Hey, welcome to the Homeschool Money Podcast. Before we dive in today, I wanna give you a preview of what's coming up in this episode, and trust me, you're not gonna wanna miss a single minute, okay? Today I am gonna pull back the curtain on my personal story, and that doesn't probably mean a whole lot in the first place to you, right? But here's the thing. I've never shared my personal story in detail in a public platform. So like this. So this is pretty hard for me, but this also is really important, I believe because it gets to the deeper why, of my intentionality as a father and for me to choose homeschooling as the educational choice for my children with my wife. And also for the creation of of, of this podcast right, as well as for the new program called The Homeschool Money Makeover. This gets to the why of how all of that came to be and why we're so passionate about helping homeschooling families afford to homeschool. And you know why I wanted to have five kids in the first place? I'm talking about the divorce that I went through as a 5-year-old. I'm talking about the culture shock I experienced when I went to public school and how I was jumped by two guys in my first two weeks of public school, and how sadly I became a wolf so as to not be targeted by other people that I considered wolves back then. It is also the story of how God saved me when I was in my late teens at my absolute lowest rock bottom point in my life, and how he gave me a total 180 degree transformation, which is the only reason that I'm probably even here today. And the only reason that I stepped onto a track that would eventually have me run into and meet the woman who would become my future wife in my freshman year of college. But here's the thing, it's not just a story about my personal transformation. It's about why my wife and I made the radical decision to homeschool our five kids and how we built a gen a business that generates six figures a year and allows us to work just 15 to 20 hours a week from home so that we can homeschool our own children and so that we can have the time. And the margin to live out our personal values. And it's, and it gets to the why that we're so passionate about reaching a hundred thousand families and helping them with our five step system for self-funding, their homeschool journey. People like you, people like you. And we're talking today about real financial freedom, intentional parenting, and why I've personally changed 99% of all of the diapers of all five of my children. And what that says about the kind of father and husband I was determined to be so many years ago. If you've ever wondered how to break free from the nine to five grind and create a true lifestyle freedom for yourself, or give your children an education that aligns with your deepest values, this episode is going to challenge everything you thought you knew about what's possible. So crank up the volume zone in and let's go. One of my biggest bragging points as a dad is that I have personally changed 99% of all of the diapers of our five kids. And we've got a 2-year-old boy now. So I've got probably another two, three, maybe even four years and then I'm hanging up the diaper changing kit for good. That is until they start popping out grand babies. I've got a nice break before then, and so I'm looking forward to that. It's a big deal for me as a man, as a husband, and as a father, to have changed the diapers for my babies because it's a way that I can support my wife who's gone through nine pregnancies, four miscarriages, and two. Two clinical near death experiences, which we'll share a lot more in episodes to come. It was also important for me to be a husband that was super involved with my wife during pregnancy and with my children once they were born. So I was super excited when my first born baby boy was born in the fall of 2011, but I was also scared out of my mind and all of those emotions swirled inside because of all I went through in my childhood as a father. I didn't wanna hurt our new baby boy the way I had been hurt. I wanted to be there, be close, be and intentional dad, and I just wanted to be a physically present dad. I mean, there's a lot to be said just for that because that's something that I did not have. I wanted to instill the core values that I live by. A love for God, a love for family and lifestyle freedom, as well as a need for financial abundance to support my first three core values and also for self-actualization, which for me is rooted in God's calling for my life. Homeschooling was a big part of our plan of intentionally raising our children. We knew we wanted to build a strong family and raise our children to value God and value family in their hearts. So we answered the question of how to afford homeschooling a long time ago. We've, we've been self-employed and run and have run businesses that have provided the lifestyle and financial freedom to live life on our own terms. Crystal has coached individuals and families in their personal finances through, paying off debt and getting on track towards retirement for years. And I've been a digital marketing consultant for hundreds of entrepreneurs helping them plan launches, write their sales funnels, build them out and optimize their businesses online for high profit, low stress, lifestyle income. And now we have the Homeschool Money Makeover program, which is a five step system. We package all of our experiences that we had with personal finance coaching to helping. Other people launch businesses and running our own businesses, we package all that up into a streamlined five step system that helps any family get their budget in