Be Willing to Help Your Fellow Human – Kevin Weitzel | Episode 2

Hello and welcome to the Plus for new inspiration. My Name is KT Maschler. In this week I will be interviewing Kevin Witzel from out house. He is one of the hosts of the Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast, and if some of you don’t know that is the other podcast that I work on. It is also co hosted by my boss, Greg Bray from Blue Tangerine and both of these men, not only on taught loads about digital marketing and sales, but they have also given me the chance to find my passion for PODCAStING. Tell me a little bit about you. First off just for the people who don’t know you. I do really know you that much anyways you’re just kind of podcast host and I’m your editor absolutely well. I’m currently, forty nine years old father of two college students, I’ve kind o got a little bit of a forest gump background. I come from extremely poor family. My mother actually was I’m a first generation American, because my mother actually came over her in World War, two she’s a Holocaust survivor, so she is definitely some of that motivates me just you know, and we’ll kind of go in a little bit more that here in a little bit, but you know she’s, a stereotypical woman that is, you know, starts off with you know great aspirations and political aspirations and wants to move forward as professional in her own life and then falls in love with a man and then allows the man to do his thing and that was kind of how it was in the S, and s is that women would support the men as they were going through college or as they were going through their professional endeavors and they would stay home and raise the children, and you know the obviously, the world has changed to the better or, in my opinion, were that’s not the case as much anymore, but but in her case she made a lot of bad decisions in life just based off of following you know her heart following her desire to be one with you know the people that she was with so one of my major motivations in life, although she does motivate me and she she’s very hog, she’s highly intelligent. She has a degree from western Michin University, but she kind of flowed from job to job to job job and constant pathway of the grass is going to be greener. So, by the time I was eighteen years old, she had moved over eighteen times. You know, so that’s that’s kind of rough. You know on a kid, so I never really did be to settle down or hunker down any one one points or one place for any length of time. That being said, what it did give me the the ridiculous ability to do is I can talk with anybody I can hold on his conversation with anybody. Regardless of the background, I can talk to you. I can have a good time I can. I can you know, Walk Um and say how to do somebody so meeting New People has never been an issue in my book, and I can think of my mother, for that. The downside is, is that that really did kind of give me a scenario in my life, where I didn’t have a lot of very wholesome, really close knit friendships. You know I do now. You know my older age, but as I was when I was really young in the subs, I struggled a little bit with having wholesome relationships. You know there are very lot of superficial relationships, but when I say I live kind of a forest gump lifestyle, I mean not only coming from a poor family background and having to do everything on my own, my mother, relocated back to Kansas when I was out here in Dona screen in high school, so I’ve done my own s is my fresh mear and high l so live now. I had a furries scholarship to University of California Davis. I made a couple of little mistakes on implementing, said plant and then went the Rin Corin stead, so I did eight years as a garrison sniper in eighty five D, forty one, even although they don’t call m e T, find forty one any more as a garse sniper in the United States Marine Corps. So eight years there then, after the fact I was heavily involved in wheels so bicycles, motorcycles, automobiles for several. You know my entire professional life. Until about the last five years, I’ve been in the home building industry, but there’s a few factors that come into play as well as that my parents divorced when I was three years old and I struggled having a relationship with my father. I was a stereotypical, you know divorced parents, you on only live forty miles away, and you know we lived in Michigan at the time, but to you o on the forty miles away, and you know it starts off where it’s I’d see him every other weekend and then it would be every couple of months and then it was on special occasions and then it was excuse after excuse after excuse. So although my dad was a dynamic human being, he was also a raging alcoholic and alcoholics. Even when they’re dry or when they’re clean, you should say, fall into patterns and those patterns are as excuses. Mistrus, if you will lies, that’s another word for it and it was a constant struggle of of having to to adjust to his non truth, and I kind of kind of mess me up a little bit psychologically. I still have some dad issues. Even though he’s been gone he’s you know he died about fifteen years ago or so, but he actually inspires me too. He inspires me in a couple of fashions number. One is that he was boisterous. He had this bar toned voice that when he walked into a place they all knew he was there. So I did learn how to just be in the presence. You know to be known, be it known that I was there and an so you know being bold and being willing to put myself out there. I learn her for my dad. I learned how to be variable by my mom. You know how to you know suit the variations that are out there, so I did learn that from him. You know we had basically parked ways semi permanently when I was seventeen years old O. Actually, when I was sixteen years old, no