in church.
• 27:44
  Yeah. And so here's.
• 27:46
  Yeah, so here's a twist on that, right?
• 27:48
  So you've heard of Young Life, Mark, right?
• 27:50
  Oh, yeah. OK, Yeah.
• 27:51
  OK. So Young Life leader, shocking
• 27:55
  to you? I know.
• 27:55
  Yeah, that is. That's crazy.
• 27:57
  Mark goes to needs a high school.
• 27:59
  OK, I was young life leader for three years, four years.
• 28:03
  And I decided because I was in college, I wanted to put
• 28:08
  together a rock band. So my very first rock band, I
• 28:11
  and I can, you know, you know, this because of our initial, one
• 28:14
  of our things we did at Rotary, I was the original lead singer
• 28:16
  for Disturbed. True story, no bullshit,
• 28:19
  legitimate fact. I was actually the true first
• 28:23
  lead singer for Disturbed because that was the name that I
• 28:25
  named the band again, off of a Pearl Jam video.
• 28:27
  The word Disturbed came up. I'm like, oh, that's a great
• 28:31
  name for a band. Disturbed.
• 28:32
  OK, I got ostracized from Young Life because I wanted to go be
• 28:40
  in a band and they felt by being in a band, I wasn't committed
• 28:44
  and I wasn't committed to Young Life.
• 28:45
  And then I was, I was turning, how do they say it?
• 28:48
  You're turning your you're, you're turning your back on your
• 28:51
  relationship with God. I'm like, really like.
• 28:58
  I know his story, which which Jesus is I hate about what?
• 29:04
  And you just said it again, Mark, you tried to get people to
• 29:06
  cooperate and they won't. And I would be like, did you
• 29:09
  guys not read the I understood the message from the get go as a
• 29:12
  little kid, right? It didn't make sense to me, but
• 29:15
  I still absorbed because I'd like to understand how things
• 29:20
  work, right? And then when you see people
• 29:23
  working against each other in something that's supposed to be
• 29:26
  nothing but beautiful, right. Where's the disconnect?
• 29:30
  I I love Chris's story. I love when he tells that story
• 29:33
  because here he is trying to do something positive and he's
• 29:37
  being ostracized for it. Right.
• 29:39
  We don't do that. That's not what we do.
• 29:42
  Yeah. When we when we.
• 29:43
  And who is we? Well, yeah.
• 29:45
  And. And who made you arbiter of my
• 29:47
  life? You know, when when we came off
• 29:49
  the road with the band, we went to visit a Southern Baptist
• 29:53
  church in town. So we went for a couple weeks
• 29:56
  and then we decided to join. So we, you know, you walk up
• 29:59
  front and you tell the guy we're going to join and the pastor
• 30:02
  wanted to meet with us. And so we went and sat in his
• 30:05
  office and he said, you guys play rock'n'roll music, right?
• 30:09
  And I said, well, that's a stretch, but we play in a band,
• 30:12
  right? I mean, you know, we play clubs
• 30:15
  and stuff. And he said, well, if you're
• 30:17
  going to be a member of this church, that's going to have to
• 30:19
  stop. And I thought, fuck you.
• 30:22
  You know, I mean, I absolutely, I've been, you guys won't let me
• 30:27
  play in church because the saxophone doesn't belong here.
• 30:30
  So the electric guitar or the electric was me, So what am I
• 30:34
  going to do? And, you know, and and it's such
• 30:37
  nonsense anyway, you don't know my life.
• 30:40
  And so, yeah, I mean, we were a member of that church for three
• 30:45
  days and then we went to a different place that I ended up
• 30:48
  getting a job. But yeah, that that whole
• 30:52
  concept of God told me what you need to do.
• 30:57
  Thank you. Yeah.
• 30:59
  It's like, you know, he loves that question.
• 31:04
  Look, I'm right here. God, if you want to tell me
• 31:05
  something, just tell me. I don't need it to come through.
• 31:07
  Some knucklehead that can't even figure out how to tie their.
• 31:09
  Shoes right and what see what blew my mind about the young
• 31:12
  life thing, the whole thing if for those you don't know what
• 31:15
  your life is, it's a it's a it's a youth centered youth group in
• 31:19
  high school that is designed to kind of build a rapport with
• 31:24
  with with high schoolers that that may not have anybody else.
• 31:29
  They're the outcast, the stoners, the Kirbys.
• 31:32
  It's not fellowship of Christian athletes.
• 31:33
  It's the the polar opposite. Of that right.
• 31:36
  So I, I bonded very well with with that core of, of students
• 31:40
  because I had the long hair because I was acting at the time
• 31:46
  and didn't realize I wanted to be in bands yet.
• 31:47
  But I listened to what they listened to.
• 31:49
  I listened to the Metallica and the Ozzy and the Black Sabbath
• 31:51
  and the Pearl Jam sound gun. Everything's coming out of.
• 31:54
  He was a cool kid and. Right.
• 31:56
  Yeah. No doubts, right.
• 31:58
  So, and I was, I was, I graduated high school at, at 19
• 32:02
  years old. So I wasn't the, the age gap
• 32:04
  wasn't a lot. It was, it was, I was 20 because
• 32:07
  it was pretty much right after high school.
• 32:11
  So 19/20/20, 1:00-ish, you know, within that realm.
• 32:15
  So I, I identified with everything, right?
• 32:17
  Everybody else that was, was young Life leaders with me.
• 32:20
  They were late 20s, early 30s, married kids, that kind of
• 32:22
  thing. So there's that gap.
• 32:24
  So much so that this is fucking a joke.
• 32:28
  So a core of these leaders went to a Metallica concert, OK, when
• 32:33
  they're playing the Phoenix International Raceway with, with
• 32:35
  Guns and Roses. And they, they, they prayed in
• 32:40
  the back because they felt such an evil presence.
• 32:44
  And it was so dark and and you have got just kidding me.
• 32:48
  No, it was, it was, it was the biggest fucking joke that I I
• 32:52
  ever heard come out of somebody's mouth.
• 32:54
  Who, who was the area director for your life?
• 32:58
  We we had kids that would poison was huge and every, every
• 33:04
  something to believe in came out and one of the kids was was
• 33:08
  talking about that. So after club, I had a record.
• 33:12
  I used to record MTV all the time because I you know, that's
• 33:15
  Oh yeah, I just right. So so I had I had that somewhere
• 33:19
  recorded. So I brought it to our next post
• 33:20
  club meeting and I played it and I remember him laughing.
• 33:23
  This person, this leader. When Brett Michaels teared up in
• 33:27
  the part where my best friend died.
• 33:29
  A lonely man in a palm tree hotel room, right?
• 33:32
  True fucking story. The dude overdosed.
• 33:34
  It was his best friend. It's.
• 33:35
  Bodyguard. And it was.
• 33:37
  His. Everything right, right.
• 33:38
  And this leader, who's the regional director at the time,
• 33:42
  mocked that shit and thought what a joke.
