OuttaDeeBox Podcast
OuttaDeeBox podcast is a pre-recorded bi weekly show geared towards supporting former and current inmates and their families in Wisconsin. Our mission is to inform listeners about community resources that can assist them in securing employment opportunities, housing, mental health and substance abuse support, with the goal of reducing recidivism in Wisconsin. We also give listeners and guests the opportunity to share their unique inspirational stories through spoken word and other forms of musical artistry.
OuttaDeeBox Podcast
From troubled teen to Entrepreneur: A True Story of redemption and Success
What if a dark past could lead to a bright future? Justin Yapp's story is proof that redemption is possible. Growing up in a small town, the allure of a rebellious lifestyle led him down a path of addiction and crime. At the tender age of twelve, he found himself experimenting with alcohol, which fueled a dangerous journey into more problematic substances. Faced with severe consequences, including a lengthy stay in county jail, Justin encountered a profound realization: he wanted change.
This episode captures the raw emotion of his experiences, from battling addiction to seeking forgiveness and finding his purpose. Justin shares pivotal moments, including his determination to pursue a career in video production after prison. His story resonates with anyone facing challenges or seeking a second chance.
Join us as we explore themes of personal responsibility, transformation, and the power of mentorship. Justin emphasizes the significance of surrounding oneself with supportive individuals and the hard work necessary to forge a new path. His journey is not only about overcoming personal demons but also about advocating for systemic changes needed in society to support those with criminal backgrounds.
Discover how life can flourish after adversity and how everyone can aid in reforming the narrative surrounding addiction and reintegration into society. Let Justin’s story inspire you to believe in the possibility of change. Tune in, share your thoughts, and let's engage in meaningful discussions about the power of resilience and redemption!
What's up everybody. This is your host D-Star here with.
Speaker 2:Justin Yap of the Apography Media.
Speaker 1:What's going on, man?
Speaker 2:Not much, man. Thanks for having me. D Appreciate being here.
Speaker 1:Eh, I do what I can.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a fun little show you got and I just love the stories that you can share and kind of relate to. You know there's people you can relate to and hopefully I can relate to some people and, you know, give some perspective on things.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. For the people that don't know you, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've been in the video production industry now for 18 years. Owned my own business for 12. A lot of self-taught stuff, especially with business, the nuances that go into it, sales making, deals, networking, that kind of stuff Something that you don't necessarily get taught very well in school but that you learn quickly when you're actually in the grind of things. I got a family of two kids wife live in Sun Prairie.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so where are you from?
Speaker 2:Lodi, wisconsin, a little town called Lodi, out by Lake Wisconsin.
Speaker 1:So how was life growing up in Lodi?
Speaker 2:It's a great little quaint town, plenty of stuff to do in the summertime. Wintertime it's back then anyways Not much to do other than get into trouble. Being a small town that we didn't have like a rec center or a lot of extracurriculum activities, unless you were like a sports nut athlete, which I am definitely not. Therefore, there was a void you know, that got to get filled somehow right. Mischief and mayhem was what kind of filled the void. High school, I'd say, was probably your average life, you know, mom dad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, mom and dad both in the picture. Then they do get divorced later on, when I'm in my 20s. But growing up, yeah, I had a pretty straightforward situation. My parents were kind of broke. They didn't have a lot of money, but I played sports. Growing up I did wrestling, football, boating, swimming, living on a lake. You get a lot of that opportunity. So normal childhood for a while. But then when you get to the high school stage and you're a teenager and your hormones are going through, you're going through puberty and whatever, you know whatever, and there's not much to do.
Speaker 1:I got out of sports, got into drugs, got into. I had very bad priorities set for myself as a young, young person, yeah. So you know what I hear a lot is kids and people say I was hanging around the wrong crowd. You know, I got mixed up with the wrong crowd, I need to change my circle. But you know what's crazy is nobody ever says take responsibility for my actions and say, hey, I was the person that was the bad influence. You know, like I was the leader of my little crew and I was kind of pushing everybody to do crazy stuff all the time. Was that you, or were you like more following the crowd?
