The Alimond Show
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The Alimond Show
Kelly Kirk - Founder of 222 Muscle: Transforming Tragedy into Purpose and Healing Through Fitness
What if fitness could be the key to transforming your life after a tragedy? Join us as we explore the incredible journey of Kelly Kirk, founder of 222 Muscle, the Sofia Graham Foundation. Kelly takes us through his path from a small high school freshman joining the wrestling team to turning fitness into a sanctuary after the devastating loss of his fiancée, Sofia Graham. Listen as he shares the profound mental health benefits of fitness and how it became a cornerstone of his recovery.
Kelly's story is not just about personal healing but also about giving back. In this episode, he discusses how the foundation he created offers free gym memberships and training to those experiencing trauma, evolving to include leadership training and motivational speaking. With a certification from the John Maxwell leadership program, Kelly underscores how leadership principles can turn failures into growth opportunities. We delve into the interconnectedness of physical and mental health, emphasizing the importance of consistent effort and support in overcoming both personal and professional struggles.
We also touch on the emotional journey of a dedicated teacher navigating the chaos of COVID-19, the significance of a bodybuilding event in honor of Sofia, and the importance of expressing love and gratitude openly. Kelly shares his heartfelt reflections on balancing professional success with personal grief and the urgency of making every moment count. This episode is a powerful reminder to find purpose through perseverance, cherish your relationships, and communicate your feelings without hesitation.
My name is Kelly Kirk and the name of my business. It's a non-profit, it's the 222 Muscle, the Sophia Graham Foundation, and what we do is we raise money primarily for people that are going through a trauma or tragedy where a free gym membership or training or working out might be something that could eventually save their lives.
Speaker 2:How did you get into this?
Speaker 1:Through a path that nobody really wants to follow. I lost my fiance three years ago. That was kind of the catalyst for it. But the industry itself I've been in for probably 30 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. How did you get into fitness? Like how, when you were a kid, was it something you always kind of wanted to do?
Speaker 1:I was the smallest kid in school from elementary school all the way through high school, showed up in high school. I'll never forget the first day of school. My wrestling coach was walking through and he's taking names and he gets to me and he says Kelly, and I said yeah, and he looks and he says how tall are you? I said I don't know. Like four foot nine. I was tiny in my freshman year. How much do you weigh? I said 92 pounds. He says go home and tell your parents you're starting varsity wrestling this year.
Speaker 1:I have no idea what wrestling was but I fit because I was little. So immediately I needed to get big and I wanted muscles and I needed you know, and it kind of the same thing and I've always been athletic and it just kind of grew. In 2007, two of my best friends and I opened up a gym together and ran that for a while and we thought that was kind of a dream. Turned out not so much, but that's what we had thought. So just an industry that I've always been in and always been interested in it. And then I've sold medical devices for about nine years into the OR and ER. So I've always loved the science part of it. So I kind of have molded the two which doesn't often happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. What does fitness mean to you?
Speaker 1:Growth and health. Health more so, probably, from a mental standpoint than a physical standpoint. I always tell everybody, we all say we go to the gym, oh, because I want to live, to be healthy. No, you don't, you want to look good on the beach.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, that's what we all want and, whether you admit it or not, there's.
Speaker 1:you know that might not be the actual end goal, but there's some truth. You want to feel good about yourself.
Speaker 1:So, it's why we all you know, why we all go. So, yes, there's the benefits of the physical health, but to me it's a place where you can kind of just leave the rest of the world for a little while and do something that's just for you and, from a fitness standpoint, if you are in shape, that's something no one can take away from you. If somebody sees somebody that walks into the room and they are in shape whether they're an athlete, a bodybuilder or just somebody who's taking care of themselves you know that that person has put the work in to get there. Nobody handed it to them, they didn't inherit it, they didn't win it in the lottery. They did the work and that is very, very impressive to me. Anytime you meet somebody like that, that is impressive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how do you feel? I mean, obviously it's very important to you, the mental health of working out as well. Tell me a bit about how you kind of got to that place.