• 33:44
  And I looked like like, dude, like seriously, you don't, you
• 33:48
  don't know the context of the song.
• 33:50
  You don't know the context of of why that's emotional, right?
• 33:53
  This is and I explained to him, this is his best friend, who was
• 33:56
  his bodyguard, who he's known forever, who overdosed in a
• 33:59
  hotel room in Palm Springs. Like it's legit ripped from his
• 34:02
  life words on the script and and just I mean, that song connected
• 34:07
  with so many kids because literally no question.
• 34:10
  You, you, I mean, now you want something to believe in.
• 34:12
  Who doesn't want something to believe in?
• 34:14
  The reason was #1. Right.
• 34:17
  So that and the Metallica thing. And then I come to them and say,
• 34:20
  hey, I'm going to step away because I want to put together a
• 34:23
  band. And I'm kid you not.
• 34:26
  One of the leaders that I knew was a friend of mine.
• 34:29
  We went to high school together. That's it.
• 34:31
  Our relationship severed because I wanted to be in a rock'n'roll
• 34:34
  band. It's like, you can't do that.
• 34:37
  Well, why not? Because your life, part of your
• 34:39
  life was skits. And so I thrived.
• 34:42
  I thrived in the skits because that was my first real
• 34:46
  experience being in front of people and being on a quote UN
• 34:49
  quote stage and acting from that level and doing stupid, stupid,
• 34:53
  silly shit where I realized I don't have a filter.
• 34:56
  I don't have any self-awareness when I'm up here.
• 35:00
  This just feels fantastic. Which that was the part I love
• 35:03
  the most, man, right? You're never going to be more
• 35:05
  free than standing on that stage, right?
• 35:08
  Amen that. So for them to kind of say you
• 35:10
  can't do that, and if you do that, you can't be a leader,
• 35:12
  it's like, wow, OK, well, I guess see you later.
• 35:16
  Bye now. Full circle.
• 35:19
  This person I referenced, I've connected with him on Facebook.
• 35:21
  So Mike and I, we're talking one episode we found out that Cliff
• 35:27
  Burtons dad had carried on Cliffs legacy by putting, I
• 35:31
  forget now, but hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of kids
• 35:35
  through college. Oh, it was an immense amount.
• 35:37
  Scholarships just insane. And I and I shared that with
• 35:42
  this person. And then he, of course, he
• 35:44
  backpedaled. You know, well, that's not what
• 35:46
  I did. That's bullshit.
• 35:47
  Dude, and how many millions of dollars does Metallica give to
• 35:50
  charity at every city? You know they give hundreds of
• 35:53
  thousands at every city they give to, if not more than a
• 35:56
  million sometimes. Then I saw a clip of Hetfield
• 36:00
  talking and he was referencing the accident with the tour bus
• 36:05
  and Cliff. And, and it was, it was very
• 36:08
  poignant because he was just kind of like this having a
• 36:10
  conversation with somebody. And he referenced in the
• 36:13
  conversation of, of how he prays every day and how and how that
• 36:18
  was such a struggle in Cliff clad.
• 36:19
  Like they, they were at a crossroads from a band
• 36:21
  standpoint. They don't know what they're
• 36:22
  going to do. And, and it just didn't
• 36:24
  understand why God took him away.
• 36:25
  I sent that clip to him. Here's your demon man.
• 36:29
  Yeah, 'cause here's your guy. Christian Science.
• 36:32
  Right, right. Here's the poor guy.
• 36:35
  Mother died not getting medication because she believed
• 36:39
  in God so much, right? Yes, the, the and when I'm going
• 36:44
  with this is the hypocrisy. Agreed.
• 36:47
  Of of Christians is just is just unbelievable.
• 36:51
  I mean, not all of them. I'm not.
• 36:52
  Let me tell you the box. No, and it's the it's the, it's
• 36:57
  the not being self aware. Look, we're all we all have our
• 37:00
  moments of hypocrisy, right? I mean, it's it's because we're
• 37:03
  human. It's that meant to it right
• 37:06
  here. Well, that's what I'm saying.
• 37:07
  It's this, this the not being able to recognize that within
• 37:13
  yourself, right? That pointing fingers at
• 37:16
  everybody else while your life's falling apart, You know, how
• 37:19
  about just let people just leave them alone, right?
• 37:22
  We're not called, but I mean, scripture is pretty simple.
• 37:26
  We're not called to judge people.
• 37:27
  We're called to love people. That there, that's, that's all
• 37:29
  you don't need. We don't need to have a
• 37:31
  discussion about it. That's pretty simple.
• 37:33
  Let me ask you the $1,000,000 question mark, because I ask
• 37:36
  everybody this and now you're a subject matter expert.
• 37:38
  Chris likes to, He likes life resumes, which I love.
• 37:42
  I like when people are what I call subject matter experts.
• 37:45
  You were a pastor for 30 years, correct my question at six years
• 37:51
  old because I understood there were other religions in the
• 37:54
  world, right? So I have to believe in Jesus,
• 37:59
  that he died for my sins, right? And this is going to get me to
• 38:02
  heaven. I understood the message, But my
• 38:05
  question was, what about all these other people?
• 38:08
  And at that time it was kids. What about all these other
• 38:10
  little kids that are Jewish and Muslim and Islam and Hindu and
• 38:15
  Buddhist? They don't believe in Jesus.
• 38:17
  And by your definition, they're all going to hell.
• 38:20
  And I cannot accept that. And it bothered me so much, like
• 38:24
  it bothered my soul. I knew I was an empath at that
• 38:26
  point. Right.
• 38:27
  I'm feeling things. Yeah.
• 38:28
  On a level that most people don't.
• 38:31
  And that's been my whole life. So what is your answer to that
• 38:34
  question? If I had presented that to you
• 38:37
  at that time when I was in my 20s, I would have given you the
• 38:43
  stock answer and not felt very good about it.
• 38:47
  I struggled. I like that part of your answer.
• 38:50
  Yeah. I mean, you know, I didn't start
• 38:52
  going to church until I was in the ninth grade.
• 38:55
  So. And then I made this mistake of
• 38:58
  actually reading the Bible through, right, which I'm not
• 39:01
  sure very many people have done. So in 9th grade I read through.
• 39:03
  I've done it three. I've done it three times.
• 39:05
  I only made it all the way through once, but I did it and
• 39:07
  then I had a million questions. It's like the stuff you guys say
• 39:10
  this, I don't. It doesn't make any sense to me.
• 39:12
  I so that was their first mistake was asking me to read
• 39:15
  that book. That's exactly right.
• 39:17
  You should have told me. Don't read it.
• 39:18
  We're going to tell you what to think.
• 39:19
  Thank you. So I think early in my ministry,
• 39:24
  I would have given you that common answer and really felt
• 39:28
  crummy about it because it's never made any sense to me that
• 39:34
  God, that this God that we can't explain, this God that is bigger
• 39:39
  than all of us, this God that is whatever that we are the only
• 39:45
  people who have the right path to that and everybody else is
• 39:48
  screwed. It doesn't make any sense to me.