Speaker 2:I'd say a bit of both. Right, it depends on which people were in the crowd at the time, right, like the older kids, the seniors and stuff. When I was a freshman I wasn't leading them, but in their absence, and it was more of my peers, my direct peers, that were my age, absolutely there'd be times I'd be leading the charge for, say, like let's go score something, you know, like let's go find some stuff, yeah, but it was kind of one of those just snowball effects. We just fed off each other's scumbagness, I guess you know, just not achieving much and not aspiring to do much other than where's the next high?
Speaker 1:yeah, you know. So what was your first experience with drugs, and was it your decision? Well, of course it's your decision.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:But were you peer pressured into it, or is it something that you were curious about? What led you down that path?
Speaker 2:I'd say alcohol led me down to that path. I first drank at age 12. We were so one of my buddy, rusty. You know we grew up just down the road from each other. His parents split up at an early age. His mom was a partier like from hell man. Like you know, here we are young kids and she'd be having like house parties at. You know, at the house with us witnessing all this stuff, people would be doing all kinds of drugs, street drugs. We were being exposed to this at very young ages and we're like, wow, this looks like you're having a good time. You know these adults are laughing and having a good time. We should try some of that, right. And so me and Rusty would always be sneaking things and going in and like trying to start off with the alcohol. Then it went to the weed and then, you know, cocaine pills and all that other stuff later on.
Speaker 2:But uh, it started with alcohol yeah, I'd say that's more of the gateway than weed is you think so? Absolutely yeah for you.
Speaker 1:Like you know, that was your slippery slope I'd say so.
Speaker 2:I think for most, though, because alcohol is so much more relatively available, I never looked at weed as the gateway. For me, anyways, it was because alcohol led to weed, and you know, those two aren't that bad. Cocaine can't be bad right Right, heroin can't be bad Right. So that was the mindset I had.
Speaker 1:I was like You're in high school, and now you're. Would you consider yourself a full-blown drug addict at this time or?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, by freshman year I was I was already doing coke and harder drugs.
Speaker 1:So you're a full blown addict at this time.
Speaker 2:Are you going to school or? Oh yeah, I mean I got to put on the appearance, right, going back to my parents too, like they had good intentions, you know, very, very loving, positive family, good, good family values. But my mom went to school, had her own kind of business going to and gave my sisters more attention growing up because they were in cheerleading and other stuff and then my dad worked two jobs to help pay the bill. So I just had a lot of unsupervised time growing up from that age 12 to, you know, teenage years, not by their choice, right, like they were doing what they could. So I just me being a parent now I look at that I'm like damn, they effed up pretty big with that right Me being a parent now I look at that I'm like damn, they effed up pretty big with that right, like that was one of their big—and they admit it Like we definitely neglected you as far as attention goes.
Speaker 1:So are you the baby?
Speaker 2:No, I'm the firstborn.
Speaker 1:Wow, usually it's not like that. Usually the firstborn, you know, is like the golden child.
Speaker 2:I was a black sheep by teenage years.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you know, all this stuff kind of snowballed into another right, like lack of supervision as I'm growing up so I have opportunity to hang out with some of these not-so-good-of kids, right, right that my parents would have said, no, don't hang out with.
Speaker 1:Right, had they known? Had they known right, had they been paying attention, had they gave you the level of care that you require, that we all require.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. So then you go to these kids' houses where their parents, they're their kids' best friends, right?
Speaker 1:They're like oh, oh, I know the type.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was like yeah, it's cool to be friendly to your parents, but your parents are supposed to be your parents. They're supposed to bring some boundaries to the situation, not be your best friend and try to like appease you. And people like Rusty were given the opportunity to do whatever they want right With their parents' knowledge.
Speaker 1:I grew up with a lot of kids that had relationships like that with their parents. So basically it would be they could pretty much do whatever they want besides not go to school. So as long as they went to school, they could drink, they could smoke, they could have girls, they could have parties they could like, and then that transfer to their friends too, so they could do it and their friends could do it too. You know, so like we would all want to go to this house because we know we could get their mom to buy us alcohol, we could get their mom to, you know, take us to drive us here and drop us off and come pick us back up. And you know what I'm saying. It was like a friend, like not, there was no parenting, like there's no guidelines, you know, like okay, that's off limits.
Speaker 2:No, everything's wide open just go raid their stash too. Yeah, because you know, oh, dad's out of town, let's go. Let's go up to his bedroom and grab an eighth quick. And then we got into stealing too, because all of us being from broke families and stuff Rusty lived across from a trailer park and so at night we'd sneak out and go raid all the trailer parks, like coolers and outside bars. So that's how we'd supply ourselves with alcohol at a young age. This is at 12 and 13. We're doing this, you know.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that just snowballed. You know, that kind of behavior, that kind of mindset just got worse.
