The Day the Music Was Resurrected w/ Jeff Hunt - An Enlightening Tale of a Spiritual Awakening Through Scientific Research and Self Reflection

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[00:00:16] Greg: Hey, hey, hey, everybody out there. My name is Greg Heggs. I'm from St. Louis, Missouri. I always had a desire for people to be able to prosper and to make their dreams come true. And I'm glad to have this platform that God has blessed me on so that I can reach millions of people who has that desire and that dream.

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[00:00:56] Greg: hey, hey, hey. Welcome to Hags Radio. Boom. And you know I have a special guest here today. Jeff Hunt. Jeff Hunt man. And we just gonna share with you, man, because this is what this station is all about, bro.

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[00:01:39] Greg: Interesting. You can't just be

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[00:01:49] Greg: Yeah. Not special, special.

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[00:02:17] Will: know.

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[00:02:20] Jeff: man? I was born in central Michigan 1973. By 79 my family moved away to Tampa down to Florida. I was born on a farm and then moved to a metropolitan area. So that was, you can imagine me and my three siblings, you know, having grown up in, in rural community and now all of a sudden we're, we're in the city community.

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[00:03:10] Jeff: Push came to shove and we ended up having to relocate. We, my family and I had to relocate up here to Illinois where, where my partner's parents lived. And we had, we had to lean in, you know, we landed, landed on them for a little while, for some support to get us back on our feet. And it was, it was one of the most life changing events I've ever had.

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[00:03:54] Greg: You know, you know, that you, you mentioned that you had to go land on some support from other people, but through these struggles, you know, I know for those who, who may not even believe, but it have, you tap in to a lot of, not yourself, but tap into there must be a higher power.

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[00:04:27] Jeff: And, and that's, I think that's part of the journey that, that we'll get to. You know, that got me to that point where I, I finally took a step back and I was like, whoa, let me, let me rephrase it, I guess, or, or give a little context. I, I'm a I'm a very, very analytical person. You know, I, I use my brain to process everything and I look around at this world and the chaos that has always existed in this world, and it, it's hard to find faith that there's something else, right?

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[00:05:16] Jeff: Now, I'm so analytical that I, I never go to the extremes unless I know, like, I know one plus one is two. I'll give you that a hundred percent, but I don't know what I don't know. And I, I've never been able to, and I can't exclude what I don't know. So I've always left a sliver of an opening there. Like, if by chance I ever got the opportunity to, to have a miracle happen in front of me or something like that, you know, then, then maybe I would open myself up to it.

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[00:06:09] Jeff: And at that was only four months ago, five months ago. So my journey is, you know, in faith is, is really just starting well like literally just starting.

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[00:06:31] Greg: You know what I'm saying? And, and this is something that's lacking among a lot of people. Yep. They got faith in what they see. But faith is not the definition of faith.

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[00:06:49] Jeff: I'd have been arguing with you, I'd have been on the other side of the spectrum, telling you how, how it, it, it's preposterous to live your life by faith and to not strategically plan every single thing that you're ever gonna do. And then when those, but when those things fail, then that, that brings up more failure.

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[00:07:21] Jeff: And I, and I'm thankful. I'm thankful to, you know, to God and, and, and, you know, whomever for my parents, you know, my parents did. Lemme take a step back a little bit and try to tell a little bit of the story. Okay? So get the career part out of the way. I was a terrible kid. Terrible, terrible kid growing up.

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[00:08:05] Jeff: I don't wanna bog our conversation down with, with those granular details, but just

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[00:08:18] Will: So, anything you wanna say, just go ahead and say

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[00:08:34] Greg: Right. I like Beastie Boys love

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[00:08:37] Jeff: My parents hated them, partly just cuz they had beast in the, that were, you know, my parents were very religious. Or had been raised very religion and anything that says identifies as a beast. Oh, is a, is a, you know, that takes 'em to revelations, right? Oh, beast. You know, go ahead.

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[00:08:58] Greg: That is that your parents was religion. You see your mom was spiritual and religion. Well,

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[00:09:21] Jeff: And I've pieced all that together now. So

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[00:09:43] Jeff: it's always there.

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[00:09:49] Will: Well, you know, what's crazy is that people, sometimes they say, you know, they say, okay, well I don't believe in this and I don't believe in God, or I don't believe in that, and certain things, right?

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[00:10:17] Will: It doesn't make sense that you can believe in all these other things. You know, the way the mind thinks and everything like that, but yet you can't believe in, in

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[00:10:32] Jeff: Religion. Religion is part of the problem. Yes. The vast, very soon, the vast majority of our world identifies as a religion or, or as a particular faith, rather than finding, finding their own spiritual relationship. Yes. With a higher power. Yes. And then manifesting that. However, if that means you go to church and you share it, then, then that's fine.

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[00:11:14] Greg: everywhere.

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[00:11:24] Jeff: And, and here's the problem, I, I think the masses, instead of putting in that effort to find themselves and, and start that spiritual journey on their own between them and a higher power, whatever you, whatever you define that higher, higher power to be.

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[00:11:54] Jeff: They need you to be strict. And it's, you know, it's rules, rules, rules. Gotta do this, gotta do that. When you find spiritual faith, you don't have to live by rule, you don't, you live, now you, if you're always doing the right thing and if you're always processing, you know what's going on and, and you're, you're not making decisions based out of your head, but you're making every decision based outta your heart.

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[00:12:23] Will: Yeah. I think a lot of things are interpretation too, because you gotta think like this, you can get a, you can read something right?

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[00:12:46] Will: He said he's reading the Bible. And it you be like, oh man, this has something to do with me. They talking about me right now. You know what I'm saying? And somebody else is saying, Hey, they talking about my life. Your, your life are talking about, you have two different things going on in life, but yet every person in there, or just about everybody can relate to the situation cuz it's being interpreted in the way that they can understand it, that works for their life.

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[00:13:07] Greg: what though? And that's, that's, you bring up a very, very important and interesting point. See, God made us to be for one purpose for him, really, truly. So you can interpret it a different way, but it, we, that's how we all connect. A message can connect to you, can connect, can you to connect. That's that instant connection.

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[00:13:48] Jeff: message. But we, we take some, we take those things and we twist and you know, and, and now you look at social media today and the impact, and you look at AI and the fear now you just open the newspaper or, or scan the headlines.

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[00:14:22] Jeff: It, it just ha it's a message that's most if you, if it takes Jesus to find the message, if it takes, you know, Buddha, you know, whatever. As, as long as you get to that, that place of understanding, I, I think that's important. But to interpret and, and I think we're all of the Christian faith. Jesus simplified it very, they, they tried to trick him up and they tried to challenge, and I don't know the Bible.

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[00:14:57] Jeff: If you love God and you love your neighbors, that's it. That, that is, that is Christianity. So if you are in a Christian faith that hates L G B T T Q or hates you know, other countries or other faiths, that's not what Jesus said. Jesus said, there's only two commandments. If you love God and you love your neighbors, then there is no hate in your heart.

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[00:15:39] Jeff: What are, what is the most important commandment? And he said, love God. Love your neighbors. If you're loving your neighbors, there's no reason for you to be hoarding guns and you're not living by faith. That's true. Because why? If you're living by faith, you don't need that gun. If you're loving your neighbor, you don't need to be ready to put six in somebody at the drop of a hat.

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[00:16:01] Will: like this. I, I, on some level, I, I completely agree with you what you were saying before, but it's a saying that you don't need to have, you know, a gun because you don't for less love, or it is less love for your neighbor if you have one. I don't think that's the reality. I think the thing is, is that the message is like this, like if we said it's interpretation, so for one person, they're hearing the message this way and they're doing, and they're, they're going by it, but other people aren't.

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[00:16:29] Jeff: gonna be levels of, of that faith so that the lower level of faith is still grabbing on to, Hey, I gotta defend myself.

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[00:16:38] Jeff: I think, well, you know, my, have my house just got shot up on Easter, you know that.

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[00:16:45] Will: never shot a gun. You trying to get your, I've never shot a kind of hay on, no, not, I'm not, I ain't trying to do that. Like I'm saying, I live in faith, but see, my brother, my brother, a few years back was shot and killed inside his house, you know, I'm sorry.

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[00:17:18] Will: Yeah. I wanna be able to answer that door and know for a fact that, hey, there's a. You know, a chance, a 50% chance that I'm gonna, I'm gonna still be living when the situation ends. You know, if somebody comes in the house and kicks down my door and they come in with a gun, I want to have a chance to be able to grab mine or be able to defend myself in a way that I could stop whatever's about to happen, happen.

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[00:17:49] Jeff: absolutely, and, and I, I wasn't trying to tr trying to judge on that at all, because you're right, it's all where you're at on your own journey of spiritual faith.

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[00:18:24] Jeff: But when you can get to a point where you're living of that faith, you don't feel the need to. And like I said, my house just got shot up four or five days ago. I'm not changing my seat. It was right above where I sit lit. I, I'll show you when, when we go back later today. And I made it very, very known to the, the people that I have a suspicion about and, and to the authorities when it was reported.

