Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Kelly, welcome board to the show today. I appreciate having you. It's the end of the day, so it's, you know, I'm a little tired but I have been looking forward to this talk the whole day. I want to start with a unusual question. If you had to recall your happiest memory, what would it be?
[00:00:20] Speaker B: There's a lot.
I had a pretty awesome childhood and a pretty easy Life up until 30 and I can think of things with learning to ride my mini bike with my dad.
That was kind of a rite of passage in the family. I think that's. I still remember that day vividly. I was about five years old, a couple of different wrestling. Incredible.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: To remember something that's, that's quite incredible to remember something from when you were five. What was special about that memory?
[00:00:49] Speaker B: I'm the youngest of five and I'm 55. So this was 1974 and kind of a rite of passage. We had an old beat up, barely running minibike and my oldest brother got it when he was 5 or 6 and got to ride it and my next brother's a couple years older than me him. And when it got to me, I was tiny. It was very, very, very small kid. I'm still small now, but I was a very small kid and was just petrified that I wasn't going to be able to do it. But everybody talked about, oh, I can't wait till you can ride the mini bike. And I remember dad taking me out and we went down to the end of the street, we called it the dead end. And it was this big dirt area goes down into the woods. And I remember getting on it and being able to balance, you know, I could ride a bike so that was okay. But this thing was fat and heavy and smoked and smelled like gas and oil, you know.
And I just remember getting on it with my big old giant helmet on my head and riding it across the kind of the parking lot or the dead end part and going down. This to me was the size of Mount Everest hill and getting to the bottom and actually getting stuck at the bottom and my dad coming down and just being frustrated with me and what do you mean you can't make it up? And I just remember being petrified that I was going to, you know, let him down and not because, you know, he was angry or, but my expectations of myself, you know, and what it was. I remember getting on that back on the motorcycle or on the mini bike and making it up to the top of the hill and my dad just cheering and Me going home and telling everybody, I just, like I said, I can still smell the, the gas and the, you know, the oil and everything on it right now. Because this motor mini bike back then, it was probably 30, 30 years old at that point, so. So that's definitely one of my better memories from when I was little.
There's a lot of stuff like that. When I opened up the, I owned a gym. I owned a 40,000 square foot gym with two business partners. For a while that opening day was something that was pretty huge and just lots of different stuff with family and friends. I've learned now, kind of through everything I've gone through that a lot of the best moments in life and the things that I remember are not huge events, they're small events. I think about now things with Sophia, you know, as I tell you that story, some of the smallest things in the world are things that come back to me. Now I'll be making dinner and a song will come on and I'll remember, oh, I remember we danced in the kitchen to this being silly, you know, shaking our butts and laughing about something. And a lot of times I realize now it's the smaller events in life that tend to have the biggest impact a lot of times.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: Thank you so much for sharing. I mean on this show particularly, people really do open up and give a little bit of themselves. And I feel like it's a gift to me personally and to our audience. So I want to really appreciate you and thank you for being vulnerable.
You mentioned you kind of said this earlier on. You had a pretty easy life or a blessed life until you were 30.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: And then something changed long about. Well, really at 30, I guess I started growing up a little bit.
Had always, up until that point I was senior class president in high school and captain of the wrestling team, baseball team. When I graduated college, you know, if I wanted a job, I was able to get it into my, I guess mid, mid to late 30s, kind of the same thing. But I was just plodding along. I didn't have a necessarily a goal. Didn't know really where life was going to take me even at that point. And my two best friends and I decided we were going to open up a gym and we ended up with a million and a half dollar loan. We opened up a gym and I was I guess 39 or so right at that point.
And owning your own business was an eye opener. But when I hit 40, that was when really I kind of the first, first of several tragedies, you know, kind of Kicked in. And that was the first time in my life I'd ever had to deal with, I'm not going to say adversity, because I'd certainly dealt with adversity, but the first time that things that were overwhelming, you know, kind of got to me and took me down, for lack of a better word, you know, bring you to your knees.
When I was, I guess 40 now at this point, my nephew and niece were 11 and 12 years old. They were my brother's kids. And my brother was divorced and his wife had remarried. And we get a phone call.
Well, I get a phone call. It's about 9:00 on a Tuesday night. And it was my dad. And my parents were older. And I thought for sure when the phone rang, it was going to be dad saying something had happened to mom. You know, you always worry about some. You know, you worry about your parents. And I answered the phone and I said, hey, Pop, what's going on? And he said, kelly, he did it. He said, the son of a Did it. And I said, did what, dad? What are you. What are you talking about? He said, he killed the kids.
I said, what? He said, he killed the kids.