order, generate an immediate $1,000, raise money to self fund their homeschool, start or scale up their side hustle, or scale up their self-employment services or start a business, using one of the top five business models that we have personally seen and used and are using currently to grow a family business that supports the homeschool lifestyle. A business that provides a high profit, low stress lifestyle income. This system works for anybody wanting to create maximum income in little time and wants to make 50,000, a hundred thousand, several hundred thousand dollars a year in income or more annually without working more than 15 hours a week. Since we care about homeschooling and we know that. Money is a big challenge for most families. We're offering our comprehensive solution to the homeschooling community. We're answering this question in the most comprehensive way online. There's no other resource like what we've created with the homeschool Money Makeover that we know of. And for us, it's taken every last experience, certification, client success story, years of being early adopters and taking chances to give us the expertise to even package up all of this into such a streamlined and comprehensive solution. The five steps that we've put and packaged up into the homeschool money makeover all came from the seedbed of the experiences that I'll be sharing here. So I was born and raised on the north, inside of town of Beaumont, Texas, a city in the deep southeast part of Texas, close to Houston. My dad has been a senior pastor of large churches for 50 years before he retired. Family life for me, in the first five years of, of my life were stressful from what I can remember. I had one other sibling, he was my brother, older brother. He was 14 years older than I was, my mom had my brother with her previous husband and he was kicked out of the home by the time I was two or maybe three years old. So it was just my parents and me. I can remember arguments. I don't remember too many more instances. I do remember watching He-Man, when I was a kid and a strange show called Banana Man. I remember watching Fraggle Rock, and I do remember watching Sesame Street, but I do remember arguments also and being afraid at times. And by the time I was five years old, my parents had divorced. I had cousins that were on my dad's side of the family, but not so much on my mom's side of the family. And we lived in town in Beaumont with my mom's side of the family. And so there was only my auntie and my grandmother, they lived together. My brother moved in with them. But he was hardly ever around. He ran the streets all the time, and so I didn't see that much of any man in my life After my parents got divorced, and I can still remember. My father walking out the door in our home. We hadn't even lived in this new home for long, maybe a year or so. And I remember saying to him, pleading with him, telling him that I promised to do better. I promised that I would change, and he assured me that it wasn't my fault. Only other experience I had about that time of that transition from going from a home with my b both my parents to transitioning to the divorce was riding my bicycle around the corner to the front of the neighborhood of this suburban neighborhood in the far north side of Beaumont. Riding my bicycle around the corner from the house to the apartment that my mom would move us to. And I remember being raised in that apartment. From that age of five years old all the way through high school graduation, there were different points where my mom wanted to get a home. But all the neighborhoods that we were considering were sort of in the, you know, worst part of town in the north end of town in Beaumont. And I just as well would rather stay in the apartments that we lived in. They were nice, they were clean, they were safe. They had a nice pool, a nice hot tub. And I loved, loved swimming, so I just as well stayed there. And, I'm actually really glad that we did stay there until I graduated high school. And so, growing up from that point. Was very lonely for me. It was isolating, it was an isolating experience, very lonely experience. I definitely demonstrated signs of depression and, high anxiety, maybe even suicidal tendencies. And yet there was never any discussion or talk about counseling or anything like that. And for me, as a kid living in real time, I did not even know that that would have been on the table until I got older and realized that man, you know, some people get therapy for things like divorce or depression or whatever in their, as children, their, their parents do that sort of thing for them. But for me, I didn't know any different. I had the early childhood elementary school experience of attending a private school. It was a very small private school, and that was a very. Good experience for me being at that particular private school. There was, maybe 50 to 70 or 80, maybe to a hundred students or so in the heyday of the school. And it was a great elementary school experience for me because it was very diverse and it was safe. The kids were nice, the teachers were nice, but it was very diverse Also. There were white kids, there were black kids, there were Asian kids and even Hispanic kids as well in that elementary school. And so I grew up just feeling comfortable with everyone. And I can remember having to lead that school in fourth grade because the school ended like it only went up to fourth grade. And so I. I remember having to transition from that private school experience where it was nice and the kids were nice, the teachers were nice. At that time, around that time, this was Michael