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[00:18:56] Greg: Was you thinking that they was intended to shoot your house up?

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[00:19:12] Will: I think. Like, so like having, having and Willie

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[00:19:33] Jeff: But that's a perspective I don't have. And, and so I can't share that now. I'm gonna learn that perspective. Yeah, for sure. By getting to know you better and understanding your journey and, and how that's impacted you. And that's important to me. Yeah. And that's why I

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[00:19:51] Will: And I get that. I just want to have

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[00:19:59] Will: You know, so I think, I feel like, I feel like, you know, when we talk about like having, you know, weaponry or having guns or anything like that, I think there is a se, there is a sense of.

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[00:20:22] Will: Like, somebody's gonna judge me and say, Hey, you know what, like we need to have this because what if Marshall Law comes into play and we need to defend ourselves and stuff like that, you know? And that's, and that, and that's very true. That could happen some point in life. You know, we couldn't, we never expected to live out through a situation where we would have covid and have people wearing masks.

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[00:20:57] Will: I don't think, I don't, in my, I don't think in the next 10 years we're gonna have a situation that like goes like that. But I can't predict the future. But at the same time, if that's the case, then why is it so accessible for children to be able to get that in their hand though? That's the, that's the problem I have.

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[00:21:30] Will: It just doesn't make sense to me, to me that that's the responsibility of the owner of the weapon. It's like your responsibility is to, to make sure nobody else can get access to this and if it they do that you reported immediately so that it's known that it's out there. You get what I'm saying? Right.

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[00:21:47] Jeff: difference. You're living on faith of people that they're all gonna do the right thing. That that's right. And, and, and when you start living in that philosophy, man, life's gonna spiral. Yeah. Because the people aren't, people aren't gonna make the right decisions. They not

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[00:22:03] Greg: But,

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[00:22:09] Greg: You know, I, I, I think that it should, it is not a day. It's not a day. See, you know, nothing has ever been moved by the masses

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[00:22:24] Jeff: In the wrong way. Always in the, the masses are always wrong. Always. Yes. If you're going with the masses, you're, you're going in the wrong direction

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[00:22:39] Greg: Lemme give an example. Okay, Jeff and, and Will. If we wanted to really, truly, truly make a difference, this is what I think this station is gonna do, is make a difference. I say, if you got three people, the three people's in this room, if we say, Hey, you know what thing? We gonna take these three people and we're gonna host a meeting.

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[00:23:20] Greg: You know what a good award would do to get people involved with you? Say, Hey man, you're going to qualify for a grant to fix your house up. Come on man. People going need the place to live all the time. If you be a part of this and you do this and you do that,

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[00:23:52] Jeff: They sure do. And put 'em against each other and put '

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[00:23:59] Jeff: chaos.

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[00:24:17] Jeff: Now you've got the poor jealous of the poor next door. So they're fighting. And you got the rich jealous of their, you know, and you see that with all of our celebrity gossip and bullshit all the time. They're all fighting, you know, and, and what was just us versus them is now us versus everybody, you know?

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[00:24:35] Will: world, in the world, in the way I live. I grew up, you know, because I grew up in city of Chicago, so the way I grew up, it was always that way to me. Like it never seemed any different. It was always the poor against the poor because like, it was like, it was the haves against the have-nots.

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[00:25:10] Will: I mean, if anybody's familiar with Chicago area mm-hmm. That was the Inglewood area. Mm-hmm. One of probably the worst areas you can live in. And, and the people who lived there probably won't say that, you know, being but like anybody else who heard, who watched the news or anything like that would say, Hey, yeah, Inglewood is like a really tough area to, to grow up in.

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[00:25:44] Jeff: of these, that's the biggest problem in our world is the, the lack of opportunity or the lack of the, the instillment into the, the younger generations that you don't need to wait for the opportunity to come to you.

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[00:25:55] Will: already in you. You just got grind it truth. It's already in. You preach on man with the preach on he, he delivering Easter eggs right now. I'm telling you. No, I'm telling you. It's, it's in you. It's it's in you, man. It's, the thing is, this is one thing I do like about social media and I'm not gonna say I like everything about social media, but one thing I do like is because it can take the lowest of the loaves and show them that there's opportunity outside of the everyday life that they're living.

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[00:26:38] Will: You've seen things that people getting robbed and stuff on social media platforms. But you also see a lot of the, of the opposite. I see more of a, the positive side than do I see, than I see the negative as I used to, like in life. It was a lot of negative. I seen where I grew up at, it was a lot of the negativity that goes on.

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[00:27:11] Greg: Yeah. You know, just presenting a opportunity for the opportunity. Yeah. You, that's a good way to put it. Yeah. You know, it's just like this man, and

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[00:27:28] Jeff: Is that truth?

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[00:27:41] Jeff: would be amazing, Greg.

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[00:27:46] Jeff: would hear, but the lives you would touch.

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[00:28:04] Jeff: There's no

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[00:28:13] Jeff: it out of. And that's our job, as in our generation, is to instill that downward mm-hmm. On them. And so I I agree wholeheartedly with them.

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[00:28:20] Will: and say who's listening to 'em? That's the, that's the thing too. That's the other thing. You're right. Like they have ideas, they have these concerns, general concerns, and no one's listening. The, the thing

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[00:28:37] Jeff: Truth true. And next thing you know, now they're going down the bad, they're, they're going down that other path because they were never given that opportunity to be heard by somebody who actually cared.

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[00:28:53] Will: I think I like the way, the only thing I do like about what's happening now, nowadays is that the younger generation is stepping up more and saying things that needed to be said years ago that people were too afraid to say and afraid to do, and then making changes that like we didn't have before.

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[00:29:34] Will: And they just went on with their lives and not got involved in a lot of things that are way deeper and the younger generation are saying, Hey, you know what? We wanna be able to have, you know, lesbian, gay people, whoever the case may be, run for office or be in the military or do these type of things that, well, at first we were holding people back from growing in life.

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[00:30:02] Greg: what though? I, I, I, I, this is my opinion, I think that people would, who on the, in they community and who they are, I'm not knocking who they are, but I think that a lot of people choose to go that direction because it's easy.

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[00:30:22] Greg: answer to it. And they feel it gives them more opportunity. You see what I'm saying? So I think that if you shine the light on opportunity, like coming in here, man, come in here and speak. What, what you got, shorty? What you been thinking about?

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[00:30:46] Jeff: Right? What do you, and, and frame it completely positively, positive so that they walk away, they gotta a link to that forever. They can shit. Yes. And, and then they live that it wasn't just a conversation.

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[00:31:05] Greg: That's the part that's, that's the, that's the, the whole love. That's, that's the connection. The connection that we searching for.

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[00:31:38] Greg: You know what I'm saying? Mm-hmm. So, and if so, and it makes sense to him, it will become taller than a giant. But if it doesn't,

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[00:31:57] Jeff: That's real.

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[00:32:19] Greg: But since you came and, and got on a microphone today, your responsibility is higher. Yeah. What is required of you is higher than anyone else's. That didn't come on the mic.

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[00:32:35] Jeff: Well, let me, let me finish that.

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[00:32:55] Jeff: You know, this was in the middle of the night. We were, we were rotting kids. Kids huge Beastie Boys fan. I ended up with two tickets, you know, I went down to Specs music and got my own tickets, you know couldn't, couldn't wait for the day to come. Never really thought about how I was gonna get there.

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[00:33:34] Jeff: And I get there and I realize I got no money. Like, I'm thirsty. I'm hungry.

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[00:33:44] Jeff: I, I had no money in my pocket. Not, not a penny. And I don't, don't think I'd even thought about it. Now I'm, I'm skipping ahead to the story. I'm, you know, I, well, let, let me not we'll get, we'll get to that in, in a little bit cuz there's, there's a reason I got to that point and I didn't realize, you know but anyway, so I'm over in St.

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[00:34:13] Jeff: I'd, if I had to walk, I could walk it in 11 hours. That was, that was my plan. And I'd spent, you know, what few dollars I had on, on the bus to get over there and had one extra ticket in my pocket. So now at this point, I want a t-shirt, you know, I don't want to go to a concert without a t-shirt. And I'd never even been to a concert before.

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[00:34:46] Jeff: So I had this extra ticket go up to the the t-shirt guy. I ended up working a trade with him for a t-shirt and a joint. Now, I've never smoked weed. I didn't even know what a joint was. And I ended up trading that for liquid, for a drink. I traded that with a, a vendor. I was like, Hey, I don't know what this is, but I'll take a coke.

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[00:35:26] Jeff: So it, you know, just natural crossing up paths. Anyway, great concert Get Out and I think it's 11, 11 30 now. My parents have no idea. I didn't, I never came home from school. They didn't know I wasn't at school. In the first place. Now I'm I, to this day, I don't, you know, I don't know if they got their phones blown up.