Speaker 1:The mental part. Well, the gym has always been my best part of the best part of my day the what I would look forward to, can can't wait to get out of work. I can go to the gym and train, you know, and that was with my buddies and working out and talking smack with each other, and just the whole nine yards from a teenager. You know all the way through. None of that changes whether you're 15 or 55, you know, as a guy, it's still the same thing the camaraderie yeah but the mental health part of it really hit me after everything happened with Sophia, so I met her.
Speaker 2:Tell me about Sophia.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, that kind of ties into the whole mental. I met her in. It would be 10 years ago now and I owned a gym. The gym was struggling and she walked into the gym gym, decided she wanted a membership. She had seen me at an event and wanted to meet me. So this was all on her. I always laugh at that. Long story short. We she joined the gym, she started training there, her and I went out on a couple dates. We just hit it off and it was just perfect.
Speaker 1:It was unlike anything else that I had had and this was at a time in my life when I had just gone through a bad breakup. The business was struggling, I was struggling health wise. I was overweight, uh, blood pressure was high. I didn't feel good. It was just all the stress of the world and business coming down on me and she didn't care. She believed in me 100% and we had been dating about six or seven months and I lost the gym. And when I lost the gym I lost everything. I lost where I lived. I ended up in my car, living at a rest stop on 95 for about three months, lied to everybody hey Kelly, where are you staying? Oh, I'm over at my family's house, my family. Hey, where are you staying? I'm at a friend's house. I just lied to everybody.
Speaker 2:What was it like carrying that burden? It was awful Not being able to tell people.
Speaker 1:It was awful and I probably could have told people, but I was embarrassed. You know, there's a sense of pride. Nobody wants to tell somebody that you lost, don't have any place to go. Sophia didn't care, baby, you got this, you'll get a job, you'll build it back. Let's do this. She was the one that pushed me and believed in me, literally when I didn't believe in myself.
Speaker 1:And over the course of the next couple months we had stopped working out because I had lost the gym. And a friend of mine owned a gym here locally and I contacted him and was talking to him and he said you know, I'll give you and Sophia a free membership. He said but the only way I'm going to give it to you is if you promise you will use it. I said what do you mean? He said you have to be here to work out. I'm not going to give you a membership if it's just going to sit, but if you're going to use it, I said we'll be there tomorrow. He gave us two memberships. The next day, 4.30 in the morning, we walked in together and we started training together.
Speaker 1:Six months down the road, my physical was getting better. I was losing weight, looking better, feeling better. As my physical got better, my mental improved and that really just kind of was the catalyst. Not long after that I got a job substitute teaching. Substitute teaching turned into teaching nutrition. At high school she and I started our own nutrition company teaching people how to do healthy keto and into the bodybuilding industry, working for the NPC IFBB working shows. I mean, it just took off.
Speaker 1:And it felt like her and I were just literally kind of building an empire and I was like you know, there's a reason why I've had to wait this long in my life to get to this point with this person Because I needed to see all that was wrong with me and other people to get to her to know what worked.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And things were going fantastic and we go through COVID and towards the end of COVID, her mom had come in to visit and she was staying with her mom in a hotel for a few days. And Friday night, july 30th, three years ago, her mom calls at 1230 and Sophia didn't wake up. There was no underlying health conditions that anybody knew about. There was nothing wrong. It's just one of those things that just happens, wow. And to say that had rocked my world is an understatement.
Speaker 1:I've been through some stuff in the previous decade. In 2009, my nephew and niece were 11 and 12 years old and they were brutally murdered by their stepdad. Oh my God, six months later, my mom passed away. Niece were 11 and 12 years old and they were brutally murdered by their stepdad. Six months later, my mom passed away. A month later, my dad was diagnosed with stage four glioblastoma brain tumor and he passed away a year later. So I went through a lot, and that was at the time when the gym was starting to fail and go down. All of that was incredibly devastating. None of it scratches the surface to what it means to lose your person.