Jackson's heyday, Paula Abdul's, heyday Madonna was on the pop radio station. My mom would play when I was a kid, and I just remember, you know, going from listening to Paula Abdul to my public school experience in the fifth grade and experiencing total culture shock, okay. In the fifth grade. I remember the first day of school when I had to go to public school in the fifth grade because. I had a new outfit on a bright red shirt, and I remember who was on the shirt because the movie Space Jam was popular. The one with Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny and Michael Jackson had done the video. And with Michael Jordan. I just thought that was the coolest thing ever. I love that movie. And so my mom got me a Space Jam shirt to wear on the first day of school with a matching cap, and I wore that on the first day of school. And I did not know at the time what I was walking into on the first day of school in the fifth grade. But this school that I went to, they put me in the class with. A group of kids that would come to be known as the B 13 convicts. Okay. I'm talking about the school teachers called the students in the, in my class, the B 13 convicts. Alright. So apparently these kids had already developed a reputation, maybe from fourth grade, I'm supposing, but they were all pulled together into what I would learn would be like some of the worst kids in the whole school. Okay. It was probably around 20 some odd kids, a class made up of about 25 students or so. And I would say that probably a good 13 of those kids were just like. They would actually grow up to be, you know, just some of the worst kids that I, I knew kids who were held back, kids who were sent to alternative school. Kids who would grow up to drop out of school by the time they were in the ninth or 10th grade. Kids who would grow up to develop records with arrests and prison, do prison time. And unfortunately, one or two kids that died at a very early age because of the lifestyle that they were engaged in. But on that first day of public school in the fifth grade. It was tough for me. Within two weeks, within the very first couple of weeks of my public school experience, all students I had never seen or known before. I remember being jumped by two kids in the class on the way home from school. I walked home from that particular school 'cause it was in the neighborhood. And it was probably a mile, mile and a half away from my home. I don't know why I was targeted. I guess I was different. I probably talked different, you know like I said, I was listening to the pop station when I was, you know, just that summer, right before school, the school year started. But, but these kids weren't listening to the pop station like me. They, these kids were listening to some stuff that I didn't even know about. Like they were listening to ice tea. They was listening to nwa. I mean, I, I was introduced to rap music, by the kids in this fifth grade class. And I was also introduced to gang. Affiliation and gang mentality. I would not like to describe it such in terms of like real gang violence because, you know, we lived in Beaumont, Texas. We knew, we knew we wasn't raised in Compton. Okay. But Beaumont, Texas kids in particularly on my side of town, north End and also the south end of town, were, largely African American and there's a lot of, you know, projects and just, you know, poor neighborhoods. And so a lot of kids, you know, were influenced by gang culture that was happening on the, on the West Coast and that type of thing. And so I'm wearing a bright red t-shirt on the first day of school and I remember somebody this particular kid you know, accusing me of being a blood just 'cause I was wearing a red shirt. And apparently he and everybody else in the class, and I guess most people in the school system were associating with Crips. And so, like I'm confronted with. Gangs, like being a, being accused of being a blood as opposed to being a Crip in the fifth grade. Okay. And I'm up here wearing my space jam and ball cap and t-shirt to, to the first day of school thinking that I'm gonna be accepted. I'm be warmly greeted and I'm gonna be, you know, Hey man, you looking fly today? Nah, dude. I was wearing red in a all blue gang culture. Okay. And so I developed bullies, I developed a bully and in the fifth grade, and by the end of the fifth grade, I'm, I'm pleased to say that I had made it outta that class. It was such a problem that, you know, the teacher apparently noticed a difference or whatever in me and I was able to get caught up to what. You know, the curriculum they were on versus what I had been on in, in my previous school, my private school set setting. And so I was able to get outta that class and get it placed in an AP class. But my goodness, that happened toward the end of the school year. It was, by the time I got into that class, it was just like a month or two left of. Fifth grade before I was then dumped into the bottom of a whole nother system that is middle school. Okay. So from there I went to middle school, sixth grade to eighth grade. I'm in the sixth grade. So I was also by my parents. I was a younger student than most other students. My birthday is falls August 3rd. So I, I was placed in, in school early which made me, you know, developmentally younger and maybe smaller than other students in, my classes. Right. Especially in public school because in public school or, or at least the public school system that I was in. You got, you already had kids that was in the fifth grade that was already held back. My dad moved to Washington State, to pastor a church there several years just a few years