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[00:36:04] Jeff: Anyway, I flagged down a cab, I gave 'em my address. I had no idea how I was gonna pay for it. I knew my parents were gonna be pissed. We got there and, and, and they were my dad paid that taxi bill, but boy did I get in some trouble. Now, that was leading into the summer of 87 and I was still, I I, I turned 14 now in the backside of that summer, in late August, that got me thrown away back to Michigan.

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[00:36:40] Greg: we just want the real, the real, because you know what, that's all I am is real.

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[00:36:55] Jeff: My life is an open book and it's, it's gonna be a much more open book, you know, that I, I envision we'll probably have several conversations like this.

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[00:37:13] Greg: Yeah. At 13

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[00:37:22] Jeff: So the first couple weeks there, I learned their sleeping patterns learned when they're going down, you know? Mm-hmm. They're, they're elderly at this time there. I think they were in their sixties or so. And they had a very regular routine schedule. Mm-hmm. And so they're going down every night and every night I'm, I'm popping grandpa's car and, and going and picking up two cousins and away we go.

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[00:38:09] Jeff: All summer long. One, one night we put it in a ditch and the three of us, it was two 13 year olds and a and a 15 year old somehow got that sucker out of the ditch. I have no idea to this day how we did that, but we got it parked back. And, and grandpa never knew anything, never knew anything. But those are two, you know, that was just a one summer of my childhood growing up.

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[00:38:54] Jeff: I barely graduated the, my senior year I had to do summer school, you know, I walked with my class, but I had to do summer school to pick up another couple credits just to be able to qualify to actually get my real diploma. And in, in that summer school, one of, one of the classes was a, I don't remember what the actual class was, but I remember we had Macintosh computers and I be, I fell in love with, with the computers back then, and it got to the point where class would get over, school would get over, and this was night school.

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[00:39:37] Jeff: I I, I did that all summer long for that, you know, but I learned a lot on computers and now, you know, it, it fed into eventually my it career that, that's been very successful.

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[00:40:01] Jeff: It took a while to, to, to learn a lot of that. So I barely, I, I cheated to graduate high school by the time I graduate. You know, I, I graduated in June and I had my, my child in August of that year or my first child. So at, you know, it's not like I'm heading off to college with, with my resume. Mm-hmm.

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[00:40:37] Jeff: The only time he ever took off was for summer vacations. We'd go up for two weeks, summer vacation, and I'm sure he took a few days off with mom here and there. That I, I don't recall, but he's seven days a week, always said. Now he ran his own construction company. He was a block mason concrete. And that,

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[00:40:57] Jeff: One of, I have a tremendously high work ethic. And, and I attribute a hundred percent of that to my dad. And, and if you just look at the, the, the dna, knowing that his dad and his dad's dad and his dad's dad, and I've, I've traced that line all the way back to the 14 hundreds in England, all farmers.

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[00:41:32] Jeff: Now they're trying to fit in a day off, you know, a lot, a lot of 'em live by the Bible principles and they want to observe a Sabbath and, you know, so the, and I think that was the, the family that I grew up in. Except for when my dad shunned the religion and ran away to Florida. He didn't care about that Sabbath.

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[00:41:49] Will: and sisters do you have?

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[00:42:01] Will: though.

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[00:42:10] Jeff: the, the desire for that work ethic is, is instilled in all of them, but I don't think any of them got the glimpse of what my father instilled in me.

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[00:42:35] Jeff: It's, you know, not quite as well as my dad. My dad's one of the fastest block layers I've ever seen. But I could pour concrete. I, you know, I could do all that stuff by 17. I was, I was a fully skilled mason

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[00:43:02] Greg: See now this is the deal. You took it on a high energy thing to be able to just achieve whatever you, you put your mind to. Now you got other brothers and sisters. Now that same effort didn't go all the way to every last one of them, but it's it's in you though. Absolutely. It's in them. Yep. They just don't they just don't recognize it.

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[00:43:34] Jeff: the same my sisters towards that light. Yep. Both my sisters in particular are, are two of the most loving, fascinating human beings I know. And, and they've, they've, I don't wanna say struggle, but they've really found it difficult in life to find their place in, in, in, to be able to utilize, you know, the things that I know and I see inside of them.

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[00:44:18] Jeff: And.

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[00:44:44] Greg: And you didn't take no time to believe, not believe you said, oh man, this happened, bro, this happened. And so you went all again, like you did all forward into it and believed that it happened. And so now the change is, is of fear has dropped to the wayside. Yeah. All is is dropping to the wayside. All no

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[00:45:05] Jeff: And, and we'll, we'll get into that. Willie and I talked a little bit about that on the way here. And I, I think I've got some profound experiences I think that, that he said in particular that, that you would, you would like to exchange on get through the, the education and the, the upbringing real quick.

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[00:45:35] Jeff: Got the opportunity to Walmart distribution center was opening up, you know, and this was back in the day when, when they only had 1415 of 'em around the country. And suddenly here at Brooksville, Florida is getting a wa you know, it was a big deal, you know, 1.2 million square feet and gonna, you know, hundreds and hundreds and I might have even been thousands of jobs.

[: 00:45:52

[00:46:15] Jeff: I became supervisor of unloading and then went to supervisor of like, the, the forklift drivers, you know, worked my way up into, into management pretty quickly. Even though I was a young kid, obviously I had talents and I had skills that I had always ignored because I was too off the rails to tap into 'em.

[: 00:46:30

[00:46:52] Jeff: Yeah. Because they'd all be different. You know, they'd all be different people right now for sure. But that's, that's living in regret, and I don't do that anymore. And, and, and we'll, we'll get to that in a little bit. And this Yeah, I see you smiling. I like what

[: 00:47:04

[00:47:07] Will: Like I got something in store for you guys.

[: 00:47:10

[00:47:28] Jeff: And that, that career kind of fell apart. But it led into the opportunity. Now I'm in my young twenties, 23, and at this point I'm a single dad. You know, my my partner and I had, or my wife and I had, had gotten a divorce. I still had the kids. So I'm, I'm living that side of the, the world. I'm a single dad, and now I just became unemployed.

[: 00:47:49

[00:48:06] Jeff: They already had a single mom's program, but at this point, we're talking 19 96, 97, and single dads were becoming a little more prevalent in society. And I tapped into their first single dad's program, which helped me financially, you know, get three semesters of college under. I did very well in college.

[: 00:48:24

[00:48:45] Jeff: There were several classes in school that I, my chemistry teacher let me completely quit, go into his office every day, kick my feet up, read the paper, walk across the street to the Circle K, and get him a coffee while I was getting me some, you know, that's what I did for 50 minutes every day. My Spanish teacher did the same thing.

[: 00:49:01

[00:49:18] Jeff: You know, I, I just didn't want to, I, I couldn't, when I hit something that was too challenging that I knew I was gonna struggle with, I, I just, I wouldn't do it. So that I'm in college now, but things are starting to click now. I like trigonometry, geometry, all this stuff that I had no idea about, that I would've never thought that I could.

[: 00:49:35

[00:49:53] Jeff: And three times they're going around the room because the first speech class, it's always, Hey, introduce yourself and tell us two interesting, or three interesting. You know, I could not do that. I, I, it, as it was approaching me three times, I, I couldn't race to the drop ad line fast enough to drop that shit and, and move on cuz I wanted no part of it.

[: 00:50:12

[00:50:30] Jeff: It wasn't until I let go of my plan for life. Oh. And yeah.

[: 00:50:36

[00:50:51] Will: I was like, I'm gonna go say, you know, man, great job. You know, because like, I feel like, and when you in karaoke or something like that, or you doing an anything that's great, people sometimes need encouragement, you know what I'm saying? To continue going. He hadn't, he hadn't really come out like that.

[: 00:51:05

[00:51:20] Will: Like, I didn't. For a long time. I never sung before, I never sung in public like this before. So like, it made him feel good that people were coming to him and saying, Hey man, good job. We like what you're doing. You know? So I mean, that's how we end up meeting and being coming like really cool. But I

[: 00:51:34

[00:51:42] Jeff: Well, I, I knows I've only scratched the surface. That's,

[: 00:51:45

[00:52:09] Greg: Your journey is so important to a lot of people cuz they feel that same way

[: 00:52:15

[00:52:28] Jeff: My mom put me on a journey and, and maybe now's an opportunity to skip ahead. You know, I, I think I ended with a college. I quit college. I landed into a call center job. And it, by this point, fast forward, you know, since I had been hopping the white ceiling in school to learn the max. You know, I, I owned my own Packard Bell and, and I, I became pretty proficient on early Windows and Windows 95, and, you know, I, I was installing Windows 95 for friends.

[: 00:52:55

[00:53:18] Jeff: And I, I was struggling with figuring out how to get, get the opportunity to even speak it. And, and it's not like I came to you guys, you know, Willie came to me and said, Hey, come, come out and talk to me. So anyway, I I, I land in a call center, job it call center. I'm instantly, I'm really good at that.

