January 7, 2025 • 47 mins
50 friends paid off their college debt, 7 families helped them buy a house, and they joined in on buying cars for 4-5 people. Branden and Ashley are members of an extraordinary Army of Generous Folks and show us what living in community can look like!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
She gets on the mic and she says, we wanted
a knight to bless y'all, but really what we're here
for is for the last year, we've seen y'all fight
and tooth and nail and grind to pay off your
student loan debt. And just as much as Jesus has
paid the debt of your sins, we want you to
(00:28):
know that your debt free tonight. And we're like what
she goes, we've paid off. All of us here have
paid off the rest of your debt.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach in
Inner City Memphis. And that last part, well, it somehow
led to an oscar for the film about our team.
It's called Undefeated. Guys, I believe our country's problems will
(01:05):
never be solved by a bunch of fancy people and
nice suits using big words that nobody ever uses on
cinn in Fox, but rather by an army of normal folks.
That's us, just you and me deciding, hey, you know what,
maybe I can help. That's what Brandon and Ashley staffis
(01:26):
the voices you just start have done. Not only have
they been the beneficiaries of radical love from their own
army of normal folks, but they've also catalyzed this army
to bless many others too. I cannot wait for you
to meet them right after these brief messages from our
general sponsors, Brandon and Ashley, stay this.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
It's whatever you want.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
What is this Greek abbreviated name you've got here?
Speaker 1 (02:15):
It used to be?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Now? Yeah, I did it right. Welcome to Memphis, I
think sure is going to be. Came from Austin, right.
How do you get from Austin to Memphis? I guess
you fly? There's no direct flight, is there?
Speaker 1 (02:29):
They hit us to Atlanta, Phila Delta?
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yes? Well good. So you guys excited about the playoffs?
Are you? You two fans?
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Yeah, we actually went to their rival school.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
You did, but well you didn't. You didn't have a
football team anymore. I mean, what's that that football you
guys played this year? I'm not really sure.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
No, that's it.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
I just specifically remember Ole Miss going to a place
called Man this year and absolutely thumping this group of
people that.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Have times you win sometimes you don't win.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Y'all have been winning for a while. You go, so
it should be did you go to No? I just
didn't ministrate you t for fifteen years, So I feel
like I've done four or five educational cycles with having
no degree. Note, but I went to Jacksonville State.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
You and McConaughey or Powells, Oh, yeah, we're buddy.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
He's a great guy. He wears the same leather jacket.
I tell him it stinks you should put on a
different leather jacket, but he has the same. I think
it's his lucky leather jacket. He pulls it off, rocket,
he pulls it off.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
All right. So you got here last night?
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
And did you get to do anything in Memphis at all?
How much? Do anything besides put you in a hotel here?
Speaker 1 (03:48):
There's only one thing to do in Memphis, and that's
see the ducks.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
And so we did things more to do in Memphis.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Rush to the docks, Rush to the dock, and they
rushed to the elevator and then said goodbye to us,
and then we went It is great, it's great. We
went on Beale Street.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah, we went on Beal Street.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Good walked, Yeah, walked, what's it raining? So you're fine?
So it was good.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
It was great.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
So you got to see the ducks. For those listening
to us, Yeah, the Peabody is a hotel in downtown
Memphis that's been there forever and back in the thirties,
I think it was some inebriated hunters brought back some
ducks and as a joke, dropped them in the fountain
and the foyer or the lobby, and thus started ducks
(04:35):
in the Peabody fountain. And now they are trained to
come down from the duck penthouse on the roof of
the Peabody, down the elevators, walking to the the fountain,
hang out, and then they walk out and make a
big whoop to do over.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
A red carpet.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Oh yeah, yes, why wouldn't you.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Lots of phones out, That's exactly right.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
So we're good. I'm glad you got to enjoy the ducks.
So normally at this time I will introduce our guests
and talk about the organization they're with. In this case,
that's not what we're doing today. We talk about all
the time not having to be part of some big
(05:15):
government organization or NGO or anything. Else to be a
part of the army of normal folks. We also frequently
talk about seeing meet need in your community, using your
passion abilities to meet that need, and we often get
people all the time saying, you know, I just I
(05:37):
want to get involved, I want to help. I care
about my community, I care about people in my community,
but I just don't know how to start. And your
guy's story really exemplifies the power of just simple kindness
and generosity and how on a small scale you can
do massive things. And I can't wait to tell that
(06:01):
story to encourage and inspire folks to understand that need
is everywhere and the ability to be generous and help
others is abundant. And I can't wait to tell the story.
But to tell the story, we kind of got to
start with you guys dating. I think, really, so how'd
(06:26):
you meet? How does somebody from Texas and know you
even begin to get together as well?
Speaker 3 (06:35):
I was living in Dallas, he was living in Austin.
My sister's sister in law, Divine Woman, said I think
that you're going to marry this guy, Brandon Stathis, And
I was like, we'll see. I had never met him,
didn't know who he was. She just was like, I
just have this weird feeling I was living, she was living. Yeah,
(06:59):
so her boyfriend was Brandon's roommate, lived in a house
of ten guys. After calls about it was like a
mini Yeah it was. It was very sweet and so
she was like, you got to meet him, met him,
and the rest is history was very quick. We dated
nine months in dating six months. I moved to Austin
(07:21):
for him three more months. We got engaged, engaged for
five months. Done.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
That was me and Lisa. Yeah, you know, you know
from the day Lisa and first date, which took me
five months to get her go out with me, but
from that date until the day we were married was
only like fourteen months.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yea, I fell in love. Yeah, she fell in like
and I'm not really sure she's looked all the way
there after thirty three years. I'm still trying real hard.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
So you moved to Austin, Yes, moved and you were
in Oklahoma.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
I was in Dallas, grew up in Dallas.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
I'm sorry. So what we do?
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Went to OU I was an executive assistant and then
moved to Austin with a lot of school debt, no job,
and nowhere to live. A family took me in that
he knew through in life, and I lived with him
for my first however many months, but I moved here
because I felt like the lord told me a date
(08:23):
to move a month. So I was like, I'm gonna
trust you. I'm going to blindly trust you. Everyone was like,
you're crazy when you're moving a city to a city
for a guy after dating him six months and then
two year, moving with no job and you have a
lot of school payments. And then my second day in Austin,
we were in a soccer league, I broke my foot
and they were like, I think you're gonna need surgery.