Speaker 2:You know, it's just completely different.
Speaker 1:So about three or four months after everything happened, I was sitting at lunch with my best friend and I said I want to do something in Sophia's honor. And he said well, what I said? I don't know, you know something fitness related. And he's like well, I mean, said I don't know you know something fitness related. And he's like well, I mean you could sell t-shirts or you could supplement something that's meaningful, you know. And he says, well, what did she mean to you, what did she do for you? And I said she believed in me when nobody else did. And he said then that's your business, that's what you do. You believe in other people when they can't believe in themselves. And there sparked 222 Muscle, the Sophia Graham Foundation.
Speaker 1:So, um, again, anybody that's going through a trauma or tragedy that you just feel like you're at the end, there's no way out. And it doesn't have to be a death. Sometimes it's a divorce, Sometimes it's the loss of a pet. It could be loss of a job, A job or a home Getting out of I've had guys that have gotten out of jail Substance abuse, I mean there's so many things. We all internalize everything differently and there's so many things that just make it feel like I can't grow. I'm done. I'm at the end. There's nothing.
Speaker 2:I can do, you just feel stuck.
Speaker 1:You can't move forward. And if you get into the gym, not only is there scientific evidence on the physical part, with the endorphins and the serotonin levels and the stuff that it does, but the mental part itself. You start walking by the mirror going, oh well, I look a little better. So it just changes everything. And you also start to get proud of yourself because now every day, at whatever 6 pm or 6 am, I've gotten up and walked into this building. You're doing something consistent, like over and over and over so there's such a tie-in from the mental and physical.
Speaker 1:So I started this foundation with the thought of all we're going to do is raise money to give people free gym memberships, and that's primarily what we have done so far. But in the last year it has branched off. I got certified through John Maxwell leadership and keynote speaking, so I've always felt like I had a story to tell. I had met with one of the representatives, john Maxwell, about five years ago, and Sophia said baby, you need to do this. And I said man, the timing's not right. I don't know, just didn't feel right. And last year I teach high school nutrition and every year at the beginning of the year we do mental health instead of physical health. So about the first six weeks I talk about mental health and every year I tell my story. And for high school kids that are like this and talking and crazy, for that day when I tell my story you can hear a pin drop.
Speaker 2:And everyone has their phone down.
Speaker 1:Everything is there. And last year when I told my story it was different. It was still very emotional, but it was a little more powerful. It was a better message. It wasn't me blobbering my eyes out and being upset, it was me kind of putting together the steps of where I was going, what I was doing and how.
Speaker 2:And where you are today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I said okay, so I need to do something with this. So I called my contact back at John Maxwell. He contacted me right away. Again, it's been five years, kelly, I'm so happy to talk to you. He said, man, I can't wait to get you on board, you and Sophia. He said you guys have such a great story to tell. This is just going to be amazing. Let's get you certified and in and graduate in Orlando and all this stuff. And I said, well, my story's changed a little bit. And I told him, oh my goodness. So I rolled through the course like I was putting 10 hours a day in it to get through the course. I graduated last August and it took the focus of the foundation to a larger level. So now not only are we trying to raise money, but now, as a leadership consultant, I will go into businesses, groups, schools, churches and talk about leadership. And the leadership part that I talk about is failing forward. We all fail.
Speaker 2:Failing forward. How do you fail?
Speaker 1:forward. How do you take that loss? You know, if it's a sports team, you lose the championship. People go well, that's still good, you got second. No, you failed, you won it. Go well, that's still good, you got second. No, you failed, you won it first. That's not a bad thing. You take it, you learn from it. You figure it out. In business. So many sales reps and stuff go through things. Where this month was great, this year was great. Now, all of a sudden, I can't get clients. Who do I talk to? What do I do? Ceos? The same thing. My business is failing. What do I do? So I talk about the leadership from that standpoint and the big thing is that I push is really growth. When you didn't think it was possible, I grew. When I didn't think it was possible, I was living in my car at the bottom of the barrel, literally contemplated how do I end this? This is not what I want to do.