after, well, maybe several years after the divorce. So they divorced when I was five years old. And by the time I got to middle school, probably sixth grade or maybe seventh grade, my dad. I moved to Washington State to pastor a church there. But of course, me and my mom stayed in Beaumont, Texas. And so this you know, my dad was, was I, I would see my dad some weekends. He would come and get me when he lived in town. But after that, you know, I just, that those were such critical years of me trying to learn the ropes as a boy, peering on, on my teenage years. And I really, what I would later find out that I really needed a, a loving, you know, caring father around but a healthy father. And so I it was hard for me to learn. My self identity and gain my self identity and feel comfortable in who I was given the fact that my dad wasn't there and I didn't have any other men, positive men in my life, that I can say showed me how to be a positive young man and to help me develop good habits and that sort of thing. And so I was really left to learn how to be a human being and how to not get picked on by the wolves who very early on in that fifth grade year had targeted me. And so very quickly I start trying to learn a completely new game instead of trying to learn how to be a good student. Elementary school that last year of elementary school, fifth grade, or into a good student in middle school. I am completely absorbed with the culture shock and my place in this new social pecking order and ecosystem. That was my middle school experience, that was hard. And so, you know, just a bunch of, of, of students and a large school population of kids who were essentially raising themselves without, you know good strong family and parental figures in their lives to help them figure things out and to be disciplined and to be, you know, academic and all of that. And so we're really influenced by this time, by the the new. Rap album that like changed everything. And that was the chronic album by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. I mean these guys, Snoop Dogg, and then mainly Tupac and the Notorious BIG these guys became my mentors and these guys became the pied Pipers of really everybody that I was around. And so if I describe my childhood experience, I would have to describe it as, you know, in terms of the eighties the popular eighties movie, breakfast club, you know me and the guys that I, I, I developed a trauma bond with. Now I call it a trauma bond that I'm grown out. And I know some of these languages some of this language. Why is it that I was attracted to more to them and work to become more like, like them instead of. Withdrawing and, and moving away from them? Well, it's because I didn't know how to process good versus bad friends. I didn't really have strong boundaries. I didn't know that I had really an alternative and that I could have gone a different direction and really separated myself even further. But instead, I felt like I was with wolves. And so I, I, I learned myself to at least put on the mask of becoming a wolf myself. And this just created for me a very stressful middle school experience. I would love to go and visit my grandmother. That was like my safe place. When I can go and visit my grandmother, because she was there, you know, being retired, she was there. My mom was working a lot and so my grandmother was able to be there and she was really sweet to me. And I could just remember laying in the bed with her watching, you know, the Smurfs and watching other cartoons. And then she would turn on TV N and watch a lot of TV preaching. And, and that's what what we did. She'd watch the stories during the day. So I'd be at her house a lot of time during the summertime, and there were kids in the neighborhood you know, she lived in the hood and there were kids around that you know that were, that were. Kids that I hung out with there and my, my aunt, like I said, lived with her. And then my brother was just in and out of the house. And so I saw him every now and again, but my brother was running the streets and, you know, I mean doing all the things. And so he was not that positive influence on me. In fact, my brother was a person who. Would like teach me like anytime he, I spent time with my brother. His intention was to teach me, like, I'm teaching you how to be, how to ride in a car with my seat so far back, I could barely see out of the side window teaching me he, would drink and, and drive. I mean, have a cooler sitting in the backseat of the car riding around the streets of Beaumont, Texas all day long. And sitting me down and in front of a, a TV and a video player and putting on DVDs that would teach me about things that I should not have been exposed to as a young person. But those are the lessons that I learned. From the, person who was a male authority figure in my life. Once my great uncle got out of jail, out of prison, he went to live with my grandmother. And so in the times I was with him and we went fishing and what do you think a great uncle who is, you know, doesn't have any job or anything like that, who had just got outta prison? What do you think, you know, older guys like that do whenever they are fishing? And so he introduced me to some, bad habits out fishing at the fishing hole and so these were the, the men that were in my life, the two men that were in my family in my life that I grew up with. My dad's dad, who was also a lifelong pastor, and he pastor a church in Austin, Texas, a historical church there in Austin, Texas. He passed away when I was nine years old. And I just remember crying so hard when I lost my papa. And knowing that