seventeen years old, I was a professional cyclist for about four four and a half years. I, with the Olympic trials in eighty eight, and I was actually Kenny- Carpenter’s alternate navy, eight of for the Korean Olympics, so well the not the greenly ics for the only thing that were held the sole area and when I told him that I qualified you know for that, that contest you know it was. Oh, that’s great, that’s good news and no, no consequence. How did you do? None of those follow calls nothing. So I wrote a pretty heart felt letter that, basically let him know that you know I didn’t need him to be part of my life anymore. So I would say that from an inspirational standpoint, I did learn a lot from him from another inspiration. I learned left my mother seeing her struggle as a single mother with three kids: a working job, job, sometimes multiple jobs of time. You know battling whether she can sleep trying to provide for her kids. You know, and it wasn’t always successful. I mean there were times when we didn’t get to eat times. When was we were sleeping in sleeping bags, because you know in Michigan winters he gets cold and you know we couldn’t keep the eat on you know. So I’ve learned to be humble in to appreciate the things that I do have, but another thing that I learned from her was one of these points, and that is that you have to not only appreciate what you have but appreciate that you don’t need it in your life to that be very materialistic. Okay, so I do appreciate Nice things. I have a tendency of not wanting a lot of bobbles or things in my life. I prefer high quality items. I’d rather save up for that heirloom piece of furniture than just a piece of junk that you know we’re going to throw away or place every three or four years. So, philosophically that’s kind of how I, how I, how I subscribe to life when it comes to what makes me walk down the pathway every day and live a straight life. I’ve got a couple: O philosophies, number one don’t be in jail. I make it a daily goal to not do anything that would ever wind me up living in jail because it just looks miserable. I don’t I don’t Care Yeah, you get three squares. The temperature is probably appropriate, but I really don’t want to shower with a bunch of guys, and you know and to be honest with you, I want to be able to tell I want to be able to leave whenever I want to. I don’t want to be confined in to a tiny little room, so yeah. That’s that step. One is to not be in prison. The step to is that I’ve firmly even kind of one of the budhist takes, which is to not tread on other people, so enjoy your life, pursue your happinesses without treading on others. You know when you’re treading on others, and you know using their shoulders and their head as stepping stones, to move up to your next position and a company or to move in society. I think that’s a major major flaw in someone’s personality, so I’d make that my second tenant, if you will of ways to live. What has a moment in my life? That’s that’s inspired me to change my life when I was in the United States. Bray core, obviously, snipers are not known for humanitarian efforts were basically assigned to get rid of a target. However, I spent about a year and a half in Africa and my year and a half in Africa. I learned something very poignant that sticks with me to this day that so many people that had literally nothing- and this is mostly eastern Africa. This was during an operation of restore hope in Somalia, but so many people there had nothing they lived in. They would stretch a tarp over a Bush and then they would use that area as their place to sleep at night. They didn’t have any belongings like we have. They don’t have TV, they didn’t have running water electricity, none of that stuff they have so when they had all that nothing, but what I would keep seeing every day as people walking around with smiles on their face, and why were their smiles in the face? You know why, because they weren’t beat themselves up to pay mortgage, they weren’t clocking. In clocking on a job they hated doing to make sure that they could buy the newest Nike for their kid. You know it all came down to, as it was just simple family time. So that is definitely a moment when I kind of just it’s set in stone in me that you don’t need to have all the stuff you can literally live and just be a happy person. Just by your experience with your fellow person, that was definitely a moment there. What else do we got? What a where E we out here? So where do you look when you’re like struggling to find inspiration just in like a general basis, just some day to day kind of like bad Monday situation? It’s funny you say bad Monday, so I don’t really have bad mondays. I am a firm believer that, if you enjoy what you’re doing at work, you will o you’re living. So I do enjoy what I do and II, don’t necessarily dread going to work. There are times when I can get down, but I get down more, just all the crud and the stuff. That’s out there. You know. Just all the the things you see in the news that are just bad. That can just drag me down. You know it’s like man. How can humanity get like this? So I’ll tell you. What brings me back up? What brings me back up as seeing individuals they go out of their way to be more human than what’s even called upon them. So a good example is my friend k. t was on a podcast with me, where we were talking to homemade and Scott Larson. The CE of a mate actually said something along the lines of you. Don’t know what being human is until you plan a shate tree that you’ll never get to enjoy yourself, and I truly do believe in that. I think that the actions that we have on a daily basis shouldn’t be about self serving. They should be about things that you sure that you can enjoy yourself, but that others will also benefit from. So when you picked up the