And my. My brother's ex wife, her husband had come home from work and he got in an argument with his wife, my brother's ex wife, and went downstairs and got his gun and shot her twice. And then proceeded to walk into my nephew and niece's bedroom, my nephew's room first. And he walked in, it was about 10:00 at night. And he put his gun to his head and he shot Connor and killed him instantly. And Brittany, his sister, got up and ran to the door and he grabbed her by the face and put the gun here and blew out the side of her neck. She actually lived for about four and a half hours.
So that night I ended up at the hospital, you know, with my brother and her in surgery. And the feelings, the emotions, everything that you're going through is completely surreal. It doesn't feel like a movie. It doesn't feel like reality. You know, it's just completely different. And, you know, it's something that, thank God most people don't have to go through. And it's something that I would never wish on anybody, but it was really the first time in my life where I'd had something, you know, tragic like that happen. And. And you figure it's probably going to be the only time in your life, like that's kind of the initial thought, but. So I lost both of my. My Nephew and niece at that point. And I also, and this is tough for me to say, but my brother, who's four years older than me and my hero growing up, you know, everybody wants to be like their big brother.
Kevin died that night. And not in a physical sense. He's still here and kicking. And I see him, you know, every weekend or every other weekend, but a part of him died, you know, just completely changed. He was the vice president of a large repository company making good money and just super successful. And he ended up on disability and dealing with mental stuff and just depression and you name it after that. So that was a really tough thing. On top of that I had the two deaths, but also just really losing my brother. But that whole thing was hard on my family. On the flip side of that, that was also when I realized this gym community, you know, I owned, I was a third owner of this gym and we had 4,000 members, something like that. And you realize what a, how good people can be and what a close knit family that can also be. You know, these are people that are paying me 25, 30amonth. And you would think that they're just customers, but it turns out they weren't just customers. You know, that the people that were coming into the gym and bringing their kids into the kids room and working out and taking aerobics and you name it, you know, that was home to them. And I, and you know, I was family to them. And the amount of outpouring and support that I got from the community was just, you know, absolutely, you know, amazing.
So that was kind of when things, you know, when things changed the first time.
Fast forward about six months after that and my mom, who was 81, suddenly passed away and she was older and had been sick, so it wasn't completely, you know, complete surprise, but she had been doing good. So, you know, nobody really expected that.
We just figured that, you know, she needed to go see her grandkids. That was kind of what was going on. Brittany and Connor needed their grandmother is what we, we figured. So we were able to deal with that. It was tough on my dad. And about 30 days after that, my dad was diagnosed with a stage four glioblastoma brain tumor. And he was told that he would probably have 30 to 60 days to live.
But my dad is, was, you know, World War II generation, different type of people than we have now. And he made it about 13 months and did pretty well, you know, up and up until the end.
So in a matter of, I don't know, 15 months 17 months, something like that. You know, I lost my nephew and niece to a, a brutal murder. My mom passed away. My dad had this brain tumor and I, you know, took him to radiation and chemotherapy every day and dealt with that and kind of went through that whole thing, which is always tough to lose your parents.
And it just all happened so quick. And like I said, I had, had never ever thought that I would have to deal with, you know, all of that or even really imagine what it would be like for somebody to go through it after having. I'm not, like I said, I'm not going to easy life.
We weren't rich, it wasn't anything like that. It wasn't easy. But if I worked for something, I got it. If I wanted something, it kind of just happened. And I had a great childhood and everything growing up, but that was all pretty devastating. And that's 15 years ago this Valentine's Day, two days before Valentine's Day. So this February will be 15 years when that happened with the kids and I guess 14 years with my dad coming out of that.
Over the next few years I ended up, had a split with my business partners.
We had a difference in how business should be done. So I left the gym and walked away from it. And about a year after that they lost the gym. So I came back in and actually took over the gym, assumed the loan, started running things on my own and kind of doing it how I wanted to. And at that point I really thought that I had been through all of what I had been through.
You know, for some reason, I don't know what that reason is, but there's got to be something because now, you know, I've, I've got the gym myself and I'm running it and I made through it and I've really seen what this community can do and how people can react. And there was just a lot of positives, you know, going through all that.