(08:43):
And I was like, okay, this is cool.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah, no money, no money, knowing nothing.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
So what are you doing with ten guys in a house?
What's up with that?
Speaker 1 (08:54):
I think it's cheap rent. That was the only way
to do it in Austin. I think it's now you
can't even do that. But it's just it's cheaper rent.
It was a huge house. We all had jobs and
we just we went for it and we all doubled
up in a room.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
What were you doing for eleven I worked for.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Young Life at the University of Texas. So most of
the guys all had just business corporate jobs, accountant when
it was an architect, engineer, film the other. And I
just was a ministry guy. I did college ministry at
University of Texas. Loved college guys. I had moved from
the Southeast, so originally was from Georgia. Moved to Austin
(09:30):
to take that job, to do that.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
And so for those of our listeners that aren't real
familiar with young Life, tell us what that is.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah, young Life a relational ministry to adolescence. Really anyone
middle school, high school, college, they do teen moms, military
and and you can go on staff, you can be
a Young Life leader. But it's all about going to
where students are to share the love of Christ into
(10:02):
We call it earned the right to be heard.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Sounds like a really crappy job.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
It's the crappiest job ever.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
And I'm gonna tell you what it's. Well, you know
I went to miss and you know, oh you where'd
you go to school? Jacksonville State, Jacksonville State down in Ala, Alabama, Alabama.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
It's a sneaky place, Jacksonville, Alabama.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, but where is it.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
It's about an hour and a half southeast of Birmingham.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Okay, all right, so we went to college. In college,
there are a number of things. There are books, there
are classrooms, and then beyond those two subsets of unimportant things,
there's beer and for tarnity and shorty life and parties
and everything else. And I can only imagine the challenges
(10:53):
associated with trying to have relational, christ centered work done
in an ironment where pretty much everything that's any fun
is in direct opposition to that. Yep, yep, So why
do you do that?
Speaker 1 (11:09):
We love a good challenge. I think at the heart
of every college student, and I think maybe people in general,
it's just the desire to be known. And when I think,
you leave your high school, you're a big fish in
a small pond, and when you come to a place
like the University of Texas or Ole Miss or OU
or any big d one school, you become a small
(11:30):
fish and a big, big pond. And so we would
encounter freshmen who just had a lot of need, even
though on the outside they looked like they had it
all together. They were going to do this hit, this sorority,
hit that fraternity, whatnot. They really desired deep friendship, and
then they also desired to figure out whether faith was
(11:52):
their own or it was their parents.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
And that's interesting because there's a lot of people who
quote grow up in church because their parents drag them,
And I think those are parents in general trying to
do the right thing by their children and expose them
to what they think is the right fundamental basis for
(12:16):
a meaningful life. I get it. I did it with
my own children. But I also know when I went
to college, even having been drugged to church by my
collar as a child, when I got to college, one
of the first things I thought was sleeping in on
Sunday is a heck of a lot better than waking
up going to church as an eighteen year old, nineteen
(12:37):
year old. I mean, I'm first to admit that was
my approach. And when the guy from Campus Ministry, Campus Life,
Young Life at All was you at orientation, smiling real
big and handing me a flyer or whatever, that might
have been the first thing to win the trash basket. Yep.
(13:00):
I rejected the notion of a Kumbaya meeting at eighteen
years old with a bunch of other freshmen. I rejected
that I mean, I don't want anything to do with it.
Did you feel that, Oh?
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Yeah, It just depends on the person. There were definitely
guys that you would feel that stiff arm and you
would kind of just oh, the most heisman post. I mean,
there were some rough guys that I met early on,
but man, you crave to be known. And so if
all of a sudden and two weeks later, amidst going
(13:36):
to class, I say hey, Jimmy, and he's like, how
do you know my name? I don't want anything to
do with this. Two weeks later, Jimmy, how's school going?
I mean, it's like you can't not respond, And so
there you kind of win. We would win guys over
by just essentially letting them do their thing and just
(13:57):
still being available. And then there were guys that were
much more hungry and willing to be like again, I
feel like I'm a fish out of water, and you're
friendly and like, we're gonna go do something really fun
and cool. And we would never lead out necessarily with
come to this Bible study. We would just hey, we're
going to you know place, pick up basketball at the
(14:19):
blah blah place this Thursday night. Come with us and
anyone who played sports was like, I'm down for that,
And so I think that's kind of you can move
somebody down the line till all of a sudden you've
earned the right to go, Hey, what if on Thursdays
at four, when you don't have class, me and all
your buddies we just got down on the grass and
opened up the scriptures. Would you be open to doing that?
(14:40):
And they're like sure. And then then when you get
in there, it's over because that first one I look
at them and go, why did you come? Because your
mom doesn't even know you're here and didn't make you come.
Why did you get here? And they're like, oh, yeah,
I guess on my own. They want to be their
own at least in the guy's side, they want to
be their own man, and they want to like decide
(15:01):
for themselves. Who is Jesus?
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Is he real?
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Is he personal? Does he have anything to do with
my life? Because now it's like my life has been
gone and I've already been making my own decisions anyways.
So I think that Cross Hairs was a dynamic moment
for those guys. That was my journey. My mom was
so afraid when she dropped me off that I was
(15:24):
going to just go crazy, and she even said something
like I don't know, she's like offered me money, Like
I think she tried to bribe me. If she's listening
to this, she was cutting my hair or something, and
she was like, you know, if you don't you know,
if you go through college and you don't drink, like
a friend of mine gave her son one hundred and
fifty bucks and you know that stands for you too,
(15:46):
which I'm like, Mom, come on, you can give me
a undred more than one hundred fifty bucks. But I
think what was more mesmerizing for me was taking ownership
of my life and faith and money started in college
and actually impacted us in our life with the whole
journey of generosity kind of story. But I think that
(16:08):
impacted me so much that ended up making a career
out of it and moving to Austin And what's your
degree in business management? I was full on business, was
going to go do finance. Yeah, go do wealth management.