Speaker 1:So what led you to getting in trouble with the law?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, like I said, snowballing into it, I started breaking and entering into summer cottages on Lake Wisconsin. You know, illinois. People would have properties up here. We'd target them. We'd know that they wouldn't be home, you know, during the winter months, and so we would have the place to ourselves. To. You know, just take our time and mostly the electronics, you know that kind of stuff you're taking that you can sell quickly on the street to get money to buy the next eight ball or whatever it is that we're trying to get. And that's kind of what snowballed into a really really bad decision-making path that I was on. And so eventually the law catches up, right, people start noticing things, start to be more aware because this is happening.
Speaker 2:And then somebody in our crew got pinched, spilled the beans, set me up to kind of come out of the house one day, called me up and said hey, you want to go smoke? It was like 10 o'clock at night. Never would call me this late anyways. So I thought something was kind of off-putting. But me being a drug addict, oh, I can get high right now. Yeah, let's do it. So I wasn't really going with my gut. Something wasn't right with the phone call. So she picked me up.
Speaker 2:We went down the down the street, by about a block, turns left and then starts to pull over. I'm like what are you doing? She's like there's cops. I'm like what? And then the cherries and berries came on right, so she was responding before they were even pulling her over. I'm like, dude, what are you what? What's going on here? I'm like I. I was very confused. They came around the car to my side of the door and said mr apkin, please step out. I said why? What's going on? You know, I got, we haven't done nothing wrong. And then they're like well, we have reason to believe that you've been a part of, uh, you know, a theft robbery string of robberies blah blah.
Speaker 2:Let's take a look at your shoes, and that shoe looks like a match. They arrested me for you know the, for questioning. They put me into the hole and then from there they just presented all their evidence on the spot there and I was like, okay, you know an awful lot and so, not coming from a you know, a privileged family, I had to get a public defender. His advice to me was to make a plea deal and blah, blah, blah and gave me piss, poor advice. And so I copped the stuff that they knew about because they had evidence against me and this was my lawyer's advice. And so I'm like, yeah, that was me.
Speaker 1:And ended up going to the county jail for 13 months.
Speaker 2:Wow 13 months, huh yeah, and just enough where they wouldn't send me to prison.
Speaker 1:They kept me in county jail, which is worse, which is worse, Way worse.
Speaker 2:Back then in the 90s and 2000s, there was an old saying you come on vacation, leave on probation. That's true in Columbia County, and so they kept me in the damn county jail and I got eight years probation off of that too.
Speaker 1:What was your experience in jail for all of that time?
Speaker 2:It was rough man. So it was around Christmas when I first got arrested. So I sat that before my sentencing, you know. So I was in the county jail for a while, locked up, before I even got my sentencing. That was through Christmas. And then by the time I got sentenced I had another you know year to serve and that was through another Christmas. So, like Christmas Day was what really hit and was looking around, I'm just like just absolute despicable people around me, you know, like most people I would see come and go multiple times, I'm just like this is the life that they have set for themselves, right, this is what they know. They don't seem to mind it, I guess, like you know, they keep coming back. And that's when I had the epiphany. I'm like I don't want to have this ever happen again. Like this sucks.
Speaker 1:What was your aha moment? Christmas day, the second.
Speaker 2:Christmas Day, the second Christmas, yes.
Speaker 1:The second Christmas. You're like this is the second Christmas.
Speaker 2:This is the second Christmas. I'm missing out. Merry Christmas right. This is the life I have set for myself. If I continue down this path, or death right, or getting shot by somebody for breaking it yeah, breaking it to the hell you get out, then what?
Speaker 2:I have a new opportunity ahead of me, right? So I'm like I'm presented with a crossroads. I go back to doing what I know, but at this point I'm now a year clean, right like I went through all my withdrawals in jail. You know, the worst of the it's already passed me, right? All that that's what made jail even worse. Right for the two, two months I'm just detoxing and going through all this stuff. So that way I'm like, well, I'm not going to go back to using again, like that'd be stupid. So you kind of get a good perspective on who cares. Who's been there, right, and your worst time who showed up? Right? Obviously family. And I had a few friends that still believed in me, like one of my teachers like to this day I love her so much, ms Dalton. So I had to graduate high school while in jail because that was my senior year. I got arrested and I wouldn't have been able to do it without her. She brought me my homework every.