I just did not have any other men in my family besides my brother and my great uncle who were both really negative influences on me there was not too many lessons for me to learn. And so I. I, if I draw the analogy of who I was and who I became and who I tried to be like from the movie Breakfast Club that was that popular eighties movie me and the guys that I ran with were the John Bender of the school system. Right? The, the, the rebels, right. The funny thing is that when I would make a life change in my later high school years I would turn out to be this person who was more like, who was more like Brian, right? In the, in the movie Breakfast Club. More like Andrew in the movie Breakfast Club, right? The nerd and a little bit of the athlete, a little bit of the nerd, a little bit of both of those types of guys. I was, I became this pretty disciplined person who loves to exercise and all of that. But also was about my books and about about learning and getting ahead like Brian was. And it's just funny the way that. School was public school was I experienced all of these different cliques. Yeah. There were the Bryans, the nerds, and they hung together. Yeah. There were the athletes and they hung together. Yes. There were the Hispanic students who pretty much hung together and so I didn't find a place to fit with, many. And then there were the popular kids, right? And I didn't find a place to fit in with any of those guys. When my dad moved to Washington State, I would go and see him on the summertime. In the summertime. And he married another woman and, and she had a son who was a year older than me. And though we got along great, he also was influenced by the wrong people, the Snoop Doggs and the Tupacs and the biggies of the world. And so, you know, from every place that I went from Beaumont, Texas to Washington State, it seemed like to me my worldview revolved around, you know, the rappers that we heard and were revolved around. All of these negative influences self-destructive machoism that a lot of the culture of people that I was around were involved in and it just was reinforced whenever I even went to Washington State to visit my dad and was around the kids that were in his church there. I mean, there was a lot better kids, I would say, than the kids that I was around in my school experience, but. You know, they were still influenced, you know, particularly my stepbrother who was also from Beaumont they, they were all, he was influenced. And so I was also influenced by these, you know, characters that were popular in pop culture it made it hard for me to focus on developing a a godly worldview, a biblical worldview, and a positive self image. And it made it hard for me to focus on school. I just got by in school, and I'm surprised that I even got by because I was so preoccupied with trying to fit in by the eighth grade getting involved in the Snoop Dogg type of, you know, chronic lifestyle. That was, that was really taught on that album. And use all of that to, to, to wear this mask and so I developed a lot of sort of dependence and comfort on things and on substances and that helped me hide in plain sight. I read a book that was given to me by my mom. When I was in the 10th grade, and this book was about hell, it's a book called The Divine Revelations of Hell by Mary Kay Baxter, I believe is the author's name. And my mom and I had been going to church I think probably since I was back in the eighth grade. It's just that the church kids that I was around, you know, they, they felt kind of snooty to me. They felt like they, it was primarily a family. And they were so, they were closed off from the rest of just like stray kids like me, you know, it was just me and my mom who went to church, but the, the biggest group of other kids were, they're made up of like four or five families. And so they had, they all had, you know, kids and they were all cousins and they were all around the same age, and so they kind of ran together and, and then there was like stragglers like me. And so I didn't find any comfort in the kids that were in the church. They, they weren't really welcoming or hospitable type of, you know, young Christian kids or whatever. They were just doing their own thing. And so church didn't mean that much to me even though we, you know, my mom, I. Had us going back to church, but somewhere around the 10th grade. I did start to listen up further. I had a really good Sunday school teacher who was the teacher of the youth program and he. He took a liking to me because when it came to him teaching his lessons on the Wednesday nights or on the Sunday mornings and Sunday school, I would have comments or whatever. I would ask questions about the Bible stories and things that were, that he was talking about. And my mom gave me this book, like I said, around 10th grade. Some sometime early in the second se semester of my 10th grade year of high school. And I read that book while I was just at my absolute worst as a young man. I'm trying to hide from my mom this, sort of lifestyle that I'm living away from home. Whenever you do things you're not supposed to be doing, there are signs, right? And there were definitely signs that I wasn't doing right. And there was definitely times that I got caught doing wrong. And trying to explain all of that away as though it was just like a one time experience was tough for me. And so I, I, I felt guilty about the way that I was living and you know, with my girlfriend at the time. And I read this book and isn't it strange that in a book that talked all about hell and and the destiny that anybody who did not know Jesus Christ would face? It's so funny to me and ironic that in a book that describes hell in very in great detail, that is actually the place that for the first time I can remember as, as an older kid. 