[: 00:53:36

[00:53:53] Jeff: It just, people are just weird. Or, or maybe I've always been the weird one and, and everybody else is, you know, I've just never been much of a people person. That's not to say I've been a, a loner. I've, I've been very successful in my business career because somehow, you know, it's like a Jacqueline Hyde.

[: 00:54:10

[00:54:30] Jeff: And that's probably one of the biggest challenges I've had in this journey is figuring out how to, because you turn people off a lot of times, and I'm sure, hopefully I haven't turned any listeners off by dropping a some here and there. Well, at some point, you know, my, my family could be listened to this at some point, and, and I wouldn't be surprised if they get offended at, at some of the, you know, the words that have

[: 00:54:49

[00:54:49] Will: The thing is, is that like, that's the thing about a podcast of speaking openly or freely like people are. So it's gonna always be somebody who doesn't like what you do. You know, no matter what you say, you say that's, you can say, I love this. I love this. And say love, love, love everything. And everybody, like, this guy loves everything.

[: 00:55:03

[00:55:09] Jeff: Yep. No, I, I hear you. So I land in this this call center job that works my way up into the Big Five and by the Big five at the time. I mean the accounting firms.

[: 00:55:18

[00:55:39] Jeff: In it next door at Pricewaterhouse Coopers the other, or one of the other big accounting firms. And that started a, a very, very successful career of mine. You know, I spent 14 years at pwc. I, I, Pricewaterhouse Coopers made me as much of the person that I am now as just about anything outside of the discovery of faith.

[: 00:56:00

[00:56:27] Jeff: And, and, and I look back on him, you know, and, and thank, thank God he was, he had his hand on those situations and, and helped to, to manage through 'em, because I could've been gone a long

[: 00:56:36

[00:56:41] Will: that was just more recently you talking about like in the past though.

[: 00:56:44

[00:56:45] Greg: though, in the past, also kind of like paying forward. The future guy got his hand over you. Yeah. Well, and that's

[: 00:56:52

[00:57:04] Jeff: That's not. Totaling cars. That's just, you know, that's a minor fender bender. I totaled a car and I got, you know, two other accidents, got broadsided, you know, whatever the, a statistically the average American has three to four car accidents in their lifetime through 2010, or from 2010 through 2014, I totaled, totaled nine vehicles, and I walked away from every single one of 'em without a scratch, except for coincidentally one of them in which my partner and I to this day will, will say, we got, you know, we got drugged.

[: 00:57:42

[00:58:00] Jeff: I mean, we, we could barely make it to the car. I remember that part of it. Aren't you was drugged. The keys were in my pocket. I had a leather jacket on and the keys were in my pocket, and we went to sleep and four hours later we woke up to flames around the entire, our car was on fire. And I, I remember opening her door because we were both panicked at this point.

[: 00:58:21

[00:58:37] Jeff: Third degree burns up and down my, my right leg from, from that incident. But of those, and that car, it exploded. As soon as I caught on fire and got about, I don't know, 5, 5, 10 steps away from it, boom. It was like a movie. And there, there's pictures and, you know, insurance claims all, everything I say, there's, there's fucking nightmare, man.

[: 00:58:58

[00:59:04] Will: making any of this. When you on this channel, we on this station, we believe what you're saying, man, we listening to everything you saying, this is your story, so you only you gonna tell it the way it actually happened, you know?

[: 00:59:14

[00:59:46] Jeff: Had we been sitting in that car 10 seconds later when it exploded. I mean, we would've been killed instantly. And then, and there's no, no debating that. My mom always said, because it seems like every time I totaled one of the vehicles, it was always my parents that had to come pick me up, even though I'm a grown ass man at this point.

[: 01:00:04

[01:00:20] Jeff: I wish I could have this conversation with her now, cuz she knows. She always knew that was just that one period. It's not like I don't have other car accidents now. I haven't had any since, you know, since I, I had a moment of realization in 2014 that that something was wrong and went, I've never had another accident since.

[: 01:00:41

[01:00:48] Greg: that God was with you all the

[: 01:00:49

[01:01:01] Jeff: Like, how many times are you gonna do this, Jeff? You went, you

[: 01:01:03

[01:01:10] Jeff: That was just one of mine. I've, I've hit brick walls, I've hit trees, I've hit signs, I've hit every, but every one of 'em are head on, usually at a high speed,

[: 01:01:17

[01:01:19] Greg: But they had to cut us out the car so, Your journey and my journey got some of the same

[: 01:01:28

[01:01:41] Will: And they look at it and say, well, God couldn't have been with me with this because look at what happened to me. And that was always my perspective. They only see the one side of that situation. They see the, like the left side of that, Hey, this is the bad that happened, blah, blah, blah. But the right side of that was saying, Hey, you walked away from this, who got you out of this?

[: 01:01:58

[01:02:18] Will: But God pulled you through it and that's the time. That's what people have to see and acknowledge as well, is that, hey, the greater part of that is you are able to walk outta this alive. You know? I think

[: 01:02:27

[01:02:42] Greg: But God did see, God knew your heart though. Yeah. Cause he looked at it as luck. He looked at it as luck, you see? And God already said, oh man, you know, you know, walk away. But see, your mom knew. She did. Your mom always knew that God had his hand on you and that you was gonna do something special, not only for you, but for everybody else to be able to benefit from your journey.

[: 01:03:09

[01:03:24] Jeff: that was a form of prayer, you know, that was you speaking to God, like, you know, is this how it's gonna end?

[: 01:03:30

[01:03:33] Greg: I knew it wouldn't go end like that. Right. I knew if anything could've happened, I could've just moved my arms and I would've just made the car stretch. And I, I had that month. Faith.

[: 01:03:44

[01:03:47] Greg: purpose

[: 01:03:48

[01:03:50] Jeff: I live my life without a purpose. My whole purpose since I was a, a teenager was to raise children and make money to raise children and, and try to, try to do the best job I could. And I, I've raised fantastic kids. I, I, I don't wanna do the math in my head real quick, but it's somewhere around 130 some odd years of parenting.

[: 01:04:04

[01:04:41] Will: Yeah. Well, you know, his purpose, he said he never really had a purpose. He may have had a purpose the whole entire time and not realized what he had that purpose. That's real. So like, for example, he said, you know, I was take care of my kids. I was trying to get them on the right path, put them in the right direction.

[: 01:04:56

[01:05:15] Will: And then now helping his kids to understand things now to help other people amongst life. So like his journey is just, is to help property. W his purpose is to help save people, get people out the, out of the negativity that he was going through and tell by telling his story. You get what I'm saying? Yeah.

[: 01:05:30

[01:05:31] Greg: yourself inside out. See, you realize this at a later age. What are you trying? Maybe that they, they're having the same doubt they're having the same Process, they probably be going through the same thing and you already got the answer for 'em, and you just trying to give them the answer, like you said, cheat.

[: 01:05:51

[01:06:16] Jeff: And that's unfortunately, that's, that's part of life. And I, I'd look back and I thank God that they were always there and they never, they never said nope, because they, they probably should have with as much as we butted heads and went in opposite directions, but that's not who my mom was. So anyway, fast forward up to the pandemic and, and that changed everybody's lives.

[: 01:06:35

[01:07:01] Jeff: You know, we find my majority of my family's on one side, and I don't wanna say I'm on the other side, but if there's a side that, that involves heavy judgment, Or, or that criticality of, of, you know, just, I, I don't, I wanna say hate because I don't wanna go that far, but just that, that you can't do that.

[: 01:07:22

[01:07:45] Jeff: I don't, I'd seen my parents one time since I moved up here. They were at a family reunion in Michigan that we were able to go up and spend a couple of days with 'em at. So that was the last time I got to see my mom. That would've been summer of 20. And then in early 21, I'm, I'm driving to work at this point, my employer's over in Champaign Urban, and I'm in Bloomington.

[: 01:08:07

[01:08:26] Jeff: And looking back retrospectively, that's, it's, it's a quality that I think is actually pretty good. And has allowed me to not necessarily follow the masses, because usually the masses, they, they. That's how they get together is in the groups of judgment. And then they, they form a, you know, a group of judgment becomes a tribe of judgment.

[: 01:08:45

[01:08:52] Will: thing is, is that when people get to groups like that, they all are in groups, in, in, in regards to a one particular aspect of what they're judging. But if you actually break down more situations with them, there's a lot of things that they don't agree on as well.

[: 01:09:07

[01:09:11] Jeff: common commonality. Exactly. And, and, yeah. Yeah. So this really, I don't, I don't wanna get on that, that tangent. That's a conversation for another time. But, so anyway, we don't have a great relationship, is what I'm saying. I talked to my mom, she calls me, it's probably March or April of 2021.