Fast forward a couple years into owning the business, it just wasn't going to make it. We had had made too many poor business decisions when we first opened it that were still, you know, hanging on bad lease, you know, buildings that was old and decrepit and wasn't going to work. We had a bad reputation because of everything that had happened. Just wasn't, you know, going to make it. And a few months before we, the gym ended up closing. A few months before the gym ended up closing, it was when I met Sophia. And again I kind of thought everything was, was happening sort of for a reason. So I had the story where I met her is actually kind of funny. I had gone out to lunch and I came back from lunch and my front desk staff said, hey, there was a girl here earlier that wants to get a membership. And I said, okay. Did you, did you sign her up? No, she said she only wanted to talk to you. I said, okay, when she coming back? She'll be back at like three. And I said, okay. So about three o'clock, this little fireball of energy at four foot eleven comes walking in. Hi, I'm Sophia. She said, I wanted to talk to you about getting a membership. I said, hi, Sophia. And I said, well, let me take you on a tour. And she was cute as could be. And I was, you know, feeling like I was Mr. Important. Let me show you around the gym, you know, what are your goals? And she says, oh, I want to compete and figure on a bodybuilding stage. I've been to a couple shows and I just really want to get involved in it. And I know you guys do this. And of course, you know, here's me with my chest poked out and taking her around the gym. And now here's a. This is a leg press. And this is how you do this. Go ahead and try it. And she would get on it and go, oh, wow, I've never used one of these. Oh, well, let me show you this. You know, we did the whole thing. Long story short, she joins the gym and I find out, she tells me later, she knew all the damn equipment. She was playing me way more than I was playing her. So I just remember, I thought I was, you know, Mr. Stud. Look at this. This cute young girl. And no, she had it all planned out way before I did. So we used to laugh about that.
She had seen me at a bodybuilding competition and heard about the gym and she did, you know, want the knowledge. But she was like, no, I just thought you were cute and I wanted to come meet you. So, you know, I always laugh because I always thought, you know, and guys, we always think we must be the one. No, it was all her. She made it work and her and I just hit it off and it just, you know, things were in the gym were going horrible because I was losing the gym and it was just stressful money time. I was probably working 115 hours a week, you know, trying to keep it going. We were open 24 hours a day and she was supportive. You can do this. We can get it, you know, with everything. And finally, around, right around now, right around Thanksgiving time, it got to the Point where I couldn't keep the gym open anymore. And the powerhouse corporate, the family that owned the gym franchise said, let it go. He was like, kelly, let it go. He said, if you want another gym in the future, you're a great owner. I'm happy to get you one. He said, this is not a failure. He's like, a lot of good people have had good businesses and just didn't make it. He said, you know, this was it. There's a lot of things that were into it, and it's not worth the stress and the amount of heartache that you're putting into this. And that, for me, was hard to swallow because I had always been successful at everything. And to think that this gym that I, you know, put my life into for the past however many years wasn't going to make it anymore was devastating to me. So the gym closed its doors, and I ended up losing everything. I lost literally everything. I lost where I live. I lost just everything.
And I ended up living in my car at a rest stop for about three months. And I was driving a Smart car, so it's not like it was a giant station wagon. I was in a Smart car, and I just lied to everybody. You know, my family would call or text me and say, hey, you know, are you okay? Yeah, I'm good. Where are you staying? I'm staying at a friend's house, and my friend. Friends call and text and, hey, are you doing okay? Yeah, I'm doing okay. Where are you staying? I'm staying with my family. You know, I lied to everybody, and in retrospect, I didn't need to. You know, there were enough people that were supportive and believed in me, but I didn't believe in myself.
The only person I knew that believed in me and knew all of this was Sophia, and she was renting a room here in Woodbridge, so she didn't have any place that I could stay. But there were nights I'd sneak over and climb in the window so I had some place to stay, you know, and she just kept telling me, baby, it'll get better. You can do this. You know, what do you want to do? How do you just. She was supportive, and I was really bottom of the barrel. I mean, there was a time where I literally sat in my car one night, and I was like, I'm done. How do I end this? I don't want to do it anymore. I've let everybody down. I've let myself down.
There's no way out. I don't have a job I don't have an income. I don't even know where to turn. Where do you go? It's one thing if you get fired from a company and you can go look to another company to do the same thing. Where do you go when you own a business and it's suddenly gone? You know, you can't start a new business. You know, do you tuck your tail? It was just I was bottom of the barrel and thank God I didn't do anything.
But Sophia just believed in me. And finally one day, acquaintance of mine, actually an old boss who I worked with at a Gold's Gym, he owns a gym out here in this area. And he and I were talking and he just said, hey, you know, I, you know, are you working out anywhere? And I said, no, can't afford the gym, so I'm not working out anywhere. And he said, well, I'll tell you what, he said, I'll give you and Sophia a free gym membership, but I'll only give you a free gym membership in one condition. And I said, what's that? He said that you guys use it. He said, I'm not going to give you something if you're not going to use it. If you're going to make sure you're in here, I will give you guys a complimentary membership. I said, bob, if you say that, we'll be there tomorrow. So he put the stuff in the System and at 4:30 the next morning, I met Sophia and we drive out to this gym and she and I started training together. And I hadn't been working out. My diet was awful. I was £226 and I'm 5 5, so that was not a good thing.
And we started training together. And little by little I started feeling a little bit better and losing a little bit of weight and my blood pressure going down and my strength going up and just, you know, enjoying her company and starting to believe in myself. And six months later, as my physical got better, I realized my mental got better. And that really just changed everything. I ended up substituting at high school, at the high school that I now teach at. Ended up getting a substituting job.