And a guy who was walking with me, who had
kind of pursued me very lightly, was like, you should
(16:28):
think about doing college ministry. You click with college guys.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
And now a few messages from our gener sponsors. But
first I hope you'll consider signing up to join the
army at normal folks dot us. By signing up, you'll
receive a weekly email with short episode summaries in case
you happen to miss an episode, or if you prefer
reading about our incredible guests, We'll be right back. Look, man,
(17:09):
I'm looking at you. Your articulate, You're probably you're good looking, dude.
You probably were doing great and financial advisor business role
and made a bunch of money. I cannot imagine young
life is a career that you're ever going to get
wealthy in.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
No no, so why I think when you are. When
I was in college, I just felt God's love. It
was personal to me for the first time in high school,
like kind of like what you said. I think this
is common for a lot of Bible bell people, and
I think it's actually becoming less and less as our
country gets I think more and more post Christian. But
(17:48):
I started reading the scriptures for myself, I started interacting
with God myself. He was personal to me, and I
was overflowing with that. So even when I was gearing
up to move to Atlanta and do wealth management at
a firm that I was excited about working for a
family friend and all that stuff. I was thinking, Oh,
(18:08):
I can really love people that way that a wealth
management guy told me people get naked in front of
three people their spouse, their doctor, and their financial planner
because wherever their money goes, that's where their heart is,
so you get to see their heart. And I was like,
I'd love to get there with people, but I always
knew that you'd have you know, at least forty percent
(18:28):
of your job would be paperwork and modules and Excel.
And I was willing to deal with that in order
to get to that other juicy stuff. And when I
realized that if I did college ministry, I wouldn't have
to wear the financial planner hat. I could just pursue
people and go right to the jugular of like caring
for them, loving them and asking them questions, of to
(18:49):
let them kind of consider their life, consider taking ownership
of their faith. Right, So I went for it.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
In turn, I think that our experience in ministry for
fifteen years, we feel rich. We feel very rich, not
financially rich, very like spiritually rich. We've got to experience
unforgettable things that like when people's life change. That's where
(19:16):
the real richness is. So you're what was your degree
in Nashley Communication?
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Okay, so you're also lovely, thank you, beautiful and hanging
out in Oklahoma and you meet this cool guy who
is obviously very passionate, nice looking and everything else. But
(19:44):
he works for young life and you uproot and roll
kind of knowing what you're getting into the ministry, which
once again is not financial, the most fruitful thing on
the face of the planet.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Why because of this man, look at him. Love makes
you do just make.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
That's why oars were.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Like, are you sure I yet know? I? I really
had never met a man like him, a man that
was intentional, and and so I was like, I am
sold on you, and I will I. I want to
follow you, and we're at whatever that means in ministry,
thriving and financially whatever where, whatever it is. I just
(20:37):
want to be behind you. And so I was like,
you know, do you make all the money in the world. No,
But at the same time.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
I had more than her.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Yeah, right, No, I mean more than you. God knows
our needs and he will provide for us. He will
see our needs and he will he'll fulfill and needs,
whether that's me working or staying home or whatever that is.
And so I was like, it was just like a
I love this man and I'll follow you to the
(21:09):
ends of the earth.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
What a cool love affair. So how old were you
at this point? About twenty three?
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Okay, so on top of it, your stupid young and wow,
it's all twenty three years state. But I was a
complete I still am. But that was all right. So
she shows up and I mean she's moved. Sonight you
have to propose? I mean, what else you got to do?
Speaker 1 (21:33):
It was this pressure?
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Yeah, so how'd that go down?
Speaker 1 (21:36):
The proposal?
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Well, I I have known to be creative when I
get an idea about something.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
And that that gives him the juju in life, the
big dreaming moments.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
This was back in twenty eleven, a dreaming moment before
like what are they called flash mobs? Small things out
not a thing, but from twenty thirteen to about twenty
seventeen they were a thing. And I wasn't thinking I
want to do a flash mob. I just thought, how
could I get as many people in this in on
(22:13):
this as possible to surprise bless and just catch her
off guard and show her I love you so much.
And so I did a proposal that had a bunch
of people in it. My family from Georgia wasn't able
to make it. So I posted on YouTube or I
have a good buddy film it. I posted on Facebook
for my family members. That's all I was thinking about.
(22:36):
And a week later had like one hundred and fifty
thousand views. Are you getting all these things? And then
a month later it had three hundred thousand views. And
this TV network is calling us to see if they
could pay for a wedding if blah blah blah, And
then a cruise ship asks if they can record it
or whatever.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Er think, what did you do well flash mob?
Speaker 2 (22:58):
How? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Okay, So I will explain it. First off, he flew
me to Fredericksburg that morning in a private plane. It
flew me to Fredericksburg, Texas in a private plane. We
get there, go to a field, have lunch. This family
comes out, serves us, lunch, we hang, We fly back
later that evening I was supposed to or I had
(23:22):
been praying about this meeting that he was to have
with his boss's boss all week. He fooled me and
then I was walking in to have dinner with my girlfriends,
walk into this restaurant. He's there, blindfolds me, walks me
around the corner to this park, takes off my blindfold,
turns me around, and there's my family, all of our friends,
(23:46):
lots of people from different walks of life, college friends,
all that. They are all holding signs, and each sign
correlated with something significant in our relationship. The significance of
that uh, it was a date plus the event, and
so he had basically mapped out our relationship with like
a timeline, and each person that was holding the sign,
(24:09):
each set of two people were associated with that event,
so they were intimately involved in whatever kind of marketer
that was, first date, first kiss, time that he said
I loved you, We went to the CMA's, all that
kind of stuff. So it was like people would walk
up with their sign, walk back, and then they at
the end, it was my parents when he asked her,
(24:31):
there my hand in marriage. So they come up and
then he hits a knee, he proposes, and then.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
He wait, is the best part, See I just told it.
They come back, they're all there and they're all showing
their different dates, and then I kind of nod to them,
and they flip over, and now all of the cards
say that day because next.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Yes, it was the next big thing.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
And then they had the knee. She says, yes, praise
the Lord. And then we the.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
People come from a crowd, and there was a flash
mob dance kidding.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
For no reason now that I'm thinking about it, So.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Never let it be said that guys from Young Life
don't have.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Game gone gone.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
That's awesome, amazing, and honestly, I'm sitting here looking at you, guys,
and clearly this is eleven years ago, and the smiles
on your face and the way you keep slapping each
other's shoulder, finishing one another's sentences, it's obviously still a
love affair. It's beautiful, it really is. There's people in
(25:44):
this world who should envy that in you. So it's
time to get married. But before you get married, you
got to start having conversations about important stuff like how
many kids do we want? Do we want kids? Where
do we want to live? Is this the wife we
want to have? How are we going to do it?