[: 01:09:29

[01:09:46] Jeff: I've been deathly afraid of, of a microphone my entire life. No karaoke, no singing, no speech, no nothing. Now at Walmart and at pwc, I kind of came out of those shells a little bit in that with team environments, sometimes you had to communicate, you know, sometimes I had to give presentations at PWC to like a group of, we're in a training and there's 20, 25 people there and, and you know, you work, you're at a workshop and you spend three days, and the, the cul, you know, the culmination of the three days is you now you'd have a little presentation or whatever.

[: 01:10:16

[01:10:32] Jeff: She must

[: 01:10:33

[01:10:37] Jeff: the, so the story behind it. And, and there's a YouTube link that that I can share with her. You guys can, you can integrate it into the pie, what I was telling you about. Oh, fast forward in a little bit, but there's a link to what I'm about to describe that you can go back and watch.

[: 01:10:49

[01:11:08] Jeff: And it was easy to make that pro. I went to Easy Path. Oh, oh, sure. I promise you Mom, someday I'll, I'll sing to you. But now I'm sitting here thinking I got. I got years, you're not looking ahead. I just made a promise and I, I'll, I'll, I know I'll fulfill it with her someday I'll get, even if it's just me, you know, and her in a rocking chair or something, I'll figure out how to sing to her.

[: 01:11:28

[01:11:51] Jeff: I mean, it, it really wrecked me and it sent me into a, a period of self-reflection. So one of my sons at the time is really, really struggling with, with, you know, grandma's passing. And so I reached out and got him some therapy. That's not something that is common in my family. We don't, we don't go to therapists and, you know, we just, it's, it's like

[: 01:12:19

[01:12:20] Greg: Yeah. Don't do really lot of black family don't do

[: 01:12:23

[01:12:38] Jeff: And my parents or yeah, my parents certainly never have, but. My siblings, I don't, I don't know where they're at, but I, I know at, at the time we were all, you know, pretty close to, I don't think there was much psychiatric or, or, you know, psychological or any kind of mental health care in our lives. My son needed it, though.

[: 01:12:57

[01:13:16] Jeff: It's for him and the therapist. I, I wanted to spend that first session with his therapist to explain kind of his life context. And so she had a better understanding of him and hopefully could get him outta his shell to talk about it. And by the end of that 45 minutes, she had, you know, without diagnosing me, told me, you, you are off the rails, adhd, you need to go talk to your doctor.

[: 01:13:37

[01:14:10] Will: It's your, it was the perception you had. That's what it was.

[: 01:14:13

[01:14:36] Jeff: That, that's been gone since July of last year. It was a very short term thing. And that, I think that's an important message for the listeners to hear is that when you do find yourself on that journey and somebody does tell you you have something and you need to take, you know, do your own homework first, you, you need to understand what it is that, that they're trying to tell you that you have.

[: 01:14:58

[01:15:19] Jeff: I'm now discovering, you know, I, I still reflect back on that. I'm able to step up on stage and sing. Oh, I, I don't, I didn't even got into that. So my mom passed. She had two memorials cuz she was a very loved woman. She had one in Florida and one in Michigan. I tried to honor her promise and sing to her at her Florida Memorial.

[: 01:15:40

[01:15:57] Jeff: So I get through October and, and or get to the memorial in October. And, and I get up on stage and I introduce myself to my family, and there's no way any of you ever could have saw me standing here. And I explained the story that I just explained to you guys, and I sang her a song. And what, what song did you sing?

[: 01:16:17

[01:16:35] Jeff: I was pretty big Garth fan. And we got to share that. And, and that's always been a very special song to her. Like in particular, I, I can remember that song coming on at times where she just tears, you know, so it resonated with her in a, in a big way. And that was the song she asked for. And that was the song I sang to her.

[: 01:16:51

[01:16:57] Greg: But, but as you were singing it right now, what you were singing to her, how would you sing that song to her?

[: 01:17:04

[01:17:10] Jeff: Okay. But looking back on the memory of the dance we shared beneath the Stars, above 4:00 AM a moment all the world was Right. How could I have known that you'd ever see goodbye? And I, I'm glad I did. We all would end the way. It all would go. Our lives are better. Left to chance. I could have missed the pain, but I'd have had to miss the dance.

[: 01:18:04

[01:18:06] Will: Yeah. Good.

[: 01:18:06

[01:18:24] Jeff: haven't broke it out at karaoke because I'm, I don't know if I'll make it

[: 01:18:27

[01:18:27] Will: It's a, it's a rough, it's a rough sound to sing. I can, I can understand cause it's an emotional sound to sing. But man, like when you, you do amazing job at it, man. Like what you just did here on the radio, man, I felt that. Yeah, me too. Thank you.

[: 01:18:42

[01:18:52] Jeff: It was not who I was, it was not. So God knew, God knew she had a short amount of time, and, and God instilled upon her to instill that into me. The opportunity for the opportunity, going back on our con, you know, mom gave me the opportunity for the opportunity and, and I grasped onto that opportunity from a promise or for a promise or to honor that promise, and it set me on a completely different path.

[: 01:19:19

[01:19:42] Jeff: So he had only been playing six months, I think by the time I bought mine. And I, again, I never even touched his, I think I strummed around. I didn't know any chords or anything. I would just like, Hmm, boy, I like making outward noise now. Whereas before, I've always been very internalized and, and reserved.

[: 01:19:57

[01:20:16] Jeff: So I picked up that guitar and I started playing it and I realized right away, you know, I wasn't good, but I, I could hear, you know, I, I could learn the positioning of where to put my fingers to make a chord, and then I could, and I just started practicing transitioning between chords that, that sounded right.

[: 01:20:34

[01:21:06] Jeff: Now at the same time, two of my out, you know, I, I would say closest and, and most beloved cousins up in Michigan are, go through a traumatic experience of their own. One of my favorite and closest cousins is diagnosed with stage three cancer. And, and she's a year and old, a year and a half older than me.

[: 01:21:29

[01:21:53] Jeff: So their, their existence was, you know, win a different path than mine. A lot, lot calmer, I would hope Jenny and Rondell. I don't, I don't wanna hear stories about you guys doing craziness that I did. But I mean, if I was, if I was destroyed in October or September, I, I tell you, I, I was really destroyed when Jenny and Ronell's situations hit.

[: 01:22:15

[01:22:33] Jeff: I don't go to the office. I work outta my basement pretty much all the time. Coincidentally, in, in January of 22 now. So we're just, you know, a little bit over a year from now or ago. There's a need. I live next door to Broman, the, the hospital. And, and that's where I work is for that hospital organization.

[: 01:22:52

[01:23:14] Jeff: So I'm and, and he doesn't know any, even though I don't touch these pieces of equipment, I have to know them very well in order to support what I, what I support. So there's a need for me to go in and train, train him a little bit on the systems. So I, I go in and I've been playing guitar so much.

[: 01:23:33

[01:23:56] Jeff: I, I did not, once I took my eight fingers off the, I don't know how to type my password. I didn't even know what it was. So it, it took me a solid five minutes to get logged into my own machine to try to teach him about this. And I'm embarrassed. I'm, I embarrassed easily. I'm turning red. I'm as red as an apple at this point, and I'm like, I'm sorry.

[: 01:24:16

[01:24:37] Jeff: And anti music since then. And and I explained a little bit of, of my story that why I'm trying to so aggressively learn guitar that I, I, I felt inspired to try to help my cousins who I knew were in need. And, and that was the, that was the fuse that he needed to get re-lit back in him because then he's Tyler's like, man, I have an entire music studio.

[: 01:25:03

[01:25:24] Jeff: That music was what took the, took the backseat. Fast forward a little bit. He, I explained my journey to him and he's like, Hey, come over. Come to find out he only lives a mile from me. Come over. Let's, let's start jamming. You know, let me, let me teach you some of the stuff I've known. You're giving me the motivation to get back into music.

[: 01:25:42

[01:26:01] Jeff: I'd go over to his place for a couple hours at night. And most of the time it was like this. We ended up sitting around talking more than anything and just getting to know each other. Got to know Tyler really well and, and, and really love that man. Come May now what, what we're doing here is, so let me take a step back.

[: 01:26:21

[01:26:48] Jeff: Every definition I have found for the word Carl, c a r l e, is something that I resonate with deeply with. So, and we both worked at Carl, and we met at Carl, and we are both just two regular guys. So we created this moniker because I, I would never do any of this for me. I will never, I I was only interested in doing that for Jenny and Rondell then.

[: 01:27:09

[01:27:28] Jeff: Mm-hmm. Carl, Jenny and Rondell. Mm. And so I created an entire business plan. I have hundreds of web websites registered on, not with just TJ Carl, but with things around that, you know. Yeah. I, I created accounts for all of the, you know, all of the sites that you as a, this is your industry, like the Patons and TJ has all that stuff and it's all just sitting there waiting.