Found out that I loved it. Never in a million years thought I would be a teacher. That was the last thing in the world I would ever want to do. And after about a year and two months of working at the school, they offered me a position, which is Kirk, would you like to come on board full time? You know, you have to go take the praxis and all the licensing tests and All. And I said, yeah, how do I do that? They gave me the information. Within two weeks, I had everything done and finished. And they offered me the job in July. And I started back that August. And this is my eighth year, I guess, at that school overall. So things just had, you know, really started to turn around. And Sophia and I started a nutrition company where we would help people do healthy keto. It was. Keto was kind of coming out at that time, and it was new, and we were. We were haters. We were like, this can't be good. Let's show everybody how awful it is. And we ended up getting into it. And I met a scientist from the National Institute of Health who helped me kind of. He said, I don't know nutrition or bodybuilding, but I know nutrition and how we do it from a scientific and medical part. And I said, well, that's great. I know bodybuilding. I don't know how to do this. And we kind of came up with a program, and we made it work. And her and I started a YouTube channel. And we would do silly videos every night of the stuff we're eating and put on costumes and just dumb stuff. I started working for the NPC and the IFBB, which is a federation that puts on the Mr. Olympia.
And I would work shows. So I'm backstage with the athletes, helping them, you know, get ready and prep and tan, do all the stuff they have to do and go on stage and off stage. And it just felt like her and I were starting to kind of build a little empire. And she started competing again and had won several local shows, ended up going to a national show and winning her class in two different divisions.
And just. That's, you know, was just phenomenal. She was a pediatric dental hygienist, so she worked with a lot of kids and little kids cleaning their teeth.
I used to be like, I'm dealing with kids all day, but I'm not putting my fingers in their mouth. So I don't know how you do that.
That's a whole different world. And things were just rolling along. We were trying to buy a house. We were looking to get married. We were engaged. Everything was just fantastic. And we would talk about how much we loved our simple little life. We did everything together. We cooked together, you know, did our videos together. We trained together. We traveled to the shows together.
And, you know, it was just kind of perfect. And Covid hits and everybody's dealing with, you know, the life and the new normal, you know, as they put it, and everything that's going on. And she hadn't seen her mom in about a year. I guess towards the end of COVID because of everything, her mom lived in Florida. So her mom calls her on a Monday and says, so if I'm coming up, I'm going to be up there for a couple days for business. Let's, you know, why don't you come stay in the hotel with me and we'll get together, we'll go to lunch and dinner and blah, blah. So that Wednesday night, I saw her and I gave her a hug and a kiss, and I love you. I'll see you on Saturday. She and I were going to be working a bodybuilding show together, and she went to go stay with her mom.
And Friday night they went out, had Italian food for dinner, and came back to the hotel. And she and I talked on the phone for a little bit. And she got in bed and was texting me. And the text that I got from her at about 10:30, I was telling her she had actually gotten me back into competing. So it had been 19 years since I had been on stage competing, and she believed in me. She kept saying, babe, you need to get on stage, you need to go.
So I don't want to do that unless I think I can, you know, win and get my pro card. I don't want to just do it for a trophy. I don't need to. Long story short, I did Masters Nationals a few months before that, and I took second. So she was right, you know, it was what I needed to be back doing again.
And that Friday night, the text message I got from her at 10:30 was, I had been talking to some of the judges, and I said, baby, they really think I can win this thing if I do it again.
And her text to me was, baby, I love you. I know you can do anything. Go out there next year and win the whole effing thing.
And two hours later, 10, 12, 30 at night, her mom called me and she had passed away in her sleep.
And to say that it rocked my world was an understatement.
Losing my nephew and niece, I had one of my brothers passed away. I had a nephew that died of a fentanyl overdose. You know, my mom, my dad, the gym. I had all these losses in such a short period of time.
And nothing compares to losing your person.
And I don't care if that person is your best friend or your husband or your wife or who it is, you know who your person is. And it's a different type of loss.
And it, you know, Brought me down. And that was really where, you know, I sit and look now and go, how did I go through so many years of life with next to nothing bad happening and all of this loss and devastation happening? And, you know, in. In such a little short period of time?
And it was just.
I'm still learning a lot from it. And, you know, I tell everybody, Sophia changed my life twice. Once was when she walked into the gym and I met her, and all of a sudden life was going to be okay, and all of the bad stuff that I went through was for a reason. And, you know, I finally found what I had been looking for and vice versa. And then losing her, you know, has really taught me a lot about me and what I can endure and go through and has changed my life.
Losing her was not a positive, but has changed my life in a positive way because I'm looking to make that impact on, you know, on. On other people about.