What are finance is going to look like? And during
that conversation, Brandon got a surprise.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yep, yeah, fun surprise. We started peeling back all the layers,
and one of those was the financial conversation. I feel
like every couple goes through this where you're like, a,
how do you spend your money?
Speaker 2 (26:15):
They don't, They certainly should.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
I highly recommend they're getting hitched uff.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
You might want to understand one another's financial idea posessions. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
She essentially said, I have sixty two thousand dollars of
student loan debt, and every month I have to pay
you know whatever it was.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
I attempted to pay double, which I thought was like
I was crushing it. I was like, I'm paying double,
I could be paying the minimum.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
You know, when that interest hits, it's not really effected.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
So I thought I was like slaying the dragon like
I needed to. But he was like, Okay, when I.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Was looking at what I was making, don't make a lote.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
When you saw his reaction to you saying, yeah, when
you marry me, you're marrying sixty two thousand dollars in
student now, mister young Life got.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Mister young Life and mister Dave Ramsey also, oh boy,
And I was like, it was, I was did you
taken back?
Speaker 2 (27:13):
What was? What was the face you.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Got, okay to stunt done done, the smile, Okay, there.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
There are some eventually some tears. But I think what
a beautiful thing was He was like immediately solid as
both of our debts, So it wasn't like you have that.
He never made me feel guilty for like I can't
believe you adopted that debt or whatever. He was like, Okay,
we are going to work out a plan. And I
was like, I feel very loved because it is not
(27:51):
your debt, but you are owning it as yours now.
And the fact that you want to, you know, devise
a place to get the monkey off our back was
very I felt very loved in the process.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
We'll be right back. Let's go back to something you
just said that I found was mister Dave Ramsey. Yeah,
how come your mister Dave Ramsey in college?
Speaker 1 (28:24):
I don't know why my dad did this, but my
freshman year of college, he like basically dropped me off
at my dorm room and inside this little like good
Luck in College packet was this book called The Total
Money Makeover. I'm like, I don't like to read at
that age. I don't want to read my even my
textbooks whatever, why would he give me this book? And
(28:44):
by the end of the freshman year I read it
cover to cover. I don't know if I had a
lot of extra time, or that was before phones or what,
but I read it and that became the foundation for me.
I mean almost naively didn't think anything else about it,
and so I started managing my money that way. And
then we get to postgrad and I'm not making a lot.
I have very little apples coming in, and it really
(29:07):
helped me, like naming every dollar and living under your
meetings and just being like, well, if you're only bringing
in fifteen hundred a month, I guess you can only
spend fourteen hundred.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
That kind of thing, to me, the Dave Ramsey thing
is just net in the first reader. I mean, it's duh, yeah,
don't spend what you don't have.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
It's Grandma style, and don't.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Allow all of what you do have get eaten up
and interest yep, yep.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
And for that to be like that's that was just
kind of true law. I was like, Okay, that's what
we'll do. And so then I think the terror in
me was like I make less than thirty grand a
year and you have more than double that in debt.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Well, let's be let's let's talk about net. Yeah, it's
probably four years of income of net.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Yes, no, And so I just it's just basic.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Math, like, so will we do box? Yeah? How do
we do four years? We could at all if we
don't eat to clothe ourselves. Yeah, so if you're going
to be naked, you might as hang around with your
financial advice because that's.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
So there was a point where I was like, maybe
I should change jobs.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Yes, for sure, he was like, how do we do this?
Speaker 2 (30:16):
But honestly, then, what did that make you feel that
maybe he was going to change your job?
Speaker 3 (30:21):
I think I should start delivering pizzas at night if
I don't. And I was like, okay, Uh, it made
me feel guilty because I felt like his job was
his calling, like I felt like God specifically. And then
if you see this guy in what he does in ministry,
you're like, he's made for this, he was put on
(30:44):
this earth design like he the way that he leads
young men is remarkable. And so I'm like, oh cool,
I'm gonna I love this man and I'm gonna take
him away from his passion and his calling. And so
it was death very overwhelming, I anchored, which in my family,
a lot of what people think coming out of college
(31:05):
with debt is very normal, and so I was told like, oh,
it's really normal, and I think that for us. We
were like, but God says, don't be sleep till linder.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Yeah, Well, let's make sure we all understand that what
societal preconceived notion about normal is is not often right.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Totally or helpful.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Yeah, or smart frankly yeah. I mean when I coached
at Manassas, it was we were on the heels of
the whole no child left behind thing, which I think
there's a lot of stuff in the world that is
(31:50):
very well intentioned, but the law of unintended consequences. As
you look back at some of those well intentioned policies,
you think, home goodness, that was terrible and stupid and
horrible policy. And the no child left behind. I get
the idea, but the narrative that came out of that
is you have to go to college to be successful,
(32:11):
no child left behind. Every child's going to graduate, and
every child has to go to college to be successful. Well,
that is a lie. When you're really not equipped to
college and you could leave and go to a trade
school for six months, or go to a truck driving
school for six weeks, and at nineteen years old be
making seventy five to one hundred thousand dollars a year
(32:31):
with no debt. The no child left behind idea is
a good idea, but the narrative that comes out it
is you have to go to college and if you
can't afford it, just get student loans because they're free.