Speaker 2:Friday to the jail. Wow, yeah, cause she believed in me, shout out to her man. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's serious Cause. That's something that she did not have to do.
Speaker 2:Did not have to do it and, by all accounts, what is what gave me more hope and gave me more like light at the end of the tunnel? There is something worth fighting for or working towards. Right, like she actually believes in me. Right, like she's telling me this by saying hey, here you go, get this homework done. I mean, granted, I'd have to read the textbooks.
Speaker 1:You have to do the work, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I didn't have anybody to like. Can you help answer this question for me? I had to figure it out all by myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then hand the work in, hoping that it was passable. So getting out, you know I had things to hope for. I got my diploma. I started to look into college because I didn't know what else opportunities I had. I had a game plan for wanting to do photography at the time and video. So I knew I kind of wanted to do that because I always had a passion for it and I had built blueprints for a darkroom. Because you got to remember, this is pre-digital age, this is all analog stuff still, at least that's what you know. Digital is coming out, but it was very new and expensive and not well known to me being incarcerated. When I got out, I had a blueprint for to build a dark room.
Speaker 1:So when did you go to college?
Speaker 2:Pretty much right away. I had to find a job first. You know which. That's another thing, man being a convicted felon. People just look at you like why would I want to give you a what? No, I don't want you to be a part of my team, right? So I don't know. I don't know how our society expects people to better themselves when you're not given the opportunity to do so. And so I had to struggle and work 10 times harder than the average person to get the same level of respect and care and jobs. I had to beg for really bad jobs, jobs that most people don't want. I had to beg for that stuff, and so I get it. There's a problem that needs to be addressed someday. I mean, I guess that stuff, and so I get it. You know, like there's a problem that needs to be addressed someday. I mean I guess you can be present now as a convicted felon. So the whole convicted felon thing needs to be just tossed out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean now it's like really dude, you know I can't get on a roof and you know, lay some shingles, because I got a felony 10 years ago, come on.
Speaker 2:There were some employers that gave me the chances, though, and I respect them. You know, mankey Enterprises out of Lodi was my first job out of the can that said you know what, we're going to take a chance on you and gave me a job, and it paid like crap at first, but after putting in the time they quickly realized that was a good investment and they upped my pay. By the time I left I was making 18, 20 bucks an hour, and this is back in early 2000s. So that was a pretty good, some pretty good change. You know, I made some good money to save up, buy my first camera, enroll into college where I went to Madison Media Institute. I went there, graduated, got my degree in video and motion graphics. So I got out of college and entrepreneurialism was kind of a part of me, but I never like am I I inspired to be an entrepreneur.
Speaker 1:Well, your mom laid the foundation.
Speaker 2:She did for sure, yeah, but it was never like something I'm like. That was not my target, right. I wanted to make movies. I wanted to be like a producer or whatever, like you know, be a Hollywood, whatever. That was my more of my ambitions starting out. But, being the convicted felon thing, I was being passed up repeatedly on opportunities. Strictly from that, there was times I would have job interviews, two of them, the three coming in showing me around the office, blah, blah, blah, introducing me to people, giving them names like oh, this is Justin, you're going to be working with him.
Speaker 1:Getting your hopes up.
Speaker 2:Getting my hopes up. And then they're like you know, this is so great, we're so lucky to have you. The final thing is we've got to do a drug test and a background check and we'll get you onboarded. I'm like, all right, sweet. Three weeks go by nothing. I passed the drug test for oh hey, oh yeah. Well, we just the person you know. Once you got him on the phone, you got him in a corner. You're forcing something on him, right? Oh well, we found somebody a little bit more qualified than you, and so we decided to go that route and at that point I was at my breaking point. I'm like you showed me around three times now the third time you actually introduced me to people and showed me the office quote unquote where I'd be working at. Like you looked at my background and you don't want to give me a job because I'm a convicted felon. No, that's not true. I'm like you were not going to say that, because that's illegal for you to not hire me. But that's why.