Speaker 1:And I had somebody that believed in me and somebody that got me working out and somebody that got me just thinking the right way and little by little, by little, I pulled out of that. So again, the growth when you didn't think it was possible doesn't have to be a mental, you know, grief thing, although a lot of times it is. It could be sales, it could be business, it could be relationship wise. It could be sales, it could be business, it could be relationship-wise. It could be substance abuse. There's so many different things where people get stuck and just feel like you're at the end.
Speaker 1:So what I do now as a business is a company or a sports team or an organization can, instead of paying me to come in and do leadership is they make a donation to the foundation. We're a 501c3. It's fully tax deductible and I will come in and spend two, six, eight hours free and teach them leadership and growth and all of that. So it really works all the way around. It brings money into the foundation, it gets me to be able to talk about what I love to talk about and hopefully gets the organization some leadership information that maybe they didn't otherwise have.
Speaker 2:What does that mean to you to be able to give back through the foundation?
Speaker 1:Honestly, the biggest thing it does is it makes me feel good. It makes me feel good to talk about Sophia. Everybody doesn't, you know everybody deals with grief differently. I'm also now a certified grief counselor, which taking that course and going through that was kind of silly because I was like, well, I could write this book.
Speaker 2:I'm not really sure I need to take this course.
Speaker 1:You know this is kind of dumb. Yeah, I'm like got this, we're good. But everybody handles grief differently and some people, if you lose somebody, it's kind of and I don't mean this disrespectfully, but out of sight, out of mind.
Speaker 2:I don't want to think about them or talk about them, because that makes it hard.
Speaker 1:You tend to compartmentalize. I'm the exact opposite. I want to talk about her 24-7. And some people are not comfortable with that. I'll be in the gym and somebody will say, hey, have you ever tried this machine? And I'll go oh my God, yeah, that's Sophia and I's favorite machine. Or that's Sophia and I's favorite restaurant. I still talk that way. To me that's just normal.
Speaker 2:Right, and it's not for everybody, because if you don't talk about it, you feel like you might lose a part of it, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so. I've never really sat and thought about it. I haven't put enough thought into it to go. Why am I doing this? I just know that I'm comfortable doing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Somebody else isn't?
Speaker 1:Well, that's kind of on you, that's on them how they react to it.
Speaker 1:So being able to go out and talk about leadership. Of course, she is always tied into that. I don't go into a business and talk about, oh my God, this is what happened and how horrible it was and how bad my life was. That's not what it is, but I do tell them my story so they see where I was at and where I go through, and that brings me closer to her, brings me closer to who I am. I know that she would be proud of me. She was so proud of me for pulling myself out of living at the rest stop becoming a teacher. I never in a million years thought I would be a high school teacher Are you kidding me? And now I love it.
Speaker 1:I was nominated for teacher of the year this year. I was Senior Class Sponsor. I was just involved in everything. The kids love me. I love what I do. They don't pay enough, but I love what I do. So I know that she would be super proud of this. This was what she wanted me to do five years ago and now I'm like baby, I'm finally doing it.
Speaker 2:She sounds like she was an angel sent to you, to get you through a period of your time.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent. And that actually is where kind of 222 Muscle came from. So it's 222 Muscle and the Sophia Graham Foundation. When she and I had been dating for a couple months and I'd been living in my car and a friend of ours found out and said oh my goodness, you're not living in your car, come stay with me in my condo. So I'm living with a friend of ours, sherry, and Sherry's condo flooded. Insurance puts her up in a hotel. They put her up in a two bedroom suite hotel. She goes well, you might as well come over here and stay in the hotel. I said heck, yeah. So I move into this suite in this hotel with Sherry. And Sophia is on her way over the first night to visit and she texts me. She says hey, baby, I'm a couple blocks away. I'll be there in a few minutes. What room are you guys in? I said we're in room 222. Just come up and see us. And she says great, is that on the first floor? Could?