Until you get out of college and rack up all
this debt and you end up sometimes five and ten
years financially fiscally behind where you would have been had
(32:54):
you pursued another track. Now I'm not certainly not saying
actually you should have been a chuck. Yeah, but as
it pertains to what you just said, what's normal, Well
maybe it is, but it's not always the smartest thing,
and there are other ways to go about stuff. And
I just think it's interesting that your dad put a
(33:16):
book in your freshman college thing that is Dave Ramsey,
that to me is the first reader. And then you
fall in love and you meet the antithesis of that
lesson in the love of your life. I think that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Yeah, So you married her anyway.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Yeah, nice doubt job.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
And y'all's goal was killed at because.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Of Dave Ramsey, and we wanted to start a new
kind of playing the flag in the ground of going
we want to handle money in a God centered we
trust God's word way when we start a family, so
we were like, before we have kids, we want the
monkey off our back to kind of show a we are,
(34:13):
we are doing life differently hopefully.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
It was also a what if moment, like, well, what
if we what if we led a family and we
were we didn't do debt, Like what would that even
look like? It was still the age of credit cards,
but like what if we didn't have debt? And what
if when our kids went to college we told them,
you know, you only have X amount and leading them
(34:36):
toward not not incurring exactly what you just said. And
that that helped drive us to go, okay, well before
we even bring a human into this world, let's take
care of our business first. And so that's kind of
what started the journey, the aggressive journey of trying to
live off my salary and anything she made we wouldn't touch.
(34:59):
It was like I would have scratched your back for
five dollars and it just would have went straight to
o you straight to Norman.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
That sounds like a lot of beans and ramen noodles.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Yep, it was. I mean, I can't remember what our
grocery I think we had, but it was two hundred
bucks a month for food.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
Yeap read a lot of topia.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Did you go out to eat?
Speaker 3 (35:26):
Ever, we didn't know we had fifty dollars to eat
out to eat or maybe like forty I think it
was forty, and so we were like, maybe once a
month we'll go out to eat.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Oh, but for forty bucks, you're still going eat it
like cheaper.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Yeah, But we were like, no for now, not forever.
So we will sacrifice for the time being, but it
doesn't have to be the way we live the rest
of our life.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
That's a real commitment at twenty three or four years old.
Was that a shock to your world for sure? Well?
Speaker 3 (36:04):
I had never really group in Dallas group kind of
having whatever I wanted or needed, not like in the
crazy abundance, but just a normal life where everything was
kind of like provided for me. Didn't really have a
lot of financial background and how I would manage money.
(36:25):
But I think that learning from him, I was like, Wow,
you can actually have more freedom managing the money than
not managing the money. And so once we started naming
our dollars and say, you know, this was a little
bit more posted at. But the more you name it,
the more freedom it actually creates, rather than you just spend,
(36:48):
spend spend. You're like, oh, man, where's all of our
money going. I'm like, oh, we know where our money's going.
So and we can name the dollars so we can
build in freedoms in what we want.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
I want you to quick segue thanks for being so
candid and open about it, because personal finances and money
is stuff that a lot of people don't want to
talk about because it can be embarrassing. And you guys
talk about it with grins on your faces and it's
just absolutely cute. Really. So, I own a business. I
(37:22):
started it in two thousand and one with seventeen thousand
dollars and it was Lisa and me with a two
year old, of three ye old to four year old
and five year old. All right, there's no such thing
as not taken on debt. Start a business. I've been
in business since two thousand and one. I'm fifty six
years old. I have enjoyed and been blessed by a
(37:43):
certain level of success in business, But you never really
get out of lines of credit or debt. There's always
in business the burden of the bank. Even FedEx has debt,
even Amazon has debt. You just there's just about no
(38:03):
such thing as a growing company that doesn't incur debt.
Cap X stuff, investment debt, that debt, And even at
fifty six, there are times that I still really feel
the weight of debt. But in the same respect, I've
(38:30):
got one hundred and forty employees, and I've got a
business that's doing I do business in over forty countries
in the world, and my children, my wife and I
and many of the people that work for me are
enjoying a life that maybe they would not have otherwise
enjoyed if it weren't for the creation of this company.
So there's a balance right on a business side of things.
(38:56):
But I really do struggle with how much of that
debt and how much of the burden of that debt
is fruitful versus how much of that is responsible. It's
(39:18):
really the truth. What would you guys say, Since you're
a young life guy and I know you've moved on
but you're still in the ministry. What would you say
that your faith says about debt, given that the debt
(39:38):
we're talking about as a student loan debt that you
guys dealt with as a young married couple, versus the
debt I just described, there's a wide range of that
world debt.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Yeah, I I do think there is a difference between
using money to make money versus using money to live
outside your means, and so leverage is.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Really a great answer, dude, Well, that really is. I
was wondering what you were going to say, and I'm
not sure I even had an answer in my mind.
I expected, but there's one way of using debt to
make money and build things versus using debt to live
outside your means.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Yeah, one feels like a wise use of borrowed funds,
and one feels like a foolish, uncontrolled, undisciplined use of
funds that will come after.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
You and haunt you. Do you think debt's sinful?
Speaker 1 (40:40):
I don't think so. I don't think that. I think
the use of I think we money, in my opinion,
is a moral anyways. So it's not that money is sinful,
it's what we maybe do with it, or intentions of it,
or where our heart wants to There's is deeper issues
inside me than you know the money that I'm holding
in my hands, whether it's from the bank or from myself.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
I had a guest recently and I can't even remember who.
Alex sitting over there will probably scream out their name
in a minute, because he's like Encyclopedia Brown of guests.
But this guess is our podcast, we should know that
it's probably. He was quick to point out on three
(41:25):
different occasions a piece of scripture that I'm the worst
at quoting scripture, by the way, So I'm going to
butcher this, but you guys can clean it up for me.
That money is not the root of evil. It's the
love of money that's the root of evil. Is that
paraface correctly?
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (41:47):
I think that maybe can that distinct. Todd Komerniki, the
director of the movie Bond Hoffer, said that I knew that.
I told you you'd scream it.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
Yeah, you called it.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
But the point of it all is I think debt
can be looked at kind of the same way. Debt
for debt, so that you can have bigger, nicer things
and impress your friends is probably sinful debt to try
to grow and make more money maybe is a distinction
(42:24):
that's different.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Yeah, I would think so.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Yeah. So in Ashley's case, it was to get an
education so that she can make a living, not so
that she could buy a fancy, nice car. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
Well, actually would have been different. I think we would
had a longer, bigger conversation if she said, let's say
the number was less, and this is common, I have
fifteen sixteen thousand dollars of credit card debt. We're going
to pay that off whatever, But like why or what's
driving that?