• 39:51
  That's always my final question to anybody who just gets too
• 39:54
  indignant about that. They're absolutely right.
• 39:57
  I'm like time out. First off, you don't know and I
• 40:00
  don't know because we're not dead yet, right?
• 40:02
  And thank whoever for that, right?
• 40:05
  Right. But that's how I always defuse
• 40:07
  the situation. It's like man, Jesus, time out,
• 40:09
  you know? No pun intended, but fair
• 40:13
  enough. So I, I love your answer, man.
• 40:16
  I mean, is God is God not able to reveal himself or herself to
• 40:20
  other people in other ways? I mean, waiting, so many people
• 40:24
  have died waiting, right? My grandma was sure that he was
• 40:27
  coming soon. My grandma was little.
• 40:30
  She was the one that kind of got me on the iffy path.
• 40:32
  So thank, thank you Grammy, for making me think and open my eyes
• 40:36
  and teaching me about humanity, right?
• 40:39
  I can thank her and my mother and my great grandmother for
• 40:42
  the, the humanity side of it, right?
• 40:44
  They taught me empathy and that other people have feelings and
• 40:47
  that you're not always right. And the Christians.
• 40:51
  Here's what I heard the other day that I want to hear what you
• 40:54
  guys think. The guy said good people do good
• 40:56
  things, bad people do bad things.
• 40:59
  But when good people do bad things, it's religion.
• 41:05
  Wow, that's interesting. That's rattled around in my head
• 41:08
  for a while. Yeah, I think that's pretty
• 41:11
  fair. I just look at the history of
• 41:12
  the church. Just saying that that's their
• 41:15
  way of justifying doing their bad things.
• 41:18
  Right? Because we just said, if you
• 41:19
  read the book, there's so many things you're not supposed to
• 41:21
  do. I got in so much trouble in, in
• 41:25
  the ministry one time because, you know, the answer is that
• 41:28
  whole, you know, question, why do good things?
• 41:31
  Why do bad things happen to good people?
• 41:33
  And, and my God, the, the, the gymnastics that people do trying
• 41:39
  to come up with an answer to that question.
• 41:41
  That just always sounds like bullshit.
• 41:43
  I mean, you know, God allows it, blah, blah, blah.
• 41:47
  So I had really developed my own, I mean, others have shared
• 41:52
  this, but my version of this, which was God doesn't know
• 41:55
  everything and he's not all powerful because if he is, he's,
• 41:58
  he's to blame for a lot. If there are things he could
• 42:02
  stop that he chooses not to. If there are things that that
• 42:07
  happen in people's lives, you know, you, you, you support St.
• 42:11
  Jews. What it's God's plan to give a
• 42:13
  three-year old cancer. I mean, that makes no sense.
• 42:18
  Still. I can't live with that.
• 42:20
  I can't live with that. God knows a little kid.
• 42:23
  So I can give $20.00 a month or whatever, right?
• 42:27
  I mean, it makes no sense. So I, I have to, in order for me
• 42:31
  to continue to believe in God, I have to choose to believe He's
• 42:36
  not in control of everything and he doesn't know everything.
• 42:40
  And that makes that makes regular Christian folks insane.
• 42:45
  So I'll make them even more insane.
• 42:48
  I just say I choose to live a good life and try to do good
• 42:52
  things and do good by people. This is where I came to in my
• 42:55
  life, right? Because I had to throw away all
• 42:57
  the guilt. All religion ever gave me was
• 42:59
  guilt. I was like riddled with it
• 43:01
  because I'm trying to take it seriously.
• 43:03
  Like I do everything in my life and it's almost driving me
• 43:06
  insane. So I at one point I was just
• 43:09
  like, if there is a God in the sense that I was taught, and
• 43:15
  when I get there, we're I'm going to have a lot of
• 43:17
  explaining to do, right. That's just, that's that's where
• 43:21
  we're at. That's how I have to live with
• 43:22
  my life. And that'll really spin their
• 43:24
  head around. One of the two of you has got a
• 43:27
  lot of explaining to do. It may be God that has a lot of
• 43:30
  explaining to do. That's how it's like, yeah.
• 43:32
  It's like, hey, man, you want to run this by me again?
• 43:35
  But then then those people are like the arrogance of you, you
• 43:38
  know, how are you? Yeah, you're a heretic.
• 43:41
  I was called a heretic, but I've done better in my life with this
• 43:45
  thought process. I've become a nicer person.
• 43:48
  People like me, I have a lot of friends.
• 43:50
  This is always my argument, right?
• 43:52
  I'm not sure where I'm going wrong because this is the best
• 43:55
  point in my life, spiritually and emotionally than I've ever
• 43:59
  been in. Chris knows I would have never
• 44:01
  done this 40 years ago here. 30 years ago.
• 44:06
  He would have been doing all the interviews and I would have said
• 44:08
  a couple words and moved on. It's like, hey, that's your
• 44:10
  department, right? Go my my oldest daughter, all,
• 44:14
  all my kids are good musicians. My oldest daughter was a worship
• 44:18
  leader for a long time, and she worked at the same church.
• 44:22
  We all left. She went to Harvard, got her
• 44:25
  degree in I got her master's in philosophy, and now she works.
• 44:31
  If you're in the Christian world, you know who Gunger is.
• 44:33
  Gunger was a musician, wrote a ton of church songs.
• 44:38
  He also left the church. So he's put together this group
• 44:41
  of musicians. She's what she's going to
• 44:43
  Colorado next week, next month. That right spiritual songs that
• 44:50
  aren't tied to any specific faith, right?
• 44:54
  Songs about the the, the spiritual part of who we are
• 44:59
  without it having to be locked in to being Christian or Muslim
• 45:04
  or Jewish or whatever it may be. And, and that feels really good.
• 45:09
  I was. When I was working at
• 45:10
  Westminster, I was reading through some church stuff and it
• 45:14
  pissed me off. And so I slammed the lid down to
• 45:17
  my computer and said I am done, I'm done with Baptist.
• 45:21
  And these two Muslim girls came up and said, hey, can we talk to
• 45:24
  you? I said sure.
• 45:26
  They said, hey, we're worried that you're going to hell.
• 45:28
  Would you like to become a Muslim?
• 45:31
  I went, no, no, yours is just as nuts.
• 45:35
  I'm trying to avoid rules, you guys, you guys are nothing but
• 45:40
  rules. You know, the, the Bible says it
• 45:42
  is for freedom's sake that you are set free.
• 45:45
  And then so we become free and then we burden ourselves with a
• 45:49
  bunch of rules that don't make any sense.
• 45:52
  That's the point. They don't make sense.
• 45:55
  It don't make sense. I'm so glad you keep saying
• 45:57
  that. I, I love it because that is the
• 46:00
  point. And people look at you like
• 46:02
  you're nuts when you say stuff like that.