'cause I, I did ask to be baptized when I was younger. Much, much younger. But I, I didn't continue walking with the Lord or anything like that. But at this particular time, I'm like, you know, 16 years old. And I, I. Am reading this book. I hadn't been reading books, I wasn't reading books at that time in my life at all. But I'm reading this book and I cannot put it down. I read it every day when I come home from school, and I'm just captivated by what is being described and the scriptures that are being shared. And I cry out to God one night and I asked Jesus to come into my heart and to save me. And I could just remember shortly after that on a Saturday, being in the park by myself and watching a puff of smoke go up into the air and just having a, an original thought I thought. My life is like this puff of smoke. It's here for the moment, and then it's, it's like a vapor in the wind, right? It, it's here for a moment, and then it's gone on into eternity. And so in that moment, for me, the original thought was, I have to change my life. It is not worth me living this. Stressful, hard, horrible life that I'm living a life where I'd gotten into dozens of fights. Just trying to, you know, protect myself and walking with a chip on my shoulder and trying not to look soft in front of anybody in this macho culture that I'm in. And I did not like my life, and I was so weighed down by it all. I felt very much like the character Christian in the epic pilgrim's progress story. I felt very much like him carrying around this big, heavy, dirty burden on my back. And it was funny because I'm reading this book about hell and the, the author in, in the book describes the smells of sulfur fire and fumes burning human flesh over and over and over again for all eternity. And so as I come home from school, whenever I'm coming home from hanging out with my friends in the evening times, I can literally smell in my nostrils at some points, the sulfuric smell of putrid flesh burning in perpetual fire from reading this book that is tripping me out. And, but in all of that, learning that hell was not intended for me and learning that Jesus Christ. Didn't just love the world. I know that God loved, so loved the world that he gave his only be begotten son, but that he not just loved, but loves present tense, loves me in particular. That was life changing. And in reading that book and praying to God, I gained an inward awakening and inward awareness that Jesus Christ loves me and that he didn't just die for the world, but he died for my sins. And I began to understand that, you know, if I didn't receive him except him as my personal Lord and Savior, I became convicted. That. There was no other place for me than hell. And so I know I don't wanna go to hell, right? And so I prayed and I prayed the prayer with every bit of sincerity, every ounce of sincerity I had in me that Jesus would save me. And so the end of the school year came, I went to Washington State to be with my dad for the summer for about three weeks and one day I. I was in the bed, my bedroom, all by myself, just, you know, putting away my clothes or whatever. And I just said yes. And as soon as I verbally said yes, apparently to, the stirrings that had been churning in my heart since I had read the book like a couple months earlier, I just said yes, and I fell apart. I fell to the floor crying and I had just accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior. And so I picked myself up and ran to the room where my dad was and told him what happened. And him being a pastor, of course, he was able to lead me through the Romans road and share scriptures with me about what that means and what that is. And God finally brought me to the place of salvation, and I went into the 11th grade school year at high school, even though my school was like literally like lean on me, okay. In Beaumont, Texas. In fact, that school just a few years after was shut down because there was so much corruption happening with the leadership of that and the administration of that school stealing money and using it on themselves and not actually supporting the, the kids that were in the school system. I read about this like. In the in, in the paper online, years ago I read about this and my school was shut down for corruption and it tripped me out because I know my school experience and I've always told people, man, my my high school experience was like, lean on me. I mean, there were big gang fights between the guys from the south end versus the north end because by that time, Tupac had put out his disc record against Biggie Smalls, notorious BIG, and how they had the East coast, west coast thing going. And so it was no longer a thing of Crips and Bloods red and blue. And now it was the thing of side of the country, what coast are you from? Or in our case, what side of town are you from? And so you literally, talking about a young African American population of kids who are. Influenced in every way by what happens in rap culture. These are the captains of the ship, so to speak, of, of of our culture especially for young black men. And that was the case in my school system. In high school. A lot of south kids who were on the south end of town fed into the school system that had been, you know, sort of more populated by. Kids who were in the north end of town. And so there were these big 30 person fights that took place in the 10th grade year when I went to the big campus of my high school. And so I went