Speaker 2:be no baby. It's right in the hotel. I know.
Speaker 1:That was the argument and I no, baby 2-2-2 is on the second floor and that turned into a huge. Well, sometimes they have the second floor because of the basement. So it became a huge joke. And fast forward three months later I was helping her get ready for her first figure and physique show and they give you little round numbers to put on your hip and they're random. They're assigned. Her number was 2-2-2. She wins the overall. We were like oh, that's definitely our number. Fast forward a year later we're in South Carolina at national championships for her to become a pro. She wins both of her classes. There's 1300 people. Her number was 2-2-2. So it just kind of became our thing, yeah.
Speaker 2:Is it one of those numbers? Sometimes, you know, you randomly look at the clock too, and it'll be 2-22?.
Speaker 1:Well, and there's been so many things. I mean that's the big thing. And I tell people I don't care what your faith is, what you believe, which I promise you, this is not it, and I couldn't have said that three years ago definitively. But there are so many things that happened that it's just not a coincidence. You know, I'll, I'll feel somebody tap my shoulder and I'll wake up and I'll roll over and it's 222.
Speaker 2:You know just, I mean so many just crazy things, and there are so many big things like that.
Speaker 1:So that's where 222 muscle, you know, kind of came from and there's, it's great. That's where the necklace came from, so and the logo, so the necklace she had one of these was Sophia's necklace and the other was mine and we each wore one and when everything happened, sophia was cremated, so I had her ashes put inside one of them and I had them welded together. So I have her with me and then that became the logo for the foundation. That's beautiful.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's like I said, I'm very lucky in a sense that everything I do now ties into the same thing. I teach nutrition, I competitively bodybuild, I talk about growth. Everything I do still ties into everything. You know, I've got five or six irons in the fire at all times, but they're all tied to each other in some way shape or form.
Speaker 2:Tell me a little bit about teaching and this group of seniors that are getting ready to graduate that you started with.
Speaker 1:No, they are done. You see how relaxed I look today, I know right. So if you, had asked me this a week ago, whew.
Speaker 2:They just graduated.
Speaker 1:It was a lot. So I took over this class my second year teaching and my mom had been super involved in school when I was there. We and my mom had been super involved in school when I was there. We used to build the homecoming floats at my house and all this stuff. So I was senior class president myself so I always wanted to be involved. They needed somebody the year of COVID and I said, yeah, I'll do it.
Speaker 1:Sure, why not. So I meet these kids as freshmen and it's COVID. Nobody wants to turn their computer on, nobody. And if they do, they've got three masks on and they're. I'm like dude, you're in your bedroom by yourself. Nobody did any work. You couldn't fail anybody. You couldn't really teach because it was just, it was a mess it was a mess.
Speaker 2:You know the whole way around. I have three kids and I know how hard it is Sophomore year.
Speaker 1:They roll around and they walk into school and I think, okay, this is going to be great, we're sophomores. Well, they were freshmen. They didn't know, they'd never set foot in the building before, so it was a learning curve. It really took until about midway through their junior year when these kids kind of hit their stride. And once they did, they were just amazing. And most of the time the classes have two or three people that are sponsoring it and I by myself, and the reason I could was because the kids were just so good. They were in my room 24-7. Mr Kirk, we got. We sponsored an international night. We made more money than the schools ever made. We did homecoming prom, senior pranks, which we're not supposed to do. I mean tons of different stuff. And it was just fun, a little bittersweet, at graduation last week watching these 500 kids that I called mine graduate and everybody says, well, are you going to take the freshman class next year? Nope, nope, I need a break. Give me a year. Give me a year, maybe we'll see what's after that.
Speaker 2:Well, it sounds like you put your heart and soul into that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I really did so it was fun that I would want to do. I've always been in sales, ran businesses, so to teach was very different. I've never had a job where I'm there for six, seven, eight hours every day, same place.