She passed away in July. And right around Thanksgiving, I was at dinner with a friend of mine, and I said, you know, I want to do something in her honor. I'd love to start a business. And he said, well, what do you want to do? You know, she loved bodybuilding. Do you want to, you know, sell supplements or T shirts? And I said, oh, that's boring. I don't know what I want to do. And he said, well, he said, what did Sophia do for you? And I said, she believed in me when nobody else did. He goes, well, duh, there's your business. I said, what do you mean? And he said, you start a business where you're able to believe in somebody when they don't believe in themselves. You do for other people what Sophia did for you.
And they're launched two two two Muscle, the Sophia Graham Foundation. And we're coming up on. We're about two and a half years into it. And our mission statement is to lift people who feel the weight of the world on their shoulders and provide improved mental health through the pursuit of physical strength. And we raise money primarily to buy gym memberships and personal training and stuff like that to anybody who's gone through some sort of trauma or tragedy where that gym membership might do what it did for me, which is change the course of their life and, you know, and make a huge difference. And I've dealt with people with brain tumors, people getting out of jail, drug addictions, loss of a spouse, divorce, cancer, kind of, you name it. And it's just, you know, been fan. It's been fantastic, and it's kind of my way of being able to keep her alive and talk about her and, you know, do things like this. So that's kind of where it's taken full circle.
But that's a long story or a long ways to get from your question of what happened.
[00:29:48] Speaker A: And I'll share with the audience. I think everybody has to go to the website and click on the Our Story tab. I think that's what it is. And there's a whole bunch of testimonials where your gym members, your community, have opened their hearts and shared their personal stories and personal challenges and how they've overcome that through the work in the gym. And I, I was just. I was amazed. I thought it was absolutely amazing.
There, there is something here that I've never heard before, I've never seen before. It's not something that I was aware of.
How does this work? How do people kind of go and work in the gym? And this kind of supports their, their road to mental awareness and recovery. But what's the magic here?
[00:30:40] Speaker B: Well, I mean, there's the physical science behind it. When you work out, whether it's lifting weights or riding a bike or going for a walk, there's lots of hormones that kick in your serotonin levels and different stuff. So that is a proven fact.
But also, I think maybe a level of confidence is one thing. As you start to work out and you start to feel better, you know, it, it gives you a little bit of a boost. You know, I've. I've said several times, if you walk into a room and you see somebody who is in shape, and that doesn't mean bodybuilder shape, but you see somebody who puts in that time and dedication, maybe they're a cyclist, a runner, a bodybuilder, whatever it is. And you know that when you see that person, you immediately know they're dedicated, they are hardworking, they will make sacrifices to do what they need to do. There is something about that person that stands out between everybody else in the room. And you have to respect that person, because nobody was able to hand them that accomplishment. They didn't inherit it, they didn't win it in the lottery. They worked for it. And there's something to be said about that confidence and that feeling that, that gives you, you know, when you, when you get to that point. I think the other aspect of that is just the community, you know, in the gym or in the. And for us, it was the bodybuilding community.
Everybody knew us, everybody loves us. We, you know, we see the same people every couple Weeks. Everybody has been through the same thing. You have.
And it's not to say that it's, you know, perfect. It's a competitive sport and it's a competitive sport where you're literally looking at somebody and going, you look like crap. Now that's an exaggeration. But, you know, you're judging people. We're literally judging people and their looks. So it's kind of a rough thing to do, you know, but at the same time, everybody's just super supportive and like I said, has been through the same thing. But I, I think that's a big part of it is, it's just you're going through something. You know, I have people tell me all the time, oh, I wish I had your, your motivation. And it's not motivation, it's dedication. You know, I've been a part of this community and gym since I wrestled in high school, but now, you know, I'm just entrenched in it and it's just, it's just dedication. It's part of my day, it's part of what I do. And it was the same way with her.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: There's something incredibly beautiful in what you're saying because it's so fundamental to the human condition. And the one is this ability to take on a task and improve and see that improvement and success and continue at it and get better and better and better. And that builds the self confidence of, I've got this. I can take on something which is objectively difficult and I can do it. That belief in one's ability to do what they don't even know that they can do.
I think that's so, so beautiful. And I wish that, honestly, from my selfish perspective as a parent, that's something that's incredibly important for me to pass on to my children that you might not know you can do this.
I'm going to show you that you can.
[00:34:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:10] Speaker A: And I want that to be with you for your whole life, that you can do things even if you don't believe in yourself.
[00:34:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:17] Speaker A: And that's, that's so tremendously beautiful.