[: 01:27:55

[01:28:19] Jeff: Come up with some sort of event where we can invite family from both sides to participate in, in my journey a little bit, let's sing to you. And there, there are other musicians in my family up in, in Michigan that I was trying to tap into to help out with this. And I'm sure they would have had it came to fruition.

[: 01:28:36

[01:29:04] Jeff: And the entire thing ended just, you know, in May it was over. So now you can imagine, I'm even more de devastated because here I am, I'm at the point where I can actually see the progress, not just in my talents, but in the ability to be able to help my cousins, which is all it was about. I just want, and now that rug just got yanked out to me again because of death.

[: 01:29:28

[01:29:42] Greg: sometimes though people are just here for a season.

[: 01:29:47

[01:29:55] Will: And he already knew it. He knew music. He had a lot of these stuff that you didn't have. You learned to work with him. A lot of

[: 01:30:02

[01:30:04] Will: but you got to talk with him and work with him on these, on these things to, for development of yourself. Yep. And like what Greg is saying is like, you know, could be a season, this is what you needed to then move to the

[: 01:30:14

[01:30:15] Jeff: It, it was, and it propelled me to the next step. And this is where we're, we're about to segue into what I think Greg's part of the conversation where he's gonna, he's gonna get fascinated. So Tyler's dad passes away and, and now Tyler's dad also works at Carl. Okay. And had worked there for 42 years and was very beloved, you know, and, and well known.

[: 01:30:32

[01:30:52] Jeff: He wasn't able to do it. Music was a shared thing between him and his family and his dad. You know, he used to describe, you know, that that's what they did on their weekends as they got together as a family. And did, you know, did Jams and played the banjo and played, you know, that was a part of who they were, just like, it was absolutely not a part of who I was.

[: 01:31:13

[01:31:29] Jeff: So anyway, Now we're in May. And all that positivity that I was building towards in terms of being able to help Jenny and Rondell just came to a complete, fell off the cliff crash and, and I was devastated way more so than in December when the news of, of, you know, Rendell's husband and Jenny's diagnosis.

[: 01:31:48

[01:32:16] Jeff: There has been a, a lane of music in my brain for as long as I can remember, and I could not shut it off if I wanted to. There was no way to get a song out of my head other than replacing it with another song. That's the only way I could change the, you know, I had to turn on, it's a small, small world and I can get rid of whatever's in my brain cuz now that becomes toxic.

[: 01:32:37

[01:32:52] Jeff: Why'd you do this? Why'd you do that? One of, you know, two or three of 'em are, are focused on whatever the current topic or conversation is. Checking the database, looking back here, look, you know, whatever. Just a fast spring and forgot where I was even going. It's all right. You're gonna have to edit this

[: 01:33:07

[01:33:08] Will: No, that's fine. We'll fix it. Oh, oh yeah. So that's, that's, that's nothing. But like, you know what's so crazy though? Like, I'm sorry. You know what's so crazy? That is that when we first started talking about this podcast, like Greg came to me, I was a manager at T-Mobile at the, at the time, and a mutual, like an employee of mine, but somebody who had met Greg had introduced me to Greg and said, Hey, this is somebody you need to meet.

[: 01:33:33

[01:33:50] Will: I, I couldn't never pinpoint this is what I should be doing cause this is what I do the best. Everything I did, it was almost like equally to, at least in my brain, it was equally. But,

[: 01:34:00

[01:34:08] Jeff: I,

[: 01:34:08

[01:34:29] Will: So like, I truly believe that's, that's something that I have instilled in me. But the thing is that Greg himself, when we were putting this together we were gonna try to release something cause we was trying to get something out there. We was like, Hey, we need to get some material out there. We haven't done anything.

[: 01:34:46

[01:34:59] Will: And so we attempted, we were gonna tr try to do that. And I talked to him about it and Greg just emotionally where he was at at that time, he wasn't ready. He wasn't ready for it. So I can I com The reason why I'm segueing into that is because I completely understand, you know, when you know your friend, you know, dad passed away how he felt at that time.

[: 01:35:17

[01:35:33] Will: And this is how we landed to where we're at right now. And like, it's so crazy like to understand like, sometimes you get knocked down, but like if you get past that,

[: 01:35:42

[01:35:44] Will: You would never feel you, you're gonna go backwards. Yeah. You're never gonna see what's gonna, what's coming at the end of that tunnel.

[: 01:35:49

[01:35:56] Greg: And, and, and just like you said that, you know, God has, and, and I put God in everything bro. I don't care. Like some people say, Hey man, I, I listened to r and b rap and I listen to this, this, and this.

[: 01:36:08

[01:36:52] Greg: But all coming together as one, all, all coming together as one man. And you think that's a

[: 01:36:56

[01:37:10] Jeff: And I had tried before, like, I'm so tired of singing this song. How can I get, you know, and literally turning on small world is okay, I'll replace it. That's even better than I, after this stuff went down with Tyler and his dad and music was suddenly now gone from my life. I got rid of my guitar. I didn't get rid of it, but I threw it in the basement.

[: 01:37:29

[01:37:49] Jeff: I always had music. And suddenly music had just betrayed me in ways that I, I couldn't even describe because I was so hellbent on helping Jenny and Rondell and Tyler just landed in front of me and we became very close. And then just as quickly as that happened, it got taken away and I was so angry.

[: 01:38:06

[01:38:24] Jeff: I was like, holy shit, I could do that. I like this. And I became a half mayor. I I, I ran for years.

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[01:38:32] Jeff: I wasn't a track star by any means. I'm, I'm in my thirties at this point.

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[01:38:46] Greg: I could,

[: 01:38:46

[01:38:49] Will: he said, don't put me that water.

[: 01:38:51

[01:39:09] Jeff: And you, as I already explained to you, I traded my bike in for stolen cars at 13. You know, I I, I didn't ride my bike much after that, so I went 20 something years for, you know, without riding a bike. And these knuckleheads at work talked me into it. Cuz at this time I was doing, you know, doing the running thing.

[: 01:39:25

[01:39:53] Will: I thought he gonna say no. I looked at it and I said, no, I could do this without it. He said, no, I took that path. I, I have stood

[: 01:39:59

[01:40:12] Jeff: Cuz we got pretty good, we were pretty quick on the bike, but I hated it. I hated uphill. I hated Pedalling. I hated, I, I don't wanna say hate cuz I don't really hate anything, but I disliked biking in comparison to what I had been doing for years, which is on my feet enjoying sidewalks and dogs barking in cars.

[: 01:40:31

[01:40:49] Jeff: I'd figured out a way to, what am I gonna replace it with? Well, I live right next door to the Constitution Trail in Bloomington and I started putting in hours and hours and hours on the trail every day to replace what I was so pissed off at music for. And during this time, I don't have music to listen to anymore.

[: 01:41:09

[01:41:29] Jeff: I didn't really wanna listen to the news, so I'd stuffed my brain full of information on myself. That that is the first and most important step in the process of finding yourself is looking inward, having somebody tell you, you know, somebody with a authority or, or with the credentials to, to guide you in the right direction as to what you, what you might be afflicted with.

[: 01:41:55

[01:42:18] Jeff: A anyway, it, it, it all started registering and tying together. And then I, I, I'll, I'll never be able to explain exactly what happened, but I can tell you on July 4th, 2022, And the night before, I had just, I had just pulled my family out of the family reunions cuz I wasn't gonna be going up there to help.

[: 01:42:39

[01:43:01] Jeff: And I told her, I told her in that message that I realized that he and I are never gonna be on the same page. And I'm just done, I'm done with it all. Hmm. Done with the family aspect. Yeah, because I don't, I don't know, I woke up, what, woke up on the 4th of July and it was as if there was 180 degree perspective change.

[: 01:43:20

[01:43:41] Jeff: So on the 4th of July, coincidentally Independence Day, I wake up and, and my perspective on life had completely changed. And, and I can only surmise obviously, it was the experience that I had gone through. I found talent that I, I was not familiar with. I manifested that talent. If you look at the Maslow's Hierarchy, pyramid of hierarchy there, there's a, I think there's a lot in that.

[: 01:44:04

[01:44:22] Jeff: I'm still at that 0.0, 0, 0 0 1. You know, I don't deny anything and I don't, but there's no faith, especially look at my life, what just happened, you know, I hear if there's a God, he's drifting a yo-yo down in front of me saying wanna lick, psyche, you know, and pulling it back, you know? And, and I, I was more angry there.

[: 01:44:37

[01:45:00] Jeff: Mm-hmm. We are the same damn person. And because of that bump heads a lot. We, and, and if you apply that down further to mental health, I realize whatever I was afflicted with, so was he. And then the more I looked around and so was she, and so was he, and so was he. And all of my family, you know what, what, what I could observe at the time.

[: 01:45:21

[01:45:29] Will: when you, when you get to an understanding of like, of mental health and what's going on with you, and you can then see the things in other people too. Like over time when you like realize, hey, this happened to me because of this, or this is why I was acting this way, or this is why I couldn't understand or comprehend certain things or aspects of my life.