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Because of my shoes are nice.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
My shoes rock, you know, I mean I shoot, oh
that's fair, you know, let's pay it off. So I
think for her it was fairly innocent of like, yeah,
I just I went to school and like I got
a communications degree. Until your credit they don't really pay
that good, And so how do we do it? So
we just kind of devised as simple plans is how
we're going to get rid of it.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
But I and actually until this conversation, I had not
even added up like what I owed. I just was
like blindly kind of like toil.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
The conversation that the pre marital conversation of let's talk
about finances. Yes, you hadn't even thought about it.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
I hadn't even like added it all up. I had,
and so anyways, I had like this panic moment. I
found out like the sum of the number, and I
was like, oh, that is.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
So much money.
Speaker 3 (43:46):
I didn't even make that now in a year, and
so you know, and then what I'm the ten year
plan of paying it off. I'm like, that's a long
time to pay off all this. I don't really want
that for myself or for us.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Isn't that interesting? Because that's the slippery slope of all
of it, is that it just becomes part of life.
And if you make enough money every week or every
month to make the payments, and he got a little
left over, it's okay.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
But I knew when I was marrying, so I knew
there wouldn't be enough for payments. And I moved without
a job, and so I was like, ah, there's a point.
And I was living with this family. I was paying
double on my payments. I had to because I couldn't
like defer them, you know, once the payment started that
(44:37):
I had like run out of the funds that I
had moving to Austin, and I was like, what do
I do? What do I do? I started riding my
bike places. Then my bike tiretop popped and so I
was like, okay, I won't pay for gas whatever, And
my sweet sweet husband didn't speak or a boyfriend at
the time didn't speak up, and at some point I
(44:58):
had to come to him and I'd say, hey, I like,
I literally don't have any money, and he was like,
I've actually patiently been waiting for you to ask, because
I know but you you need to ask when you
need help.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
And I was like, goe.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
So he was like patiently waiting knew that there was
a need, but he was like, I want you to.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
Like ask, why Why did you want to ask?
Speaker 1 (45:22):
I was thinking about that just now. Why do I
ask that? I actually think I remember thinking, yeah, all
these puzzle pieces, you know, you're kind of sniffing out,
you're about to marry somebody, Like are they you know
who they say they are?
Speaker 2 (45:35):
What?
Speaker 1 (45:36):
She had sixty two thousand dollars worth of debt. She
was kind of unsure about that initially, didn't even know
then all these things are happening, there's no money in
the bank, I'm like, is there you almost kind of
like is there something I'm not seeing? Am I blinded
by the beauty? And like she's actually just terrible with money?
Is she just terrible with money? And the more and
(45:57):
more I just was learning and smelling, it was like, no,
she just I mean, these those unfortunate circumstances were just life,
and life just happens, and that doesn't mean you're bad
with money if it just keeps happening. So I think
when she asked, it felt like that she was just
humble and honest enough to go this is where I'm at,
(46:21):
I think, and I valued that.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
I think at the time also you were like I
want you to communicate your needs to the father also
like I want not saying not he was putting himself
as as a father, but he's like, you need to
be honest and like if you need help, like go
to the father, and so not saying like and I
(46:45):
wanted to play the role of the father, but no
it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
So yeah, yeah, but just.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
Ask for help when you need help, and you need
of the father of people whenever. And so I was like, okay, wow, yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
And that concludes part one of my conversation with Brandon
and Ashley Stathus, and you do not want to miss
Part two that's now available to listen to, as you're
about to hear some extraordinary stories of amazing generosity. Together, guys,
we can change the country, but it starts with you.
I'll see in Part two
She gets on the mic and she says, we wanted
a knight to bless y'all, but really what we're here
for is for the last year, we've seen y'all fight
and tooth and nail and grind to pay off your
student loan debt. And just as much as Jesus has
paid the debt of your sins, we want you to
(00:28):
know that your debt free tonight. And we're like what
she goes, we've paid off. All of us here have
paid off the rest of your debt.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach in
Inner City Memphis. And that last part, well, it somehow
led to an oscar for the film about our team.
It's called Undefeated. Guys, I believe our country's problems will
(01:05):
never be solved by a bunch of fancy people and
nice suits using big words that nobody ever uses on
cinn in Fox, but rather by an army of normal folks.
That's us, just you and me deciding, hey, you know what,
maybe I can help. That's what Brandon and Ashley staffis
(01:26):
the voices you just start have done. Not only have
they been the beneficiaries of radical love from their own
army of normal folks, but they've also catalyzed this army
to bless many others too. I cannot wait for you
to meet them right after these brief messages from our
general sponsors, Brandon and Ashley, stay this.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
It's whatever you want.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
What is this Greek abbreviated name you've got here?
Speaker 1 (02:15):
It used to be?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Now? Yeah, I did it right. Welcome to Memphis, I
think sure is going to be. Came from Austin, right.
How do you get from Austin to Memphis? I guess
you fly? There's no direct flight, is there?
Speaker 1 (02:29):
They hit us to Atlanta, Phila Delta?
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yes? Well good. So you guys excited about the playoffs?
Are you? You two fans?
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Yeah, we actually went to their rival school.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
You did, but well you didn't. You didn't have a
football team anymore. I mean, what's that that football you
guys played this year? I'm not really sure.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
No, that's it.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
I just specifically remember Ole Miss going to a place
called Man this year and absolutely thumping this group of
people that.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Have times you win sometimes you don't win.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Y'all have been winning for a while. You go, so
it should be did you go to No? I just
didn't ministrate you t for fifteen years, So I feel
like I've done four or five educational cycles with having
no degree. Note, but I went to Jacksonville State.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
You and McConaughey or Powells, Oh, yeah, we're buddy.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
He's a great guy. He wears the same leather jacket.
I tell him it stinks you should put on a
different leather jacket, but he has the same. I think
it's his lucky leather jacket. He pulls it off, rocket,
he pulls it off.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
All right. So you got here last night?
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
And did you get to do anything in Memphis at all?
How much? Do anything besides put you in a hotel here?
Speaker 1 (03:48):
There's only one thing to do in Memphis, and that's
see the ducks.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
And so we did things more to do in Memphis.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Rush to the docks, Rush to the dock, and they
rushed to the elevator and then said goodbye to us,
and then we went It is great, it's great. We
went on Beale Street.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah, we went on Beal Street.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Good walked, Yeah, walked, what's it raining? So you're fine?