into the 11th grade with a lot of the kids and a lot of the riffraff or a lot of the John Bender of the school system dropping out by that time. And I. Shared that I had been saved with like 13 of my buddies one day. And they rejected me and rejected Jesus at that moment. And I remember walking home crying after being rejected by 13 guys that I. You know, counted as friends at that moment. And I was set free to be a completely different person. And so for the first time ever, I learned that I never actually had to run with the John Bender's of school system. You know, I never had to run with this underbelly culture of kids that were in the school system. I could have chosen to be a smart kid and run with those, those kids, the kids who were, you know, getting ahead academically, the kids who were school president or on the chess club. And those things were there. I never paid any attention to 'cause I was so preoccupied with this subculture. I finally. Gained independence from that that, that trauma bond that I made when I was in the fifth grade. I, I was set free from that bond and I gained an inner courage that God gave me. And so I walked into the 11th grade I was free to pick up the books and start bringing books home. I was free to. Get involved in the classes that I was in and, you know, get back on the honor roll and stuff. Whereas before I kind of cheated my way through 10th grade and just skirted my way through ninth grade. And and so I was free to, to come home and, and actually do my homework for the first time ever and bring books home. I got teased a couple of times for bringing books home in the 11th grade and I was able to finally just like, laugh that off because I didn't hang with those guys anymore on a day-to-day basis. So I weren't, I wasn't trying to impress them anymore. That set me free to make a new set of friends and to evangelize and share, share Jesus with a lot of folks on campus. I ended up being a guy in the 12th grade who was bringing other kids to, to church with me and and to leader a prayer group in my school and that sort of thing, and get myself and keep myself on the honor roll and so. Because I was doing so well I was able to start thinking about college, whereas I just, I wasn't able to before I assumed that it would, that I would go to college, but honestly, there was no preparation for it before the 11th grade I learned from my childhood, experienced several things that have influenced me to wanna be an intentional father and want to be a homeschooling father. I learned that. Parenting is critically important and that what's most important to parenting. One of the things that's most essential and foundational to good parenting is having a good marriage, is having a good marriage. If my wife and myself are together and we are doing well, we will have done so much more to be good parents and we will be so further along in the work of being good parents to our children than what I grew up with, with the divorce and everything. And if I am there for my children. I should be the one who should be there to train them, to coach them to. I can't necessarily coach them in everything like in certain sports, but I mean life coach them. I should be the, the one there to train them in life I should be the one who should be their primary mentor in life. No after school program or public school program or, or even a church ministry should be doing the job that I am called to do as a father and as their parent. I learned that healthy kids are developed from healthy parents primarily. In other words, parenting is the number one indicator of the success or failure of their children. It is not up to society. It's not up to afterschool programs. It's not even up to church ministries to raise my children. That's what I learned. I learned that from my own experience firsthand, that what would've made the biggest difference for me was my parents and my parents having a healthy relationship with themselves so they could stay married and be together and we could be a healthy family. I felt crazy FOMO growing up because I did not have other siblings to go through. Even my, even the divorce with, I didn't have a lot of cousins to be around when I was growing up, I, I was essentially alone walk, walking out into the world alone and that made me feel, I. A constant fomo. And so that was also a part of the very strong trauma bond that I developed. You have to remember, I mean, I'm thrust into this culture where the rap music was a heavy influence. You had movies like Boys in the Hood and Menace of Society blood In Blood Out Colors, all these type of, you know, movies that was targeting young black men that were, that were out and popular. All of the guys that I was around were in were influenced by that and tried to live that sort of thuggish, macho. Sort of mentality. And so I was influenced by those people heavily and, and they became my mentors and they became my coaches for life instead of my own parents being the ones helping me navigate life and navigate my own identity as a young person, as an adolescent, as a young, as a preteen, and as a teenager. For our children, our five children, we are their primary influence. We, not the culture, not public, not the public school system, or the kids. They are around on the school campus. We are the ones who are influencing how our children think about themselves, think about other people, think about the world, think about their potential and who they can be in the future. And we are shaping that worldview based on the Bible we have. A quick Bible time with each other. Every single night we pray together. We walk through