• 46:04
  It's just, it's getting better. I mean, living in 2025, you
• 46:09
  don't have as much of A horrible reaction as you did in 1985,
• 46:14
  right? Or even 1995.
• 46:16
  I mean, the fastest growing group of Christians in the
• 46:19
  United States are called the nuns.
• 46:21
  Do you know this? The NONES meaning they have
• 46:25
  faith that they refuse to go to church.
• 46:28
  So because they can't, they feel like church.
• 46:33
  It doesn't really reflect what Jesus wants from people.
• 46:36
  So that's the fast. So on on my staff, I'm an ex
• 46:41
  pastor or COO is an ex pastor like board chair is an ex pastor
• 46:47
  because we lost our way somehow. I'm not exactly sure what
• 46:51
  happened or we just what killed me, Mark, was when I found out
• 46:56
  that when they translated the Bible from Hebrew, it didn't go
• 47:00
  from Hebrew to English. It went from Hebrew to Aramaic
• 47:03
  to English, Right. So it's a second generation.
• 47:05
  And the example that the guy gave me that made me really stop
• 47:08
  and think is have you ever gotten instructions from
• 47:11
  something that was made in China and the person that wrote the
• 47:15
  instructions barely spoke English?
• 47:18
  I was like, yeah, that's the Bible.
• 47:21
  Well, that and then, you know, the group of men who chose what
• 47:26
  went in and what didn't go in and how those verses should be
• 47:29
  translated. That's where it gets even more.
• 47:31
  Bad it gets even while while tripping on mushrooms.
• 47:35
  There you go. That's a good point.
• 47:36
  Correct. There was no Internet or
• 47:37
  television. There was the Acacia Bush, which
• 47:39
  was full of DMT, which is the most psychoactive substance on
• 47:43
  earth. I've done it three times.
• 47:46
  How was it? It'll take you to a place that
• 47:49
  will assure you that there's something after this, in my
• 47:51
  opinion, but I'm not quite sure what it is.
• 47:54
  It was the most geometric, so the shapes, the visuals,
• 47:59
  geometric color, but the geometry is like something
• 48:03
  you've never seen. But the thing that got me was
• 48:06
  over and I get my I got goosebumps in every part of my
• 48:10
  body, including my toenails right now.
• 48:12
  It was overwhelming love, like I understood unconditional love in
• 48:18
  that trip over anything else I've ever done.
• 48:21
  With the exception of Ben Stiller.
• 48:23
  Everybody that's done those has said the same thing.
• 48:26
  You know, my, my friend of mine went to Mexico.
• 48:29
  We did two days, said it was the most enlightening spiritual
• 48:33
  experience of his life. And I've also done peyote
• 48:36
  masculine. I've done acid.
• 48:38
  I've done mushrooms. Those aren't.
• 48:42
  And when people hear you say that, they're like, oh, my God.
• 48:45
  And I, I just laugh because I'm like, now I know you've never
• 48:49
  done it because it's not something that you strive to do
• 48:52
  again. I waited 15 years between a lot
• 48:55
  of those, you know. Yeah.
• 48:57
  I didn't start drinking whiskey till I was 50.
• 49:00
  So I missed out on pretty much all this.
• 49:02
  I was 43 maybe when I started drinking whiskey or a good
• 49:08
  bourbon. Yeah, a good bourbon.
• 49:10
  That's a better way to put it. Yeah.
• 49:13
  What are you digging through, Chris?
• 49:15
  I'm trying to find a song I wrote called.
• 49:17
  I'm starting to think I hijacked the conversation and he he got
• 49:20
  he just like he's, he's doing escrow paperwork.
• 49:24
  He knows I'm joking. With you, there's a song I wrote
• 49:26
  in in. I knew exactly what he was
• 49:28
  doing, that's why I didn't say anything.
• 49:30
  Called letter to God and I was trying to find it because it it.
• 49:33
  It. That's a great song dude.
• 49:34
  Thank you. There's, there's, there's,
• 49:36
  there's. I'll bring you ACD, Mark.
• 49:38
  Yeah, I'd like that. There's, there's, it's basically
• 49:43
  it kind of summarizes people's questions about God's existence.
• 49:48
  Like what would you say in a letter to God today?
• 49:51
  Why would you offer? Why would I?
• 49:54
  Why would you? Why?
• 49:54
  Why would you offer? OK, the dynamic of us this I
• 50:00
  wrote it after the Sandy Hook shooting with 20 some odd kids
• 50:06
  were killed. So that that was the emotion
• 50:09
  that I was going through and like, like, but there's
• 50:12
  references in the song about why would you offer the keys to the
• 50:17
  gate for a Sinner to for a Sinner to sit next to the
• 50:22
  Saints? Why would you like Dahmer?
• 50:24
  OK, Dahmer, the whole, the whole belief in Mike, you'll
• 50:28
  understand this and I'm sure Mike, you will at some level.
• 50:30
  The whole concept of Christianity is accept, believe
• 50:32
  and commit, Accept Jesus Christ died for your sins, believe that
• 50:35
  he died for your sins, commit your life to him.
• 50:37
  Sure, right, Whatever that looks like.
• 50:40
  So I struggle with that part of it because I had I had a friend
• 50:45
  in young life. I'm going to squirrel a moment
• 50:46
  here. I had a friend in your life, but
• 50:48
  you'll see where it's going. Who's who.
• 50:50
  He was very adamant about his his mother not being a
• 50:52
  Christian. Like she didn't believe, she
• 50:54
  didn't practice. She just thought it was a joke.
• 50:56
  She died. Me being me, I approached him
• 51:00
  the next time I saw him. Hey, we'll call him.
• 51:05
  We'll just call him. Hey, your mom died.
• 51:09
  She didn't believe, so she's in hell.
• 51:13
  Total Dick move on my part. Like, total Dick move.
• 51:16
  Ouch, right? It wasn't, it wasn't that I was,
• 51:20
  I was trying to like him. It was just, it was a legitimate
• 51:24
  question because I knew he walked and he still walks
• 51:29
  because I follow his wife on Facebook.
• 51:30
  I've tried to apologize him. He won't talk to me anymore.
• 51:33
  Which, you know, it is what it is.
• 51:34
  I was an ass. I I recognized.
• 51:36
  We were all asses when we were young man.
• 51:38
  We were stupid. But I recognized when I threw
• 51:41
  those words out of my mouth, like, oh, that was the wrong
• 51:44
  thing to say, or at least the wrong way to phrase it.
• 51:46
  He didn't mean it the way it came out.
• 51:48
  No, but he didn't have an answer to it, which was wrong in my
• 51:52
  eyes because you have to have that answer.
• 51:56
  Because she didn't accept, she didn't believe, she didn't
• 51:58
  commit. She's in hell.
• 52:00
  That's why I like the fact that he said he wouldn't have felt
• 52:03
  good about his answer. Right, but all things considered
• 52:06
  from a Christian, the whole concept Christianity is ABC.