[00:34:19] Speaker B: I love that. And that's a portion of kind of what we also do through the foundation. So before everything happened with Sophia, but every after everything had happened with the kids in the gym and all this, you know, everybody had always said, kelly, you need to go tell your story somewhere. Your story is inspirational. And again, this was before everything with Sophia. And I met with a guy who works for John Maxwell. And John Maxwell is the largest leadership public speaking, just literally number One in the world for that. And I talked to a guy, told him my story, told him how Sophia and I were building this empire. We had company, and he was like, man, that's incredible. You've got to come do it. Well, it's a lot of money, and it's a lot of work. And Sophia pushed me, baby, you should do this. You need to tell your story. And I remember telling her now, the timing's not right. Maybe one day I will, but I'm not ready. So, as I said, I teach high school, and every year, in the beginning of the year, I tell my story to the kids. I want them to know everything I've been through and why. And I don't walk around school with a tear running down my face, but there's been days where I've broke down, and I want them to know that that's okay. That's kind of part of life. And when I was telling the story about a year and a half ago, I guess maybe two years ago, the story came across different that time, and it was still emotional, but it was more motivational. And I had a couple kids come up to me. One whose dad had been murdered in a drive by over the summer, another one who had lost a brother. And they both came up to me, and these were pretty hard kids, and gave me a hug at the end of class. Mr. Kirk, I just wanted to say it was a pleasure to meet you, and I want to thank you so much because this happened to me. And the fact that you're here every day and doing what you do and sharing that with us, that's just really special. And I was like, wow, okay, something is going on here. I said, maybe now is the time that I need to start to share this story with other people. So I sent a text message to the guy from John Maxwell. Had not spoken to him in probably five years. He texted me right back, kelly, this is fantastic. He said, let me call you. So he calls. I answer the phone. He says, hey, brother. So good to talk to you. He said, this is fantastic. I cannot wait. He said, you and Sophia have such an amazing story to tell. I just can't wait to get it out there. And I said, well, my story's changed because he didn't know, you know, what had happened with Sophia. And I told him, and, you know, he. He was in tears. And I said, I. It's. It's time. I. You know, I think she's telling me, but it's. It's time. So I got certified as quick As I could. I rolled through the certification and graduated from John Maxwell last August down in Miami and brought that into the foundation. So now, you know, you were talking about showing people that you can still persevere, go through this. One of John Maxwell's books is the 15 laws of growth. And I use that book kind of as the basis of what I talk about and we talk about some of the laws of growth and I preach growth. When you didn't think it was possible. Because what happened to me was I was able to grow when I was, I didn't think it was possible. I was ready to literally eat a bullet and I was able to grow. And you know, I tell, I'll go into companies and schools and churches and sports groups and growth can come in so many different ways. It could be mental growth, it could be physical growth. Your biceps get bigger. You know, it could be sales. I deal with businesses, you know, the sales teams.
I was a sales rep for, you know, a lot of years and you know, you hit that wall sometimes. How am I going to get better? Where's my next sale going to come from? You run through a slump and you think you can't do this anymore. It's growth. So I preach growth in every way, shape or form. But I'm always able to tie it back to Sophia and working out and what I did and you know, kind of, kind of push that through the mental, the mental aspect of it and it's just different. I'm able to get that story out to so many people, but I run it through the foundation and it's fantastic because I get the story out for her and the foundation of what we do. But I'm able to do it, you know, in a way that's beneficial for them. Not just here, you know, let me give you a donation. But I offer the people to come in and do a seminar or a lunch and learn or a mastermind for the company and help out, you know, their sales team or management team with some leadership and growth stuff. And at the same time it's, you know, just a, it's a win win all the way around. So I love that. That's exactly what I'm trying to do.
[00:39:18] Speaker A: What are the commonalities that maybe you see between bodybuilding and your journey and the challenges that you're seeing in the corporate environment that you're helping people?
[00:39:29] Speaker B: You have to put yourself outside of your comfort zone.
And that's actually one of John Maxwell's laws. Growth happens at the end of your comfort zone. And I Talk about that quite a bit. If you want to be out of your comfort zone, do a bodybuilding show where you shave your whole body, paint yourself brown, and stand in front of a couple hundred people with a bikini on. That shows pretty much everything. And people look at you and go, your legs are too small. This doesn't look right. That doesn't look. That is pushing yourself out of your comfort zone.
So that is really no different than I remember when I had my first job as a sales rep, and I remember sitting down on the telephone and the manager saying something like, you know, you got to make 100 calls and 99 of them are going to tell you no. What? That sounds like the most awful thing in the world.
[00:40:25] Speaker A: Horrid.
[00:40:26] Speaker B: And it's awful. And you sit there and, you know, and I'm telemarketing and I'm calling through stuff and no, no, no. And that's growth. You've got to put yourself outside your comfort zone. You know, you go knock on doors, you know, starting a podcast, you're going into the unknown. That is not a comfort zone to say, I'm going to start this up and I'm going to get guests, and I've got to get my interviewing skills better, and I've got to learn about all these different subjects.
That's where the commonality is, is really putting yourself outside of your comfort zone and pushing through whatever it is you're trying to get through.
[00:41:05] Speaker A: That is. That is so inspiring, this idea of.