[: 01:45:49

[01:46:06] Will: It was just, they were going through these mental challenges themselves at this time. So I'm not using mental health as an excuse for everything, but what I'm saying is that you have a bar better, clearer understanding when you accept mental

[: 01:46:18

[01:46:25] Jeff: And, and the first is acceptance of yourself. You, you've, and you can't accept what you don't know. Sure. If you're just letting somebody else give you a word and now you just describe yourself as that word, oh, they say I'm this, well, that's great, but you need to know what that means. Mm-hmm. And, and until you.

[: 01:46:43

[01:47:00] Jeff: I woke up and, and if you guys recall, there was the mass shooting in Chicago later that day. Mm-hmm. And it, again, I I'm on a yo-yo here. I wake up with new eyes. People describe this as I've heard people describe it. Hey, I got a pair of glasses and suddenly I, you know, I had bad eyesight my whole life and I put on glasses and now I have 20, 20 minutes.

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[01:47:31] Will: glasses do make you see though.

[: 01:47:34

[01:47:44] Jeff: Those, those improper perspectives. Absolutely. That's

[: 01:47:47

[01:47:49] Jeff: So that's why I called bullshit on that, that analogy for what I experienced. That's true. What I experienced, I woke up and I'd never had eyes. My eyes were simply a reflection of everybody else's eyes because that's, that's all I ever, I surrounded myself with the opinions and the people and whate whatever I thought.

[: 01:48:06

[01:48:29] Jeff: And, and it, it, it was one of the most incredible moments of my life was, was that aha moment and that awakening. And that not three hours later, there's the mass shooting in Chicago at the at the parade. And just as quickly and as excited as I was, I, I was devastated again. I'm like, is this ever gonna stop ever?

[: 01:48:54

[01:49:15] Jeff: It's everywhere. And, and that, that was the inspiration or the moment where I realized that I, I wanted to go down this path of trying to share my message. And I don't even know really what my message is. Just my story. Yeah. Of, of hope redemption. I, I, I don't know. I think that's what it is. Of the op and, and maybe this is part of my redemption, is, is the need to, to share it with others to provide that hope for, for others.

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[01:50:07] Will: They don't see what the purpose is. But this podcast of being on this podcast is the purpose. The purpose is the purpose

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[01:50:15] Greg: Is the purpose. Yes. You know what I'm saying? Every last one of us in here took a different path to being here. Yeah. But we're all here. Yeah. But we

[: 01:50:23

[01:50:27] Will: Absolutely. That's a hundred percent. See, that's, that's what's the importance of having a platform like this is because of the fact is we can all come from different backgrounds different cultures, ethnicities, and still have these conversations and all, and have a clearer understanding about things in life, whether it be mental health or whether it be about like finances, whether it be about.

[: 01:50:52

[01:51:03] Jeff: commend you guys fully for it. I, like I said, I appreciate it.

[: 01:51:05

[01:51:10] Greg: And, and, and, and plus God know that we need a lot of help. Yeah, we do. And and most definitely your skill set, most definitely is gonna be able to, oh, yeah. I, you know, propel us. I'm yours. I anything you guys want.

[: 01:51:24

[01:51:45] Jeff: Yeah. There's people that specialize in that. You, you can be the one to help because somebody's gotta see the bigger picture. Somebody's gotta be able to piece all these, cuz people who are very granular, they're granular for life and that, that becomes, that's who they are. People like Willie and I, we have a pretty rounded, robust skillset because we have gone down.

[: 01:52:05

[01:52:16] Will: enough, I think I did enough where it feels like, okay, I feel satisfied with what I did with this.

[: 01:52:20

[01:52:36] Will: I'll come back around to it at some point in life. And a lot of times I'll do, like the whole point of me being able to do a podcast. I started off doing music recording. I was doing recording music and making songs and writing songs and stuff like that. And I'm back behind a microphone now, you know, doing some of the stuff that we were doing then, you know what I'm saying?

[: 01:52:53

[01:53:02] Greg: Now that it's, it is time to be on a fast pace Now. You graduated from, from the little Tata driving around with the go-karts to going to the track Indy 500 and going, you know, 200 miles per hour.

[: 01:53:18

[01:53:26] Jeff: Yeah. When you find, when you find your actual purpose. Yes. That's, that's when you get moved into the, the Indy car.

[: 01:53:33

[01:53:40] Greg: Oh yeah. This is gonna be many purposes that people change is gonna be broken and lives are gonna be changed and lives gonna be changed.

[: 01:53:48

[01:54:04] Will: Like this is things that like, that needed to be said out there. And I think that a lot of people out there are gonna take the, the message here and say, Hey, there's, it is never too late. Yeah.

[: 01:54:12

[01:54:21] Jeff: And, and we're probably getting ready to wrap up here soon. I wanna get to the one thing that you and I talked about on the way Sure. On the way here that I think hundred percent that I think Greg wants to hear about it as well. Part of this journey, so that was in July now is, is where we're at there, 4th of July, I had the aha moment.

[: 01:54:39

[01:55:07] Jeff: So they kind of, in a lot of ways, they kind of shelter a lot of the information that's out there and available for people to research if they wanted to behind paywalls. So I was able to get behind some of those paywalls because of my position. Now I'm my it, I'm not healthcare, but I still have access to it because I have, you know, my email address affiliates me with that.

[: 01:55:26

[01:56:03] Jeff: Explain and, and support, you know, the findings that I, that I went through, and I'm not saying this is any, anything medically, but again, it's about finding yourself, you know? Sure. Because if you're waiting on somebody to sit across the table and tell you about you in, in a five or 10 minute interaction, rather than you investing the time.

[: 01:56:18

[01:56:42] Jeff: Like virtually everything I've ever been through. I analyzed and put in, into perspective there. And that led me to a pretty profound place of discovery. And, and I was explaining this to Willie on the way over here. I no longer, well, let me make it not about me. Our world, virtually all the people who are causing problems, and I don't wanna say causing problems, but are afflicted with the state of the world and however that manifests for them, experience anxiety, fear, depression, or anger.

[: 01:57:17

[01:57:43] Jeff: Now if you had just known this, then you wouldn't have done that. Mm-hmm.

[: 01:57:47

[01:57:50] Jeff: That's the, it's a, mm-hmm. It's such an important, you have to forgive. You will never find your way on the journey unless you go backwards and you forgive yourself. And then now the next step of that is there's gonna be a lot of those situations that you analyze where you realize you wronged other people.

[: 01:58:07

[01:58:26] Jeff: And I didn't, I was not spiritual then. I didn't know anything about any of this. This wasn't spiritual, this wasn't God related to me. This was, I, I was walking through, I again, I found out retrospectively I'm very slow sometimes. I didn't realize it was a spiritual journey that I had to forgive myself first.

[: 01:58:43

[01:59:02] Jeff: And it wasn't a huge audience, but, you know, there was a, a posting of kind of a text version of what I was trying to get out there on Facebook. And I, I did my best to, for, for those who I have wrong. I, I am sorry. And here's what made you come

[: 01:59:14

[01:59:16] Jeff: July 4th When I woke up on July 4th, and I'm telling you, it started resonating then, because I'd already been doing a lot of analysis on myself through that whole ADHD podcast phase in June.

[: 01:59:28

[01:59:47] Jeff: That was, that was me taking every perspective around me and manifesting it outwardly, never knowing who I was in here and all this had ever learned. The brain was everything around me. It was my heart that I had just been ignoring all those years. And on July 4th, I learned that things flipped. I said it was 180 degrees.

[: 02:00:09

[02:00:23] Jeff: Get outta here cuz I live by this. I don't live in, in that, that realm anymore. So I went through that, that phase of forgiving myself first on July 4th, asking for forgiveness from my family and, and, you know, friends through Facebook and through the postings that I made, you know, about what I was going through on, on July 26th asking for forgiveness from them.

[: 02:00:45

[02:01:07] Jeff: And now on the flip side, I started looking at my anxieties and fears. Why? Why am I afraid of something I have no control of? Why do I have, why am I anxious about the future? There's, I, I can control this conversation with Willie and Greg right now. That is the only thing in my life that I have control over.

[: 02:01:28

[02:01:56] Jeff: And you had an epitome. Yeah, I, I, I don't know. Yeah.

[: 02:02:00

[02:02:02] Greg: you instantaneously had the Big bang theory, boom. You realize it. All your thoughts, all your travel, everything that has been waiting and piling up at the gate got released at one time when you came to that understanding. I

[: 02:02:20

[02:02:21] Jeff: I don't live backwards. I don't live forwards. I live right now, and that's it. And I, I make every decision from my heart. And if you, if you make, if you are living the right path or if you're on the right path and you're making the right decisions for the right reasons, you never look backwards. You never second guess yourself.