the Bible together. We praise and we worship. We listen to praise and worship music all, all day in this house together. And even the secular music that our kids listen to, we, we curate it. And oftentimes it's from movies that we've watched together. You know, we'll watch Trolls and they, they like this, the, the Trolls soundtracks. So we'll listen to that. We will curate other secular songs that we will let them listen to that don't have any themes that I grew up being influenced so heavily by sexual themes or. Or, or other things, primarily sexual themes in most of the music that I grew up with. Even the movie breakfast Club, I should not have been watching that movie, you know, as a six, seven, 8-year-old. I went back and saw that movie again when I was older and I was like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize that was in this movie. Oh my goodness. I didn't realize I, I can't watch this, especially now with my kids, you know, because of all the things that were in it. But I was just kinda left to fend for myself a lot because my mom had to work and I just didn't have people around me like that who were super healthy and, and steering me in the right direction. And so the trajectory that my kids are on will be determined primarily by how well I raised them. And how well me or my wife raised them and how we bring them up and what we expose them to. And so I learned all of those things when the Lord saved my soul and really became that father and that mentor that I needed to sort start making positive directions that would help me get to college and and, and make the decisions that I wanted to be a, a man with one wife, and that I would not be a man who would cheat on my wife, and that I would be a man who would. Have a, a larger family because I grew up so alone and lonely that I knew that I wanted a larger family because I wanted them to have each other, and I also wanted them to have two parents, two healthy parents who loved each other. And, and love them to take care of them. I wanted that for my children. And so that's why, and, and when I met my wife in college, and we'll talk about our story together in a separate episode, but when I met her and like it was like she wanted the same thing and so God introduced me to a person who like wanted the same thing so early in our college experience that we just, like, we quickly became fast friends and just a few years later we would end up getting married. And being married to her was such a great work by God of re-parenting and giving me a lot of the experiences, celebrating my birthday as well, and, and, and giving me a lot of gifts even if they were just hardly nothing, gifts or whatever. It was the intentionality that I just appreciated and, and the value that she placed on me that I loved so much about my wife and, and I still, Love so much about my wife. Even when it was just us two, we felt like a whole family because of how much we value one another and how much overlap we had with one another. And and now that we have our five kids, it is just a blessing every single day to have the household that I always wanted and homeschooling them has just been the joy of my life and has been amazing so far. And we're still on the road. And I absolutely love it because of all that I went through as a young person. And we knew that we wanted to homeschool and be together and be these intentional parents. And so that's why we work, have been working since 2002 building different businesses and now running the business that we've been in for years. Consulting and coaching. And selling courses, helping other people, other entrepreneurs build their lifestyle business. For us, a lifestyle business is most important. Don't have to be the richest person in the world, but we wanted a lifestyle business that would let us live out our values and our values as God. This family, and we love homeschooling because it allows us to be able to cultivate that family and that community of love, that community of safety and that community of, of healthy relationships and godly worldview that we know, that I know that was so important for me in my developmental years. We know that that is important to develop for our children, and that's what we want for them. And so the Homeschool Money Makeover program is focused on helping you self-fund that sort of lifestyle. If you wanna homeschool your children, even in, even if that's micro schooling you, you may still be asking a question of how to afford it for yourself. That is what we help you solve in a most comprehensive way through the Homeschool Money Makeover program. And so I would encourage you to go to homeschool money.com and take the free class. It's a 90 minute class. Take the free introductory class to learn more about this five step system that we call the Homeschool Money Makeover, and learn about the program and all about the program and how it will help you develop and transform your finances and help you get on track to building a lifestyle. Income without a nine to five job so that you can homeschool your children and live that intentional family lifestyle. I hope you have enjoyed this episode. In the next episode, crystal and Me will talk together about in the third part of our sort of origin story. We will talk about our life together and how we have come to develop the Homeschool Money Makeover program and tell then. I hope you've enjoyed this particular episode and hearing about my story and my childhood experiences that shaped me to be who I am today, I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. See you then.

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