So it was good.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
It was great.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
So you got to see the ducks. For those listening
to us, Yeah, the Peabody is a hotel in downtown
Memphis that's been there forever and back in the thirties,
I think it was some inebriated hunters brought back some
ducks and as a joke, dropped them in the fountain
and the foyer or the lobby, and thus started ducks
(04:35):
in the Peabody fountain. And now they are trained to
come down from the duck penthouse on the roof of
the Peabody, down the elevators, walking to the the fountain,
hang out, and then they walk out and make a
big whoop to do over.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
A red carpet.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Oh yeah, yes, why wouldn't you.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Lots of phones out, That's exactly right.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
So we're good. I'm glad you got to enjoy the ducks.
So normally at this time I will introduce our guests
and talk about the organization they're with. In this case,
that's not what we're doing today. We talk about all
the time not having to be part of some big
(05:15):
government organization or NGO or anything. Else to be a
part of the army of normal folks. We also frequently
talk about seeing meet need in your community, using your
passion abilities to meet that need, and we often get
people all the time saying, you know, I just I
(05:37):
want to get involved, I want to help. I care
about my community, I care about people in my community,
but I just don't know how to start. And your
guy's story really exemplifies the power of just simple kindness
and generosity and how on a small scale you can
do massive things. And I can't wait to tell that
(06:01):
story to encourage and inspire folks to understand that need
is everywhere and the ability to be generous and help
others is abundant. And I can't wait to tell the story.
But to tell the story, we kind of got to
start with you guys dating. I think, really, so how'd
(06:26):
you meet? How does somebody from Texas and know you
even begin to get together as well?
Speaker 3 (06:35):
I was living in Dallas, he was living in Austin.
My sister's sister in law, Divine Woman, said I think
that you're going to marry this guy, Brandon Stathis, And
I was like, we'll see. I had never met him,
didn't know who he was. She just was like, I
just have this weird feeling I was living, she was living. Yeah,
(06:59):
so her boyfriend was Brandon's roommate, lived in a house
of ten guys. After calls about it was like a
mini Yeah it was. It was very sweet and so
she was like, you got to meet him, met him,
and the rest is history was very quick. We dated
nine months in dating six months. I moved to Austin
(07:21):
for him three more months. We got engaged, engaged for
five months. Done.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
That was me and Lisa. Yeah, you know, you know
from the day Lisa and first date, which took me
five months to get her go out with me, but
from that date until the day we were married was
only like fourteen months.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yea, I fell in love. Yeah, she fell in like
and I'm not really sure she's looked all the way
there after thirty three years. I'm still trying real hard.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
So you moved to Austin, Yes, moved and you were
in Oklahoma.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
I was in Dallas, grew up in Dallas.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
I'm sorry. So what we do?
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Went to OU I was an executive assistant and then
moved to Austin with a lot of school debt, no job,
and nowhere to live. A family took me in that
he knew through in life, and I lived with him
for my first however many months, but I moved here
because I felt like the lord told me a date
(08:23):
to move a month. So I was like, I'm gonna
trust you. I'm going to blindly trust you. Everyone was like,
you're crazy when you're moving a city to a city
for a guy after dating him six months and then
two year, moving with no job and you have a
lot of school payments. And then my second day in Austin,
we were in a soccer league, I broke my foot
and they were like, I think you're gonna need surgery.
(08:43):
And I was like, okay, this is cool.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah, no money, no money, knowing nothing.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
So what are you doing with ten guys in a house?
What's up with that?
Speaker 1 (08:54):
I think it's cheap rent. That was the only way
to do it in Austin. I think it's now you
can't even do that. But it's just it's cheaper rent.
It was a huge house. We all had jobs and
we just we went for it and we all doubled
up in a room.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
What were you doing for eleven I worked for.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Young Life at the University of Texas. So most of
the guys all had just business corporate jobs, accountant when
it was an architect, engineer, film the other. And I
just was a ministry guy. I did college ministry at
University of Texas. Loved college guys. I had moved from
the Southeast, so originally was from Georgia. Moved to Austin
(09:30):
to take that job, to do that.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
And so for those of our listeners that aren't real
familiar with young Life, tell us what that is.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah, young Life a relational ministry to adolescence. Really anyone
middle school, high school, college, they do teen moms, military
and and you can go on staff, you can be
a Young Life leader. But it's all about going to
where students are to share the love of Christ into
(10:02):
We call it earned the right to be heard.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Sounds like a really crappy job.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
It's the crappiest job ever.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
And I'm gonna tell you what it's. Well, you know
I went to miss and you know, oh you where'd
you go to school? Jacksonville State, Jacksonville State down in Ala, Alabama, Alabama.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
It's a sneaky place, Jacksonville, Alabama.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, but where is it.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
It's about an hour and a half southeast of Birmingham.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Okay, all right, so we went to college. In college,
there are a number of things. There are books, there
are classrooms, and then beyond those two subsets of unimportant things,
there's beer and for tarnity and shorty life and parties
and everything else. And I can only imagine the challenges
(10:53):
associated with trying to have relational, christ centered work done
in an ironment where pretty much everything that's any fun
is in direct opposition to that. Yep, yep, So why
do you do that?
Speaker 1 (11:09):
We love a good challenge. I think at the heart
of every college student, and I think maybe people in general,
it's just the desire to be known. And when I think,
you leave your high school, you're a big fish in
a small pond, and when you come to a place
like the University of Texas or Ole Miss or OU
or any big d one school, you become a small
(11:30):
fish and a big, big pond. And so we would
encounter freshmen who just had a lot of need, even
though on the outside they looked like they had it
all together. They were going to do this hit, this sorority,
hit that fraternity, whatnot. They really desired deep friendship, and
then they also desired to figure out whether faith was
(11:52):
their own or it was their parents.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
And that's interesting because there's a lot of people who
quote grow up in church because their parents drag them,
And I think those are parents in general trying to
do the right thing by their children and expose them
to what they think is the right fundamental basis for
(12:16):
a meaningful life. I get it. I did it with
my own children. But I also know when I went
to college, even having been drugged to church by my
collar as a child, when I got to college, one
of the first things I thought was sleeping in on
Sunday is a heck of a lot better than waking
up going to church as an eighteen year old, nineteen
(12:37):
year old. I mean, I'm first to admit that was
my approach. And when the guy from Campus Ministry, Campus Life,
Young Life at All was you at orientation, smiling real
big and handing me a flyer or whatever, that might
have been the first thing to win the trash basket. Yep.