Speaker 1:So it seems that it seems like things are going really well for you and you've overcome some obstacles and you've made amends for those, and people are starting to see that. One of the ways that people are starting to see that is you were granted a pardon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was, thankfully. I mean, it was a long process. I had started the application process in 2019 and then the pandemic hit right and then everything was shut down for a while. Stuff got lost in the mix. I didn't know what was going to happen. You know, like I hadn't heard nothing. And then in 2022 or 21,. They started reviewing stuff again. But there was a backlog of stuff. I was like, oh, so I got a notification that the application and all that stuff was going to be reviewed. I was like, all right, in 2023, I got another letter stating that I had been accepted to be considered for a pardon. They reviewed it. They thought I'd be a good candidate. So the next stage is that you got to present yourself to a board. They used to do this in person, but since COVID they now do it through Zoom and so and it's in front of like five or six peers of the it's not just like government people, it's other like there was a pastor on there there was a Community leaders.
Speaker 2:Community leaders exactly? Yup, there was five or six of them, and so I had to present my case to them as well. After they had read my application and all that stuff, I had 10 letters of recommendations letters of recommendations laid out. You know the facts about why I felt like I was ready to. I accepted responsibility for my actions as a kid.
Speaker 2:I have moved on, I paid my debt and I felt like I should no longer be held back by that. Not that I necessarily want a corporate job, but I'm just like. I just don't want that. No more.
Speaker 2:Right, I want to be able to say I'm a full-fledged citizen again, and politics is something I've been considering running for anyways, and people have told me I would be good at it. But well, until recently, most positions in politics you can't hold if you're a convicted felon, I guess, other than presidency. But we're not going to go there. So that was my biggest rebuttal for why I wanted one. It wasn't to own a gun or nothing like that.
Speaker 2:I just focused on my professionalism, where I wanted to go with it, and politics being something that I was going to be considering if I was granted this opportunity to do One of my best achievements to this day now, right Like doing a 180 in my life, flipping it around and being recognized for that. So it was heartfelt, meaningful and hopefully I can pay it back forward someday with my in politics and help other people like myself that weren't given opportunities to get opportunities like that. You know criminal reform is something I want to focus on, uh, in the future, so that's something I will have on my back burners as we move forward in life.
Speaker 1:So kind of tell us, uh, so tell us about your business, like what kind of products and services do you offer and what are some of the notable projects that you've worked on and what are some of the things that you are most proud?
Speaker 2:of. I wish I could say you know I'm working on feature films and stuff like that. Not the case. It's corporate stuff, but it's important stuff, right? People all have stories to tell, and so being a storyteller I'm like this is an area I can focus on. It's not advertising per se, right. I'm not just making a bunch of in-your-face advertisements to buy, buy, buy it's. Who is the business, right? Who are you? Why does your audience and clientele care to work with you? And so I try to find the cores on that and help bring that all into a cohesive visual storytelling video that encapsulates what problems are you solving for your clienteles, and videos that people actually want to watch, versus something that's in your face that you can't skip for 10 seconds.
Speaker 2:Typically. Those are the kind of areas I look for organic type of storytelling versus a typical ad. I try to stay away from those. I do do the ads sometimes, but more storytelling Everyone's got the story. What is it, what's your? Why? I like to focus on those, and it can be from any size corporation to small business, as long as the budget's there. Nowadays I'm 12 years in now, so I'm pretty seasoned. I'm happy to say I can help anyone solve their media needs. I might not be the one producing it for them, but I got people that do you know are just getting into the game, they're just starting off and a lot of times, you know, if it's a smaller budget project, I'm happy to like hand them off to people that I know will still do them right, that need the attention, that need the work, that need to build a portfolio up and then still help this small business out that couldn't quite afford me but was able to afford something, and so that to me is still a win right, I still helped achieve that small business's needs, even though I'm not the one telling the story this time around, but consulting I also do. Consulting, I guess, would be what I'm trying to get at.
Speaker 2:I'd say a notable project recently was for the Jim Lemon Foundation, but my buddy Kyle it's one of his clients, but he brought me on because he's more of a photographer and we got to tell the story about Jim who was tragically taken away from pancreatic cancer. It's one of those cancers that is very hard to detect and when you do get it, because it's so hard to detect, a lot of times you're in the stage three or whatever the later stages, which is almost impossible to cure. And so he was. It went quick, it happened, you know, he got diagnosed and then, before you know it, he's gone. And so his wife started this foundation to help bring awareness to this cancer and to help fund research. And so it was a very sad affairs, right, like how do you tell this person's story and still, you know, come out at the end with a call to action, right. And so we built this beautiful tearjerker video and I got to watch an audience because they played it at the gala cry at one of my videos and at the end give an ovation, like cheering it on, and then helped raise thousands of dollars afterwards. So to me that was really touching.