• 52:11
  So in those clear cut lame and terms, his mom's in hell.
• 52:16
  Now do I believe that now as a 55 year old man, No, I don't
• 52:20
  because I'm the same thing. I went, I grew up wanting to be
• 52:24
  a high school minister at some point at one point in time.
• 52:27
  And then, you know, life changed and I wanted to be a rock star
• 52:30
  and blah, blah, blah, blah. But so when I wrote letter to
• 52:32
  God, it it it talks about the fact that how can you allow
• 52:38
  somebody like Dahmer, who for all intents and purposes,
• 52:40
  according to to, you know, the conversations, the history of of
• 52:45
  his time in prison, he found God.
• 52:49
  OK, he committed himself to God. And then within a month's time
• 52:52
  he was beaten to death in the bathroom.
• 52:55
  So if Christianity, the ABC is is a true and fact statement.
• 52:59
  And that's what we have to live by.
• 53:01
  Dahmer's up in heaven right now, chilling with.
• 53:05
  And I'm going to hell. Right.
• 53:07
  So, but that's the thing. So Ozzy God blessed everybody
• 53:11
  every night, every after his shows, right Him and Jack, there
• 53:14
  was a conversation. I saw him and Jack Jack was
• 53:15
  asking him what he believes in Ozzy kind of like you, Mike, he
• 53:19
  doesn't believe in a God, but he believes in a higher power.
• 53:23
  So when I. I believe in an organization of.
• 53:25
  Exactly. So when I went through a, a, the
• 53:28
  first, the first year of being sober, I mean, that was the
• 53:30
  thing. Everybody's like, oh, I'm sold
• 53:32
  by the grace of God. And we've talked about this
• 53:34
  before. There's too many.
• 53:36
  Coincidences in this universe to think that it's not organized
• 53:40
  somehow. And that's what I mean by
• 53:42
  organized. Please don't think I mean
• 53:43
  religion people. No, no, no, no.
• 53:46
  I mean that the universe is too organized and there's too many
• 53:49
  things that happen that you can't explain that something's
• 53:53
  going on somewhere. Like Mark said, either we have
• 53:55
  somebody who's asleep at the wheel sometimes, and that's a
• 53:58
  strong possibility. Sure, or we all live in a
• 54:02
  simulation that we've advanced so far that none of this shit's
• 54:06
  real and we don't even know it, we never will, or who the fuck
• 54:12
  knows? And that's the fun part of it.
• 54:14
  And that's why we're sitting here talking, and I love it.
• 54:16
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that that was the and I had,
• 54:20
  I had different people reacted letter to God different ways.
• 54:22
  I was, I was working with some, some guys from Israel, you know,
• 54:27
  and I gave them the CD and then when they went back to Israel,
• 54:30
  they sent me a message. Wow, letter to God, huh?
• 54:33
  I was like, yeah. And it they didn't mean it like
• 54:35
  in a nice way. They were kind of like.
• 54:37
  How did you? Did you write right?
• 54:41
  But that's that's that was my kind of way to just kind of put
• 54:45
  it in writing that because I had the same stuff with Mike.
• 54:48
  Like I grew up and I was beaten. I was abused, I was molested, I
• 54:53
  was fucked with, you know, I mean, just it had a.
• 54:55
  But that's one thing I loved about you as a front man.
• 54:58
  You would say the things that were hard to say at that He
• 55:01
  would. His lyrics were very powerful,
• 55:03
  man. They were.
• 55:04
  They made you think, you know, there were certain things that
• 55:06
  stood out and there were certain things that if you read them,
• 55:08
  you'd be like, whoa, hey, this dude's deep.
• 55:11
  You know, that was my first thought.
• 55:13
  Like, this guy's deep. He's 23 years old and he's right
• 55:17
  and shit, like he's lived 60 years already.
• 55:20
  Where did you guys meet? He tells the story better than.
• 55:24
  That OK so candle box concert we were a place called the Electric
• 55:29
  Ballroom in Tempe and candle box came on and I I started singing
• 55:35
  with Kevin Martin, the lead singer and it was.
• 55:38
  Told about 1500 people, maybe 2000.
• 55:40
  OK, so when I so when I say I'm singing with him, I'm singing
• 55:44
  with him note for note. I'm hitting his highs as low as
• 55:47
  it's it's you might as well just.
• 55:49
  But it wasn't humming along. No, you put a mic in my hand and
• 55:52
  I was doing what he was doing. So this long haired creepy dude
• 55:56
  after in between you saw and kept looking back at me and it
• 55:59
  was kind of like that look like shut the fuck up and I'm so I'm
• 56:02
  like I'm going to get I'm going to do this even more now.
• 56:05
  So you know, then I I really start, you know, coming from the
• 56:08
  diaphragm and and singing and hitting it and stage goes out.
• 56:12
  Half the stage power goes out with the thing.
• 56:14
  The ballroom had whatever break or pop.
• 56:17
  Like it was meant to be. House lights go on, the band
• 56:21
  talks, blah, blah, blah. Mike turns it on the business
• 56:23
  card. Are you a singer?
• 56:24
  You had a business card. That said, at the time, the band
• 56:26
  was called Desperate Angel with his name and phone number.
• 56:29
  And I was like, yeah, he's like, we're looking for a singer for
• 56:33
  my band, man we. Literally had just fired our
• 56:37
  bass player who is also our singer because he had stage
• 56:40
  fright something terrible. We had gigs booked and we needed
• 56:45
  a singer and a bass player now and I'm like bass player is a
• 56:48
  little tough to find, but a front man is almost impossible.
• 56:52
  It's like trying to find a good drummer.
• 56:53
  You know you were a musician. 2 things that you can't replace
• 56:57
  your drummer and your front man. I don't care who you are as a
• 57:00
  band, you're not going to succeed, and we didn't either,
• 57:03
  so. Yeah.
• 57:05
  So true. That was it.
• 57:07
  And then we went out wet Scott and him in a bar.
• 57:09
  We hung out, drank some beers and shit, then went back to
• 57:11
  Scott's house where we would practice and jammed.
• 57:13
  And so my addition, Mike and I decided a couple weeks ago on
• 57:16
  episode dude, he showed. Up with like a briefcase full of
• 57:19
  lyrics already. I was like, if any of those are
• 57:25
  any good, like you're in because I've already heard you sing,
• 57:28
  right? Wow, that's crazy.
• 57:30
  Yeah, and that's not that's not all of them.
• 57:32
  I knew he was, I knew he was committed and prepared just
• 57:37
  because I heard him saying I'm like, you know, as long as he's
• 57:41
  got any kind of stage presence. Then we met him at a bar.
• 57:44
  We had a few beers. And while we're having some
• 57:46
  beers, he's like, yeah, I was in acting school and I was an
• 57:49
  actor. And I've done this and, you
• 57:51
  know, I've done commercial spots and I've been in other bands.