ball and ran with that yeah, you don’t have fifty Sandolas to do make a homemade, but you know what you did. Have you had time you had? Twenty thirty forty bucks or whatever it cost to go, get the supplies to put in those bags and you went around and you gave not homeless people. People are humans that are experiencing homelessness. You gave them their personal care bags, which was a fantastic as a bottles water in there, toothpaste, rushes, Deodorant Tam Packs. The there’s some other items to is some beef Jerky, and I put a little note that said we got this. I think that’s fantastic, and you know when I see stuff like that, it gives me that kind of uplift that I need my day to know that there are people out there that actually do care. You know we’re not all out there. Just punching the clock, we’re not out they’re. Trying to you know, Rob Peter Paid Paul, we’re not out there trying to step on somebody else to elevate ourselves that that’s my motivation. I don’t really get it. I don’t get out of books like most people. Do I get it out of action? You know a lot of people can say. Oh we need to do this. We need to do that, but that’s a need to the difference is, is the dues you know do this when I see somebody out there picking up the garbage along the side of a freeway, you know that counteracts it doesn’t completely counteract, but it counterbalances the people that literally flicked cigarette butts out their car window as if the world is their ashtray, and it’s that that added human factor that people can be positive and not negative. That’s what brings me up O. Thank you. I seriously that I don’t. I just had six bags and I just sent as much as I could dollar general and when I went out and delivered, I was actually kind of nervous because I didn’t want to like offend them or like annoy them so one time I literally just like dropped it by and ran away really fast, and he was asleep and so like. I really hope when he woke up that he just like it made his day and I’m sure it did then one time this lady. She was just like. Thank you. So life, like I seriously, haven’t, had a camp on in like three four months, and I was like, Oh like I just take that for granted, something so little when you hear somebody say something like shouldn’t that person just go get a job. It’s like do. You know what it costs to get a job at cost money to get a job. You have to have a place to shower. You have to have a place to you, know, to clean your clothes and to be person. You have to have clo everywhere, a professional looking clothes at least appropriate for the job you’re looking for, but you have to have a phone so that contact you even get the job. If you don’t have a computer, a lot of jobs nowadays, you have to do it on a website. So it’s not as easy as just go, get a job and then, if they have children, you can compound it even more to where child care costs money. You know all these things cost money, so it’s not as easy as just go, get a job. It really isn’t so yeah. I think that, when we’re willing to help our fellow human that inspires me more than anything on this planet, there’s no motivation book out there, there’s no motivation speaker out there that can motivate me more than the scene. Somebody else doing a kind act for somebody else. So that’s great. I do have a fair movie that favorite movie is Harold and Maud that that was a movie that came out way before you were born sex or one huand. Nine hundred and seventy one wot. It’s a little story about a coming of age. Kid who’s from the family of very well to do family who be friends as well as his hobby, is going to funerals and at while he’s at one of these funeral funeral. He meets this elderly Gal and I don’t want to ruin the whole story, but basically falls in love with her and he learns about enjoying life and- and I look at that movie a lot not only for inspiration on just how to be simple and how to love but not to live man. You know just you know that Ruth Gordon Character, you know Ma. She just lived now. She later lived each day just to breathe. You know just to take it in and exhale it out, so yeah, that’s pretty much it and then from there. The soundtrack is by Cat Stevens, another artist that predates you. Although he’s still around today, I think I think he’s he converted Islam and probably changed his music focus a little tiny bit, but he was a singer Song writer in the s and S, and he did the sound track to that movie and there’s a song in there called trouble, and it’s about you know trouble that sets you free, it’s not about being in trouble. It’s about the happenstance in life that can give you trouble and how you can utilize that to set your set your mind for your soul, free whatever you want to set free, that’s a beautiful song. So that is a definitely a song that I listen to when I just want to kind of reset trouble by Cat Stevens, okay, I will definitely check both of those out for sure or I have this long list of shows constantly adding to it. But for sure, thank you so much for all of your inspiration and seriously. I look up to you and Greg and I think, love the opportunity of working with you on the home builder. Digital Marketing podcast be sure to check that out. If you have not so yeah. Thank you. What was my pleasure? I preciate your time to day Kiti all right. Well, that is it for this week and I would love to have you tell a friend about this podcast and you can help me share these inspirational stories by rating and reviewing the quest for new inspiration on apple podcast or your favorite podcast platform. If you have a question or an inspirational story, you’d like to share, you can send them my way, you can send me a message on Instar, a plus for new inspiration or enone at new inspiration, podcast at g Malcom, thanks again for listening and be sure to join me next time.