Speaker 2:Knowing that I was able to bring out emotion like that, right, because as storytellers we try to bring out the emotions, right. That's a huge home run, in my opinion. So, seeing that it was just my most recent triumphs, to me it's just like, wow, I did that, we did that. I mean, obviously, kyle was a big part of it as well, but I'm mostly the editor, so it was my storytelling and very proud of that. So that would be my more recent one, just because you get to see your work and not you don't always get to see your work with an audience, live, audience, right, like a lot of times it's just like on the internet and you're like it's got a bunch of likes, it's got some comments, but you don't get to see the emotional reactions. And that time I did and it was great, it was very rewarding as a content creator to see your work being appreciated and the way it was right. I had most people in there in tears.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. So what advice would you give to people that are just starting out, haven't quite took that leap of cutting off their part-time or full-time job and they want to start their own business. Whatever that business may be, what advice would you give them to move forward?
Speaker 2:A, have your plan well thought out. Right, listen to all the naysayers. As far as feedback, right, so you can kind of predict some of the hurdles you might come across. Ask the ones that are doing it already. Well, like, try to set up an interview with some of these people that have a business in that industry and just ask them, like, what's been going well, what, what works for you, what are some of the hurdles that you have?
Speaker 2:You know, like, doing your research now, your pre-production work, knowing all that stuff prior to starting a business, is going to be huge for you because you're going to have a better understanding of what you're getting yourself into, what kind of financial limitations you might have, what kind of startup costs. And then building a network. You're going to have people that you can go to if you need help on a project or whatever it is. Because you interviewed with them, you talked to them, you might be able to reach out and get an extra hand.
Speaker 2:And then renting equipment versus buying off the bat. No matter what industry you're in, you don't need the most expensive or whatever equipment right now. Go rent it first. That way you're only having expense when you have a project coming in versus trying to pay off something every month that you can only pay off when you have a project coming in, right? So it's like to me, you're much better off renting it to the point where you have enough cashflow coming in. Then you're like all right, I have enough projects on the hopper, I'm going to go buy this now because it makes sense.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so, coming from your background, getting in trouble as a teenager. If you could say something to the youth today, what would it be?
Speaker 2:Any advice I can't imagine being a teenager nowadays too. You know you got so much more to contend with as far as stress levels. You got online bullies and like social media. It's like we didn't really have to deal with that growing up. So all I can say is put all that noise aside and focus on yourself. What's good for you, what's what do you want to aspire to do? Right, and try to do it Like. Don't. Don't listen to the negative vibes that says it can't be done, because in reality, anything can be done if you put your mind to it. It might not come as fast as you'd like, it might not come out exactly how you thought it would, but something will come out of it In due times. It will pay off. Hard work pays off. Eventually it does. I guarantee you that there's always a light at the end of the tunnel. There's people that are willing to help. Definitely, don't feel embarrassed to ask for help. Sometimes we all need help. I did. If it wasn't for Ms Dalton, I don't know. Maybe I wouldn't have had the same motivation while in jail to do good. Maybe I wouldn't have had the same motivation while in jail to do good. You know she was one of those pillars.
Speaker 2:For me, especially in the early on stages, there's different pillars I had throughout my career so far. In college it's Tony Wood. He was one of my instructors at Madison Media Institute, a mentor of mine. I'm still in contact with him. We have dinners, we go motorcycle riding together. He helps out on my production. Still, you, there was different pillars throughout my stages that got me to the next stage, the next level of professionalism and motivation. So finding that for yourself is a big part of that. If you're in the trouble right now, I know it's easier to say but get yourself out, find new friends. Let them go to the wayside. They're no good for you. If you're using drugs with them all the time you got to move on, you can't hang out with them. They're not going to take you anywhere but down. That's the first step New circle of friends.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Well, justin man. We really really appreciate you coming by the podcast man. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I appreciate you.
.jpg)