• 57:55
  And he mentioned the bands and I had, I knew the bands.
• 57:58
  Disturbed was one of them. And they weren't even famous,
• 58:02
  you know? Yeah, the other one was the
• 58:03
  Andalusian dog. And I had heard of them too,
• 58:05
  because you guys had. And the reason why you heard of
• 58:08
  Andalusian Dog, Mark, is because the marketing genius of me
• 58:10
  started back then because the ballroom had these spots that
• 58:15
  you could advertise. So I advertised Andalusian Dog
• 58:19
  because we had not had yet to play out, but I'd go to the
• 58:22
  ballroom and look at bands and because back then nobody shaved
• 58:25
  their head, my head was shaved. So I was recognizable because
• 58:30
  there's only one bald man in the crowd.
• 58:32
  And then I grew it out and then I ended up shaving it again for
• 58:35
  the bald cap thing. But it was one of those things
• 58:39
  that because I had marketing, I had myself was the main
• 58:43
  character of the band being the singer.
• 58:44
  It was just me standing on stage or not really on stage, but in
• 58:48
  the studio with the name of the band behind us.
• 58:51
  But Andalus and Dog came up, the Neil came up with it.
• 58:54
  Our drummer who Neil was the one that made my mic stand, Mike, I
• 58:57
  had this really nice, I had this really bad ass mic stand that I
• 58:59
  actually put my hand in this resin.
• 59:01
  He got so many compliments on this thing dude.
• 59:03
  And so my hand, my hand was where the mic would be.
• 59:07
  So the microphone came in on my hand.
• 59:09
  Oh, that's cool. Yeah, the base of it.
• 59:12
  How much did that thing weigh? Probably 30 lbs.
• 59:14
  Probably 30 lbs. The base of it, because I was
• 59:18
  really into Morrison was Raven's Claws and Talons.
• 59:20
  So you had my shoulder down to my hand coming up from this
• 59:23
  Raven's claws and and all the veins and stuff in my arm picked
• 59:27
  up on the on the black resin. It was amazing.
• 59:30
  So I got to tell, I got to tell a boss story about this mic
• 59:33
  stand that Chris will never understand because he wasn't
• 59:36
  into the sound and the, you know, I dealt with all that
• 59:39
  shit. So the sound man would say, how
• 59:41
  many mic stands do you need? And then he would speak up.
• 59:45
  I got my own. It was so fucking cool and those
• 59:49
  guys got such a kick out of it because no singer in the world
• 59:52
  showed up with their own mic, just their own mic.
• 59:54
  Chris was like, I got it covered, and if you need me to
• 59:56
  kick anybody's ass, I got it covered too.
• 59:58
  Because that thing was. Weapon you.
• 1:00:03
  Guys was Neil was Neil was an art student at ASU.
• 1:00:07
  So it was an art project He had to use some kind of element that
• 1:00:10
  that wasn't normal for art. So it was an art project.
• 1:00:13
  You got an A on. Then he gave it to me.
• 1:00:15
  And then the cool thing about it was perfectly we measured it so
• 1:00:19
  I could hold the mic like this and my foot could go underneath
• 1:00:22
  the raven's claws and I could rock it on stage.
• 1:00:25
  Very cool. Like it was.
• 1:00:27
  I mean, it was. It was an extension.
• 1:00:29
  And then we went the last bananas.
• 1:00:31
  Then we went to Sturgis, rode the Sturgis tour and and the
• 1:00:34
  person I don't like to talk to threw something in the back of
• 1:00:37
  the truck and then all of a sudden you see the mic stand go
• 1:00:40
  boop and the drummer, Jesse, the drummer's like like just freaked
• 1:00:45
  out. He's like, that's a bad omen.
• 1:00:47
  That's a that's holy shit. This is going to we're going to
• 1:00:50
  fall apart. Something bad's going to happen.
• 1:00:51
  The whole band fell apart by the why we're there because his ego,
• 1:00:55
  not Jesse. The other guy just Josh wanted
• 1:00:58
  to quit. Jesse quit as soon as we got
• 1:01:00
  back to Arizona and it was never the same.
• 1:01:02
  Neil tried to fix it. It just.
• 1:01:04
  It just it just. Is that the dude I jammed with?
• 1:01:07
  Josh Yeah, yeah, The bass player, yeah.
• 1:01:10
  Josh. Yeah.
• 1:01:11
  Yeah. See, you guys are super cool.
• 1:01:13
  Here is a band I was in when I was a senior in high school.
• 1:01:17
  Duche. Oh, right on.
• 1:01:21
  Tumbling dice. Tumbling dice.
• 1:01:24
  You guys were epic. Dude, this is me.
• 1:01:28
  I love it. I love the fact you're
• 1:01:29
  committed. Pimp Dad.
• 1:01:31
  OK, He's sharing ours now. Oh, that's good.
• 1:01:35
  Yeah. Much hipper than what I just
• 1:01:36
  showed you. Yeah.
• 1:01:37
  Yeah. Yeah, and it's.
• 1:01:40
  That's at the Mason jar, if you're familiar, Mike, I am.
• 1:01:43
  I am. Yeah.
• 1:01:44
  That's a lot. That's on the stage at the Mason
• 1:01:46
  Jar, probably opening up for Sacred Reich.
• 1:01:49
  Yeah, yeah. There's Chris.
• 1:01:51
  There's Mike. You guys play at all anymore?
• 1:01:54
  We are actually annoy. We are actually trying to do
• 1:01:57
  things remotely now. We're working on redoing the
• 1:02:00
  song that you heard at the beginning of the show.
• 1:02:03
  And I'm. I'm holding things up now.
• 1:02:05
  So that's why I don't talk about it a lot.
• 1:02:07
  But it's, yeah, the bass tracks done, the drum tracks done.
• 1:02:12
  I just need to get a guitar track so he can lay down a
• 1:02:14
  vocal. And that was the original
• 1:02:17
  conversation. I can't remember if I called
• 1:02:18
  Chris or he called me I. Called you because I called you
• 1:02:22
  because I wrote a song. And.
• 1:02:24
  I sent you the lyrics and you were like, dude, that's fucking
• 1:02:26
  badass. I'm like, yeah, let's go, let's
• 1:02:28
  start writing music again. And shortly after that, I
• 1:02:31
  developed trigger finger, so I couldn't play for like, I don't
• 1:02:34
  know, months. My sister's a physical therapist
• 1:02:37
  and I finally stopped being a man and said, how do I repair
• 1:02:40
  this? You know, And she says, do this
• 1:02:43
  and hope it works. And if it doesn't, you're going
• 1:02:44
  to have to have surgery. So I followed her instructions
• 1:02:48
  and it worked. And I'm still, you know, able to
• 1:02:51
  play today. So thank you, Melissa.
• 1:02:52
  Awesome. Yeah.
• 1:02:57
  What's that? No.
• 1:02:58
  We'll have some new stuff coming out here pretty soon.