To me, I say, I translate this to, if everybody else is saying no, that they can't do it, this is too difficult, that it's too hard. What if you said yes and just try? What is the worst thing that can possibly happen? Just, like what?
[00:41:27] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, and, you know, it's funny, you. Well, you talk about, like, the worst thing that happens. You know, when I was 30, something would happen. I don't know, my car would break down. And I remember at 30 years old, my car breaking down, and I would throw a fit. This piece of, you know what it's going to cost me, and it would ruin my entire day, if not week. You know, it was that bad.
And now the exact same thing could happen.
You just handle it different. You know, I've been through enough. And I don't necessarily say it, but I think about, well, you know what? Nobody died. My car broke down. I'm going to be okay. I'm still going to. I'll get it fixed. It's going to cost money. You know, it's Going to be an inconvenience, but everything's okay. And your perspective just, you know, just really changes. And it is. What is the worst thing that could happen? And when I think about that, oh, my car broke down. That's not the worst. I'm okay. You know, it's, it's, I guess part of that is growing up. But yeah, I think there are some people that go through life and don't ever get to that point, but it's just really changed my perspective on everything.
[00:42:41] Speaker A: You know, there's, there's a research that was done, I want to say, in the 60s or 70s, which was incredibly controversial. And this school teacher, basically, she imposed racism on half a class. And it was separated by, I think it was green or blue eyes and brown eyes. And then she basically said, okay, you green eyes or blue eyes, I can remember, are much better than the brown eyes. And she taught them, you know, this is, you guys are superior and those guys are dirt. And, and then the second half of the class of the day, she flipped it. I said, oh, the brown eyes are much better. And she got a lot of shit around that research. Basically borderline child abuse.
But something really interesting happened. That whole class of hers that went through that experience, they on average gained, I think it was like 80 or 70 points of IQ.
Now she sent this research in and they're like, you're an idiot, you're a schoolteacher, you're not a researcher. You're clearly, this is mistake, this is impossible.
Now she stood on her hind legs, so to speak, and they came and they did their thing and they're like, yep, that happened. That was a thing.
And this is now well known in academia. And the point is that perspective is worth 80 IQ points and that's what people say.
[00:44:05] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:44:06] Speaker A: And I agree with you completely. This, this concept of, you know, there's 30 and 40 year olds. I feel like my 5 year old is more mature than some 20 years for sure.
[00:44:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:18] Speaker A: He was in, he was hiking and this girl his age said to him, oh, your shoes are old and dirty and ugly.
And like, if I had to ask you, what do you think a 5 year old would respond? You know, there's all kinds of things, dude. Like I was about to respond and I tell you, what I was about to say was worse than what my 5 year old said. He said, oh, these are hiking shoes, they're supposed to be worn out. I love it dirty and ugly. And I was about to call this five year old rude.
[00:44:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:50] Speaker A: And he just came and I was like, did I just get schooled by my 5 year old son? And, and to me, what that says, what I learned from, from that, is that wisdom is not in a, in an age or it's in experiences. And you can have deep, fundamental experiences and learnings or you can just, you know, close your heart to the things that are happening around you.
[00:45:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:16] Speaker A: And you've been through incredible, incredible, incredibly difficult experiences. But through sharing your story, you don't know how much good you're doing. You don't know what that sentence you said to that child who maybe have been in an incredibly difficult situation, him or herself, how that changed their life. So we know, you know, all the bad things that's always on the news, the good things, they go unsung, unheard. So I want to say first of all, a personal thank you for your journey of service to your community.
It's completely clear to me that you're really doing incredible, incredible work. I have a curiosity. I love teaching kids as well. I do ja and stuff like that. A lot of volunteer work. What always amazes me is the kids. What is the, like the weirdest shit that you get asked by the kids?
[00:46:14] Speaker B: My age is one of them because I'm 55 and they usually guess 35, so I get that all the time. Mr. Kirk, can I arm wrestle you? That's probably five times a week. No, I'm not freaking arm wrestling you.
How many push ups can you do? Usually it's dumb shit like that. And I'll go, I don't know, I could do probably 100 right now. How many can you do? And I'll make them do something.
The dumbest question I get asked, I got asked today because it's the end of the quarter and a kid comes up to my desk and says, Mr. Kirk, is there anything I can do to raise my grade? And I said, I don't know. Let's see where you're at.
Well, you have a seven, so I don't know. You could turn literally anything in for the last 12 weeks. That's my answer. I don't know what to. What do you mean, Ken, Is there anything I can do? You literally have been in this class 12 weeks and never turned in one thing. That's why you have to send it. That's anything you do at the stage.
[00:47:16] Speaker A: Will raise your grade.