Speaker 2:Usually I'm out traveling and doing stuff, doing different things.
Speaker 1:So it was very different, but again it ties into and fits perfectly with everything I do. I'm very transparent. The kids know my story. They all follow Sophia on social media. There was one day I walked in and the kids two of the guys were over there and they were arguing. I hear one of the kids go whatever, sophia would kick your ass. And I said what are you guys talking about? He goes. We were getting ready to arm wrestle and I and Sophia, you know, was a competitive figure, competitor and he goes. We were getting ready to arm wrestle and I told him that Sophia would kick his ass because she's got more muscles. I said my Sophia, yeah, mr Kirk, and that just made me feel so good what you know. So the kids all know my story.
Speaker 2:You're like I can't have my Sophia do that yeah right, I can't.
Speaker 1:And there's so many kids at the school that I teach that have been through so much different stuff that they can relate, you know, whether it's a brother, dad getting shot in a drive-by or a drug overdose. I mean, there's the population that I teach isn't all that way, but there's certainly a lot and there is just in this world and mental health is so big right now, you know, for everybody. I mean, these kids really went through something that none of us ever had to experience. So I like being that person. They know they can walk into my room and if you need a mental health break, whatever's going on, you can tell me anything and we'll figure it out.
Speaker 2:So it's just yeah.
Speaker 1:And it just ties into my foundation, it ties into the nutrition, it's just everything really ties together and it's one of those where it's together and it's one of those where it's the the sad days, the hard days, when things are going wrong, when things are bad, car breaks down, you know it's too hot out.
Speaker 1:Whatever there's, however, many things those days are very difficult without Sophia. I'll get home and I'll be upset and I'll kind of cry and I'm like, oh baby, I wish you were here to support me. They do not scratch the surface to how hard the good days are, Because the days that I come home and I'm proud of myself, I say baby, this kid came in and I talked to her and I said this happened and we talked about this and then I went in, I had this great workout and then this also happened and I sold you know, I have two more clients and I'll have all this good stuff going on and then it just hits you. She would be so proud of me and she's not sitting here physically and then the silence hits you.
Speaker 1:And those are a lot harder and it's funny. But the hardest days are the good days.
Speaker 2:As crazy as that is? No, it's not crazy. I can understand that.
Speaker 1:Tell me about your event that you have coming up in July. So July 30th is a bodybuilding event here locally in Woodbridge, and the two women that promote it I've been working with since 2008,. I think they promote three bodybuilding shows. The show in July is Clash of the Titans and it's a drug-tested natural show, and that was the show where Sophia and I were supposed to work that show the next day. So her mom had come into town. She was visiting from Monday to Friday. I had seen Sophia on Wednesday. We went to dinner Friday night. The last time I talked to her was about 1030 at night and I said, all right, baby sounds good. And she's like I can't wait to see you tomorrow. We're going to have a lot of fun at the show. And then obviously neither one of us made it to the show, you know, the next day.
Speaker 1:So the women that promote this are just absolutely amazing, and two of my best friends and they have um sort of handed the show over to the foundation. So this is in Sophia's honor and in honor of the foundation. So the sponsors that come in instead of um people coming in and paying a sponsorship fee and being able to set up a booth to sell stuff or be on t-shirts or whatever. They make a donation to the foundation. And when they make a donation to the foundation, then we put them in our digital magazine. We have booths set up, we put flyers out for them, we'll give away product, you name it.
Speaker 1:It's a win-win for them. It's a win-win for them. It's a, it's a write-off. You know, we're a 501c3 and for us we get exposure and more people to to know about it. So, and it'll be this year, it'll be the three-year anniversary of you know when everything happened and I'll you know at the event. It's hard for me to only talk for two minutes, but I'll get about two minutes on stage to kind of talk to everybody and tell them.
Speaker 1:But it's those events, they're our people. It's one of the hardest things for me to do is to walk into these events, but there's no place else that I'd rather be. These are all the people that knew her, know me and it's just where I want to be.