• 1:03:01
  I get bugged about it all the time because everybody's like,
• 1:03:03
  oh, you're a musician. You told me you played guitar
• 1:03:05
  like we never heard anything. That gets old.
• 1:03:08
  So yeah, you got to call their bluff eventually.
• 1:03:11
  Yeah. Here you go, pal.
• 1:03:14
  Do you still play? I do.
• 1:03:15
  I actually. It's a whole different planet.
• 1:03:19
  But yeah, I play it up. Music's music, man.
• 1:03:23
  I play in a jazz group that plays once a month up in north
• 1:03:26
  Scottsdale. And then the family.
• 1:03:29
  What's that called? Plug it.
• 1:03:31
  No, man, you can't come see it. No, Plug it.
• 1:03:35
  I can't. I can't.
• 1:03:37
  I don't know what it's called. It's just a bunch of old guys.
• 1:03:40
  It's like you don't understand. We don't have a name.
• 1:03:43
  Yeah, they've been doing it for 26 years.
• 1:03:46
  They haven't gotten around to having a name.
• 1:03:48
  And then the family has a band, and so my wife's a keyboard
• 1:03:54
  player. Anyway, everybody's a musician,
• 1:03:57
  so. But we rent ourselves.
• 1:03:59
  We we actually play for free for nonprofits that are doing a
• 1:04:02
  fundraiser. So that's what we do.
• 1:04:06
  But it's all pop music. You know, I'm thrilled if I'm
• 1:04:08
  playing Stevie Wonder and Bruno Mars.
• 1:04:10
  So yeah, I love both of us. Yeah.
• 1:04:14
  My playlist will go anywhere from Michael Jackson to Pantera
• 1:04:17
  back-to-back. There you go.
• 1:04:19
  That's good. Well, and it's indicative who we
• 1:04:22
  were too, because we opened for anybody from Marshall Tucker
• 1:04:25
  Band, Sacred Reich, Tony McAlpine.
• 1:04:28
  I mean, it's, you know, enough's enough.
• 1:04:29
  I mean, 7 Dust L.A. Guns, right?
• 1:04:33
  It's just in, in. Yeah.
• 1:04:34
  It's one of those things the back then we didn't realize who
• 1:04:36
  we were playing with, right. And and then now it's like
• 1:04:39
  kidding me. I just word we opened for a band
• 1:04:43
  and you guys can probably help me.
• 1:04:45
  That was called Mammoth. Yep.
• 1:04:47
  That then became Van Halen. Van Halen, we opened for them,
• 1:04:52
  who is now Mammoth again, Eddie Kidd, we opened for them in
• 1:04:56
  Bismarck, South Dakota. Wow, that's.
• 1:05:00
  Awesome. That's awesome.
• 1:05:01
  That it was 1990. It would have been 678, I think.
• 1:05:06
  So right before they changed their name.
• 1:05:08
  Yeah. I had no idea.
• 1:05:11
  How was that? You literally saw Eddie Van
• 1:05:14
  Halen before anybody knew who he was.
• 1:05:16
  He had to tell you that story. I didn't know, I didn't know
• 1:05:18
  what was going on. I was too busy trying to be
• 1:05:20
  cool. I love this guy.
• 1:05:25
  I told you he's great. OK, so people who are honest.
• 1:05:29
  Yeah, so before we let you go, I want you to plug Foster's 360.
• 1:05:32
  OK? So this is this is another thing
• 1:05:34
  that Mark does. And then and then we'll wrap
• 1:05:35
  everything up because we're over an hour and I don't want to, you
• 1:05:38
  know, take you away from what you got to do.
• 1:05:39
  So talk about Foster's 360 and what that's all absolutely love
• 1:05:42
  to. So, so I've, I've been working
• 1:05:47
  for 1012 years trying to figure out some kind of a solution for
• 1:05:52
  the homelessness problem and have just banged my head against
• 1:05:56
  the wall and, and haven't been very effective.
• 1:06:00
  And then we do a lot of work with foster kids.
• 1:06:03
  And I discovered that about half of the kids at age out of foster
• 1:06:06
  care end up homeless within two years, right?
• 1:06:10
  And I thought, OK, well, if we're going to work to battle
• 1:06:13
  homelessness, we need to be doing it from, we need to be
• 1:06:15
  doing it upstream. How do we keep kids from
• 1:06:18
  becoming homeless as opposed to waiting until they are homeless
• 1:06:21
  and trying to get them off the street?
• 1:06:23
  So we started this program called Foster 360, which is
• 1:06:27
  housing and traumatic trauma informed care for young people
• 1:06:36
  since we were kind of we were pioneering that in many ways.
• 1:06:40
  So all of our students go to Barrow, They get tested for
• 1:06:44
  traumatic brain injury. The majority of them have
• 1:06:47
  traumatic brain injury. They enter.
• 1:06:50
  What's that? I've been there.
• 1:06:51
  Yeah. OK.
• 1:06:52
  They enter into our program. We don't have an end date on it.
• 1:06:56
  The deal is never homeless again.
• 1:06:58
  So the kids will come in, they go through six months of just
• 1:07:01
  getting their spirit quiet. And then we start to work with
• 1:07:05
  them about finishing school or getting an education or getting
• 1:07:08
  a job and teaching a life skills.
• 1:07:10
  Because they don't have that thing that many of us have,
• 1:07:14
  which is if I go out and try and fail, I can move back home.
• 1:07:17
  They don't have a back home to move to, right.
• 1:07:21
  So we really do become that that safety net for them.
• 1:07:25
  And, and I'm really proud of that program.
• 1:07:28
  It, it, it does great things for those young people.
• 1:07:32
  And we just went through a leadership transition and I'm
• 1:07:35
  really excited about where we're going.
• 1:07:36
  We got some kids who would rather graduate out.
• 1:07:39
  We're going to add some more kids to our housing.
• 1:07:41
  We're going to add about 20 kids to a cohort that we don't have
• 1:07:46
  housing for, but that we'll be working through life skills and
• 1:07:49
  the trauma informed stuff. And we'd really like to grow
• 1:07:52
  that program up. So yeah, I'm excited about that
• 1:07:54
  work. So when you say graduate out, I
• 1:07:56
  don't want to hold you up too much more either.
• 1:07:57
  But when you say graduate out, I know they all start at different
• 1:08:02
  times. Probably.
• 1:08:03
  You're saying like foster care ends at one age 20.
• 1:08:07
  Well, it ends at 18 and then there's extended foster care
• 1:08:10
  till 24. OK, So how long are they in your
• 1:08:14
  program on average? If they're going to be a success
• 1:08:17
  story until they're ready to not be, that's awesome.
• 1:08:21
  Yeah, because we don't take federal money.
• 1:08:24
  We don't take state money. Those things all pretty much say
• 1:08:28
  these have to be two year programs or you have to boot
• 1:08:31
  them out when they're 24. It's like, what if they're not
• 1:08:33
  ready when they're 24? We got it when they were 22.