[: 02:02:41

[02:02:59] Jeff: Letting go of the past, letting go of your hate or, or your, your animosity towards others for what they've done to you and what you've done to yourself. And then on the other end of it, forgetting about the future because it's, you have no control of that. None you can control now, now you can, you can make the right decisions and you might be, have the foresight to actually see the future and where, how it can manifest because you know, you know that you're gonna make the right decisions.

[: 02:03:23

[02:03:34] Greg: man. Just, you know, today, man, I, I just say I'm gonna give all honor to God, man.

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[02:03:56] Will: it? Doesn't it? Yeah. Same thing. So

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[02:04:10] Will: You know what's so funny? Greg came to me and he keeps saying like, Hey man, you know, Have you talked to this person about the podcast? Cause he, Greg talks to people about the podcast a lot. What? I mean, what I mean is like guest giving people on, getting people to do interviews. And I was like, nah, I don't really, like, I'm at places and then I'm, I'm, I meet all these different interesting people and they tell me something and I don't fade it to like, Hey, let's do the podcast.

[: 02:04:33

[02:04:51] Will: So like, that was be because Greg came to me and kept saying, you know, why don't you talk to these people? Why don't you bring 'em to the studio? Why don't you try to get 'em out here? And I've never attempted to do that from somebody outside of who I knew, you know, currently. And I like went straight to you and said, Hey man, come do this podcast.

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[02:05:10] Jeff: hundred percent.

[: 02:05:11

[02:05:30] Jeff: Yep. And, and I've heard this stuff my whole life and I've never believed any of it.

[: 02:05:36

[02:05:53] Greg: And, you know, and, and you know, so a lot of people don't see us for real.

[: 02:05:57

[02:06:04] Jeff: you. I, I don't remember that time. I mean, it was, it was early. You don't remember seeing black

[: 02:06:08

[02:06:10] Jeff: I'm just kidding. That's probably a, that's probably a good answer.

[: 02:06:13

[02:06:17] Greg: So, but I'm just saying though, in his, in his, his in his beginnings, you, you know, you didn't see, and how you bring people from different cultures and bring different perspectives and all for the good bro.

[: 02:06:32

[02:06:33] Jeff: for the good. Absolutely. And God has been great to me. I, I, I've had opportunities in my, I've, I've done some wild things that I, I look backwards now and, and that it's almost like a Forest Gump life. You know, I, I went to China for a couple of weeks and opened up a new company, you know, as part of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

[: 02:06:49

[02:07:08] Jeff: And I had no business doing that. I, I did it out of a promise, a promise to, to my current partner that if I could make it to the top, then we're gonna make it. And I made it to the top and I should have died on that damn thing. There's no way I had any business thinking that, hey, just cuz you can run a half marathon, you can go climb a mountain.

[: 02:07:24

[02:07:34] Greg: my, hold on, hold on hold, hold on. Did you say Mountain Mountain

[: 02:07:39

[02:07:41] Greg: Did you say that you had, did you have to scale it?

[: 02:07:44

[02:07:45] Jeff: Oh, no, no. I, I, I climbed the, the, the, especially at the last, and anybody who knows Longs Peak, and you can look, you can look it up on the, the internet. I got pictures of me standing on the top alongs peak. So, you know, again, this isn't, I'm not making shit up. The, i, the last, the last stretch to get to the top is straight rock climbing, where you absolutely should be strapped to something because peop people fall and die.

[: 02:08:10

[02:08:26] Jeff: I

[: 02:08:26

[02:08:26] Jeff: did you climb down? I did. And un unfortunately, with the fear of looking at the person below me, two or 300 feet, however long that had fallen. And, and there's now they don't have re rescue can't just drive up. And you got these guys who are really trained running with a and it took them hour and a half to get to this person to pick 'em up and then try to, you know, carry them back down.

[: 02:08:47

[02:08:52] Will: I I had the same thing happen, but I mean, I wasn't probably as high as he was. I wasn't on a mountain like that, but I was on a grand, I was in a Grand Canyon and they have these like little peak little heels that you can climb up on and people go up there so they can see down further and whatever the case may be.

[: 02:09:06

[02:09:21] Will: I can get up. People standing up and once they get up, they standing up and I'm like almost like nervous to stand up. I'm like, so I finally stand up and I was like, I go right back down. I was like, okay, I need to go down. So the way you go up, it's different than the way you go down. Cuz if you go up the way you, if you go down the way you went up, you would definitely slip down because there's nothing to grasp on.

[: 02:09:40

[02:09:58] Will: There's no, there's no walkway. I can't get off that way. I have to then climb back up and go down a different way to get down. Dude, I was terrified. I was like, I'm gonna die up here. I was like, this is the end. Like, I'm like, this is the stupidest decision I made in my entire life. Like, I knew for a fact, I was like, I'm gonna die up here.

[: 02:10:17

[02:10:21] Greg: One thing Jeff said, and I always say, see, he uses that to propel him to the, to what, whatever comes his way. And I can do this, I can do that. If I, if I can go through this, I can overcome

[: 02:10:40

[02:10:42] Greg: promise.

[: 02:10:42

[02:11:01] Will: lot. Oh, oh. Propelling me for the next Yes.

[: 02:11:04

[02:11:21] Will: But I, but in reality, I, I have done it, but not in the same way. I haven't used them. I didn't make one relate to the other, but I did in, in a sense of like, did something that I'm fearful of that I knew I probably shouldn't be doing, but I did it anyway. But I never correlate the, that they both go hand in hand, Hey, because you did this, this should propel you to be able to do this.

[: 02:11:43

[02:12:01] Will: That's all I looked at it. Like, in this moment I wanna overcome a fear. I never looked at it like, oh, because of this, it propelled for something else. And that's where I feel like I have room to grow. And this is why this I, this podcast also is important for have that discussion because that's room for me to grow, to understand, hey, you've done these things.

[: 02:12:19

[02:12:35] Will: Let me give you a,

[: 02:12:36

[02:12:54] Jeff: Whether it's just somebody that, that treated you wrong or, or you, you, any of those things that I was talking about. Forgiven qual put 'em all in one big bucket and start pulling 'em out one at a time. And instead of looking at it through the glasses of looking at the fear that you were experiencing or the, the, the anger or whatever, look at everything for, for post-traumatic growth.

[: 02:13:16

[02:13:34] Jeff: That was so stupid. Like, what was I thinking? Every single scenario where you can qualify any of those things you always learn. You've, you have lessons to pull out of every single one of those events and rewrite your database to where all of those events are now. Growth experiences. I learned how to grow by stealing grandma's car.

[: 02:13:54

[02:14:10] Jeff: Figure out how you can grow from it. Like, damn, I should have done this instead of that. And now what happens is every single time, even if it's somebody in your face that, that you, that you've had debates with or, or have had heat with, come at you with something that you've already processed, it doesn't matter.

[: 02:14:29

[02:14:48] Will: fight or flight, fight or flight

[: 02:14:50

[02:14:50] Jeff: And, and you, you, you pull up a positive experience and then, and then let that guide your interaction with that person. Or in, in a lot of cases, you never interact with those people again, but let it go. And whatever you're hanging on to, just let it go. Find the growth in every single thing you've ever done, file it away in the database to replace all the negativity and, and you've rewired your brain, you've rewired your brain to look at things from a different perspective.

[: 02:15:14

[02:15:19] Greg: you, and you know what, and you can start right today. Absolutely. Like you started July 4th, like that was a moment, and then a moment, and instantaneously you, you, you break down the chains off of you. And you can excel sh you can slingshot yourself to whatever you going right away.

[: 02:15:40

[02:15:40] Will: Yeah. And we all could have a July 4th moment. Absolutely. Or September 10th moment. Yes. Or September 15th. I say that cuz that's my birthday moment, you know? Yes, yes. We could always have a moment though, like, like a moment of of clear of having clarity. Mm-hmm. You know, having clarity to, to grow.

[: 02:15:58

[02:16:17] Jeff: However, yes. Looking at that, through that different context and what growth came from that experience from my mom and I can now look back on all those traumatic events that I went through where every time, and she was like, Jeffrey, God has a plan, Jeffrey. God has a plan for you. That I always thought was bullshit.

[: 02:16:33

[02:16:56] Jeff: Yes, you, you have a DVR to look backwards on your life and you have literally a fantasy to look forward on because that's all it is, is a fantasy you. And so you're gonna, you're gonna tell me you're gonna live your life through a DVR and a and Disney World, or how about eliminate both of 'em and come to right now, start living right now?

[: 02:17:15

[02:17:15] Will: a lot of people need to hear that message. Yes. A lot

[: 02:17:20

[02:17:45] Greg: But you know what I'm saying, God is gonna take this on a flight and we just gonna do, and we're gonna touch many the people, man. Hundred percent. You gotta better leave that. So till next time, if you can sing, cook a clean and anything, anything in between can be heard on Haggs Radio.

[: 02:18:04

[02:18:06] Will: Thank you.