Speaker 2:And you think of the alternative as what? Sitting at home and doing?
Speaker 1:nothing, yeah, and along those lines we were talking about gym and the mental health of that. The gym used to be the best thing. Best part of my day, every day, was walking into the gym. That was always the best part. Now it's hands down the most difficult. I wouldn't miss it for the world. But there are days where I pull into the gym and I sit in the parking lot and I bawl my eyes out for an hour because I can't get my foot out the door to go in, and I do it. There are days I'm in the middle of my workout and I'll break down. I just kind of pull my hoodie up and cry and go through it. I wouldn't trade it for the world, but what used to be my safe space and my happy place is now the toughest thing that I do, sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but thing that I do, sure, yeah, but your perseverance with putting one foot in front of the other and sticking with it is inspiring, thank you.
Speaker 1:That's the growth when you didn't think it was possible, because I certainly never thought it was possible, and the failing forward is a big part of that. And everybody thinks failure, failure, is so bad. No, it's not. We all fail.
Speaker 2:You learn from failure.
Speaker 1:Tell my kids all the time it's important, it's scary and it's hard but, it'll make you a better person, and as we, get older and especially when I go to businesses and different organizations, failure is not an option. You have to hit these sales numbers, but it is, it's reality. Learn from it. Let's grow from it, let's figure out how Is it your management style? Is it their sales style, what is it? And there's different tests and things we do to help it. So it's neat because I get to take everything that I know from the grief that I deal with daily and I get to transfer that into a business setting and growth setting.
Speaker 1:So usually when I talk about growth everybody just thinks personal growth. No, it could be money, it could be business, it could be. So it allows me to really expand kind of my horizons Absolutely Well.
Speaker 2:You've already given us so much amazing advice. Are there any last parting words you'd like to leave us with? Maybe something in Sophia's honor?
Speaker 1:Just keep going. I mean, find your why, figure out what your reason is to get up and go every day. If you had asked me five years ago, I would have gone. My why is Sophia and I want to own a house and I want to have a dog, and you know what I mean? It kind of would. Now there's no question. My why is I want to make her proud.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Find your. Why Figure out what it is and why you get up? It might be your. Why Figure out what it is and why you get up? It might be your kids, it might be your parents, it might be your job, it might be your dog, it might be something religious. Everybody has their. Why Figure it out and don't walk away from it.
Speaker 2:Well, I am positive that she is smiling down on you today.
Speaker 1:The other thing I would tell everybody and this just kind of hit me, and I tell people this all the time is we're not guaranteed tomorrow, and I know that from my nephew and niece and another nephew, another brother that passed away, my mom and dad. I mean, all of these were so sudden. Sophia, if you're mad at somebody, if you're upset with somebody, fix it. Tell them. If Sophia were to walk in the door right now, there is nothing that I need to tell her that she didn't already know, Not one thing. And I find myself very fortunate for that, because I think of other people in my lives. You know, there were certain things that I probably would have told my parents or something, but with Sophia it just wasn't it.
Speaker 1:So you at least that part of yeah, that's, it's very comforting to me to know that there is nothing that I'm like.
Speaker 2:Oh baby, I wish I could tell she knows she knows, so she knows how much you love yeah, so just tell anybody. Yeah, it's nice, yeah, so so don't hold back on putting your feelings out there and telling the people that you care, yep everybody always laughs.
Speaker 1:I said we need to normalize telling your friends you love them. As dumb as that sounds, I was like, all right, love you Doesn't mean, but you know it's just, it's not like that, right, we all everybody gets so caught up in that. But you just need to tell people how you feel. Don't have a regret that, oh, I wish I could have said this or done that.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for your beautiful words.
Speaker 1:Thank you, I mean.
Speaker 2:I needed to hear today, and so will our listeners.
Speaker 1:Awesome, thank you. Thank you. I'm very happy to be here, absolutely. Thank you for having me.