• 1:08:38
  They didn't have their GED. So we need to work them through
• 1:08:42
  getting their GED and either getting a skill or getting a
• 1:08:46
  degree. Well, already you're at four
• 1:08:48
  years, right? So and they need to be able to
• 1:08:51
  make enough money to live here. So some of the students can come
• 1:08:55
  in there, they've got their a a they're able to get ready, find
• 1:08:59
  a job. We've had some kids come through
• 1:09:01
  Eve it. They get a job as a plumber, an
• 1:09:03
  electrician, they're ready to go.
• 1:09:05
  Others there's not there's no one-size-fits-all.
• 1:09:08
  Everybody has their own story, their own background, their own
• 1:09:13
  brokenness. And you can't determine what
• 1:09:17
  it's going to take to fix somebody with some arbitrary
• 1:09:20
  number that either the government is giving you or
• 1:09:23
  somebody's told you. So when they're ready, they're
• 1:09:25
  ready. We could talk for a million
• 1:09:27
  hours. Because most people don't
• 1:09:29
  understand that there's those rules and regulations in what
• 1:09:32
  they consider welfare and charity that's funded by the
• 1:09:36
  state, the government, the county, the city, whatever.
• 1:09:38
  You know, they put stipulations on those kind of things.
• 1:09:41
  And that's why they fail at such a high success rate.
• 1:09:45
  Oh, absolutely weird thing to say.
• 1:09:48
  There's a person I know, she's really intelligent and she's, I
• 1:09:54
  have to be careful. I don't want to anyway.
• 1:09:56
  But she, she is determined that for her family, her husband and
• 1:10:02
  her two children, in order for them to not get the benefits of
• 1:10:07
  disability and all of that, she'd have to be making about
• 1:10:12
  $82,000 a year. So we've offered her a full time
• 1:10:15
  job, but we can't reach that. But for her, the benefits are
• 1:10:19
  either all or nothing. Well, what kind of sense does
• 1:10:21
  that make? So if she if, if we could give
• 1:10:24
  her 50,000 a year and she would need from you guys, you know,
• 1:10:29
  support of 20,000 a year, why can't there be a sliding scale
• 1:10:33
  so people can get out of this poverty into a place of success?
• 1:10:37
  It's all or nothing. And if it's all or nothing, I'm
• 1:10:40
  going to pick all. I'm not picking nothing.
• 1:10:42
  Anybody is. We have to, That's right.
• 1:10:44
  It's like the people who don't want to hunt.
• 1:10:46
  Trust me, if you had to feed your kids, you'd be shooting
• 1:10:49
  that whatever. That's right.
• 1:10:50
  So, so, so we make these arbitrary rules that are
• 1:10:55
  nonsensical, and then we blame the people who are taking
• 1:11:00
  advantage of those things instead of blaming the systems
• 1:11:04
  that are in place that make people stay in those places of
• 1:11:09
  weakness. It's just makes no sense.
• 1:11:13
  OK, There's a podium and there was a pulpit moment for you.
• 1:11:16
  No, I love your program. That's why I asked that
• 1:11:18
  question. I want people to understand
• 1:11:20
  there's a difference between these state and federally funded
• 1:11:23
  programs and what you're doing. You're funding it yourself and
• 1:11:27
  you're putting out success stories because these people
• 1:11:30
  know there's not a time limit for them to succeed.
• 1:11:33
  Success is not a time limit. Everybody succeeds differently
• 1:11:36
  and success is different for everyone, right?
• 1:11:38
  That's right. You know one of them.
• 1:11:40
  We have two tag lines. One is never homeless again and
• 1:11:43
  the other one is success as you see it.
• 1:11:47
  It's not my place to determine for someone else what success
• 1:11:51
  looks like. And they have their own
• 1:11:54
  giftings, their own background, their own life.
• 1:11:57
  And part of the reason that we continue to do so much we where
• 1:12:03
  we don't make any headway is we have these arbitrary rules.
• 1:12:06
  And then we just see the same people over and over because we
• 1:12:09
  never really finished with helping them.
• 1:12:13
  And then they get discouraged and they feel worthless.
• 1:12:16
  And it's like, come on, you guys, think about the person,
• 1:12:20
  not the institution. Let's help the person, the
• 1:12:25
  institution. If we do a good job with helping
• 1:12:27
  the person, the institution will find a way to maintain.
• 1:12:30
  Yep, that's it. Thank you guys.
• 1:12:33
  And girls. And we always wrap up the show
• 1:12:35
  like this for Chris. Hello.
• 1:12:37
  For Chris. I'm Chris.
• 1:12:38
  He's Mike. That's Mark Young.
• 1:12:41
  If you're feeling bad, if you're depressed, if you're suicidal,
• 1:12:44
  reach out to somebody. Talk to somebody.
• 1:12:46
  Somebody does love you. Somebody will miss you.
• 1:12:48
  Don't leave a hole in somebody's heart because you're struggling
• 1:12:50
  with the the day journal screaming to a pillow.
• 1:12:54
  Go run. Go workout.
• 1:12:56
  Do something to clear your mind. Find some inner peace.
• 1:12:59
  Go to sleep. Wake up tomorrow.
• 1:13:00
  It's a better day. You will be missed.
• 1:13:02
  You are loved. Thanks again for joining the
• 1:13:04
  smart gun. You're you're just a superhuman.
• 1:13:06
  Dude, thank you guys. So much fun, man.
• 1:13:08
  That was great. Anytime you have time and you
• 1:13:11
  want to come on, you shoot Chris an e-mail and we'll make time.
• 1:13:14
  That was that was a blast. All right, man.
• 1:13:16
  Oh yeah. Yeah.
• 1:13:16
  Thanks fellas. Thank you buddy.
• 1:13:18
  Peace love you brother. Peace.
• 1:13:19
  Love you too, man. All right.
• 1:13:33
  On your journey, this is the place where you will go.
• 1:13:36
  Feel the trail behind your eyes. Feel yourself and meet yourself.
• 1:13:53
  Take a moment, look until you see it.
• 1:13:57
  Fight the battle and tear your boss.
• 1:13:59
  We're fight the battle but you fuck Will who is his baby to
• 1:14:13
  you? Come to him, he haven't found
• 1:15:30
  solids in his sand. He's fun fighting.
• 1:15:35
  Wait for the dead or when he's closer.
• 1:15:39
  Out and you. Put in the wind, you ain't no
• 1:15:42
  creature. We don't pray and smile and you
• 1:15:46
  should you quit on the almighty days.
• 1:15:50
  You gotta dream who in your life to keep our soul in every man.
• 1:15:59
  Take the trail behind your eyes. Feel the soul that we shed now.
• 1:16:05
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:16:16
  Take your moment. Look at you.
• 1:16:18
  See you, see you. You gotta.
• 1:16:21
  You gotta.
• 1:16:49
  You gotta. You gotta.
• 1:16:52
  You gotta.