[00:47:17] Speaker B: Anything's going to bring it up. It's not going to bring it up to 80, but it might bring it up to a 15 or a 22. Like what the, the perspective of the kids is hysterical. You talk about where knowledge comes from, and it comes from different perspectives. I always tell the story. So 222 muscle the Sophia Graham Foundation. Everybody says, where did 222 come from? When I was homeless, a friend of ours had invited me to come stay at her house. She said, you can stay at the house for a while until you get back on your feet. But while I was staying there, her house flooded. And they ended up. Insurance company put her up in a hotel. And she goes, well, you might as well come to the hotel. It's a suite. There's a kitchen and two bedrooms. I said, okay.
First night, I'm over there. Sophia is on her way to meet us, and she texts me. She says, baby, I'm on my way to the hotel. She says, what room are you and Sherry in? I said, hon, we're in room 222. And she writes back and she says, great. Is that on the first floor?
No, 222 is not on the first damn floor. It's on the second floor. So immediately that became the big joke, right? We're all making fun of her. I'm telling everybody about this, and she's arguing. I've seen 2, 2, 2 on the first floor before. No, no, you haven't. We go to a bodybuilding event a couple weeks later, and we check into the hotel room and sure enough, the bottom floor, the first floor of the lobby floor was the second floor because this hotel was built on a little hill. And your first floor was like the bas basement around there. And she was like, see, see?
And it was. It was her knowledge. You know, I'm thinking her knowledge was wrong, but it was her perspective and what she had had learned.
The cool thing about that was when we first started, when getting her to compete, the very first show she did where I had coached her, when you compete, they give you a little round number that goes on your bikini. And there was, you know, a couple hundred people there, and it's random. We check into her first show, and it was here, local, and her competitor number was 222. And she won the. Won her class and won the overall. Fast forward. About a year later, we're in South Carolina at a pro qualifier at a national show. 1300 competitors. She gets 2, 2, 2 again. And she wins both of her classes figure and women's physique. And her number was 222. So that kind of became our number. And now I look back and go, what in the world was going on in the universe that made that happen.
But it's, it's, you know, I love that story. So. And the dumbbells came through the cross dumbbells on the logo. She had one of these dumbbells was hers and one was mine and we just wore them all the time. That was kind of our, you know, our thing.
And when everything happened and she passed away, she was cremated. So I had her ashes actually put into one of the dumbbells and I had the dumbbells welded together from our welding teacher at my high school and that became the logo was the cross dumbbells there. So I always like to tell that story. So she's always with me and there's been, you know, so much stuff that happens. I tell, I tell everybody. I don't care what your religion is, what your beliefs are, what God you believe in or don't believe in. The amount of things that have happened in the past two and a half years that show me this is not it. There's something past.
When we stop breathing, there's something else that goes on here. And had you asked me that four or five years ago, I would have said, yeah, I believe it, but I don't know how much I would have believed it. And now there's just absolutely no question at all.
Like I said when I say that she's changed my life twice. Once was when she walked into my life and once is everything that I've learned since she left.
It's just not an understatement.
[00:51:12] Speaker A: You know, Kelly, I truly believe that she was an angel. The levels of support that she gave you are superhuman.
It's just incredible, incredible, incredible. I can't even articulate it in words and multiple times, time and time again, it's just beyond belief. So you've been through incredible travesties, but I think you really met an angel. That is amazing.
[00:51:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. Absolutely.
[00:51:46] Speaker A: I have one last question to you.
If you had to go back and give some sort of advice to 26 year old Kelly, what would that be?
[00:52:05] Speaker B: Hang in there. Don't stop.
Don't stop. I never at, you know, at 26, God, it's funny because when you're in high school, you think 26 is so old and you're going to be grown up. And at 26, I knew nothing, you know, and I never in a million years could have thought that I would have gone through everything that I've been through, you know, here. And I have not lived the traditional life, you know, graduate college and get married and have 2.3 kids in a White house and a picket fence. That's never been me.
You know, I've had a million different jobs and lived in a million places and traveled to different stuff and lost businesses, and it's just been different, and it's not what society looks at being the norm. You know, and there are sometimes where I sit and think about this, well, how come I didn't do this and follow that path? But at the end of the day, had I followed that path, you know, I wouldn't be the person that I am today. I wouldn't have gotten to experience Sophia and the things that I've. That I've had. So I think I would just tell myself, don't overthink it, and you're going to be okay. Push, push through. Go through.
Grow through what you go through. And I tell my kids that a lot. Grow through what you go through. And I think at 26, I wouldn't have understood that. If I came back and told myself, I'd look at myself and go, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Put that on a T shirt and sell it. But what are you talking about?
You know? And now I kind of live by it.
[00:53:54] Speaker A: Kelly, I am so grateful to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for sharing your story with me and the audience. I truly, truly appreciate you.
[00:54:03] Speaker B: Absolutely. Loved it, loved it, loved it. I have had a good time. So I told you this was going to be. We would have fun.
[00:54:12] Speaker A: Thank you so much, Kev.
[00:54:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