(13:00):
I rejected the notion of a Kumbaya meeting at eighteen
years old with a bunch of other freshmen. I rejected
that I mean, I don't want anything to do with it.
Did you feel that, Oh?
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Yeah, It just depends on the person. There were definitely
guys that you would feel that stiff arm and you
would kind of just oh, the most heisman post. I mean,
there were some rough guys that I met early on,
but man, you crave to be known. And so if
all of a sudden and two weeks later, amidst going
(13:36):
to class, I say hey, Jimmy, and he's like, how
do you know my name? I don't want anything to
do with this. Two weeks later, Jimmy, how's school going?
I mean, it's like you can't not respond, And so
there you kind of win. We would win guys over
by just essentially letting them do their thing and just
(13:57):
still being available. And then there were guys that were
much more hungry and willing to be like again, I
feel like I'm a fish out of water, and you're
friendly and like, we're gonna go do something really fun
and cool. And we would never lead out necessarily with
come to this Bible study. We would just hey, we're
going to you know place, pick up basketball at the
(14:19):
blah blah place this Thursday night. Come with us and
anyone who played sports was like, I'm down for that,
And so I think that's kind of you can move
somebody down the line till all of a sudden you've
earned the right to go, Hey, what if on Thursdays
at four, when you don't have class, me and all
your buddies we just got down on the grass and
opened up the scriptures. Would you be open to doing that?
(14:40):
And they're like sure. And then then when you get
in there, it's over because that first one I look
at them and go, why did you come? Because your
mom doesn't even know you're here and didn't make you come.
Why did you get here? And they're like, oh, yeah,
I guess on my own. They want to be their
own at least in the guy's side, they want to
be their own man, and they want to like decide
(15:01):
for themselves. Who is Jesus?
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Is he real?
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Is he personal? Does he have anything to do with
my life? Because now it's like my life has been
gone and I've already been making my own decisions anyways.
So I think that Cross Hairs was a dynamic moment
for those guys. That was my journey. My mom was
so afraid when she dropped me off that I was
(15:24):
going to just go crazy, and she even said something
like I don't know, she's like offered me money, Like
I think she tried to bribe me. If she's listening
to this, she was cutting my hair or something, and
she was like, you know, if you don't you know,
if you go through college and you don't drink, like
a friend of mine gave her son one hundred and
fifty bucks and you know that stands for you too,
(15:46):
which I'm like, Mom, come on, you can give me
a undred more than one hundred fifty bucks. But I
think what was more mesmerizing for me was taking ownership
of my life and faith and money started in college
and actually impacted us in our life with the whole
journey of generosity kind of story. But I think that
(16:08):
impacted me so much that ended up making a career
out of it and moving to Austin And what's your
degree in business management? I was full on business, was
going to go do finance. Yeah, go do wealth management.
And a guy who was walking with me, who had
kind of pursued me very lightly, was like, you should
(16:28):
think about doing college ministry. You click with college guys.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
And now a few messages from our gener sponsors. But
first I hope you'll consider signing up to join the
army at normal folks dot us. By signing up, you'll
receive a weekly email with short episode summaries in case
you happen to miss an episode, or if you prefer
reading about our incredible guests, We'll be right back. Look, man,
(17:09):
I'm looking at you. Your articulate, You're probably you're good looking, dude.
You probably were doing great and financial advisor business role
and made a bunch of money. I cannot imagine young
life is a career that you're ever going to get
wealthy in.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
No no, so why I think when you are. When
I was in college, I just felt God's love. It
was personal to me for the first time in high school,
like kind of like what you said. I think this
is common for a lot of Bible bell people, and
I think it's actually becoming less and less as our
country gets I think more and more post Christian. But
(17:48):
I started reading the scriptures for myself, I started interacting
with God myself. He was personal to me, and I
was overflowing with that. So even when I was gearing
up to move to Atlanta and do wealth management at
a firm that I was excited about working for a
family friend and all that stuff. I was thinking, Oh,
(18:08):
I can really love people that way that a wealth
management guy told me people get naked in front of
three people their spouse, their doctor, and their financial planner
because wherever their money goes, that's where their heart is,
so you get to see their heart. And I was like,
I'd love to get there with people, but I always
knew that you'd have you know, at least forty percent
(18:28):
of your job would be paperwork and modules and Excel.
And I was willing to deal with that in order
to get to that other juicy stuff. And when I
realized that if I did college ministry, I wouldn't have
to wear the financial planner hat. I could just pursue
people and go right to the jugular of like caring
for them, loving them and asking them questions, of to
(18:49):
let them kind of consider their life, consider taking ownership
of their faith. Right, So I went for it.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
In turn, I think that our experience in ministry for
fifteen years, we feel rich. We feel very rich, not
financially rich, very like spiritually rich. We've got to experience
unforgettable things that like when people's life change. That's where
(19:16):
the real richness is. So you're what was your degree
in Nashley Communication?
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Okay, so you're also lovely, thank you, beautiful and hanging
out in Oklahoma and you meet this cool guy who
is obviously very passionate, nice looking and everything else. But
(19:44):
he works for young life and you uproot and roll
kind of knowing what you're getting into the ministry, which
once again is not financial, the most fruitful thing on
the face of the planet.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Why because of this man, look at him. Love makes
you do just make.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
That's why oars were.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Like, are you sure I yet know? I? I really
had never met a man like him, a man that
was intentional, and and so I was like, I am
sold on you, and I will I. I want to
follow you, and we're at whatever that means in ministry,
thriving and financially whatever where, whatever it is. I just
(20:37):
want to be behind you. And so I was like,
you know, do you make all the money in the world. No,
But at the same time.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
I had more than her.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Yeah, right, No, I mean more than you. God knows
our needs and he will provide for us. He will
see our needs and he will he'll fulfill and needs,
whether that's me working or staying home or whatever that is.
And so I was like, it was just like a
I love this man and I'll follow you to the
(21:09):
ends of the earth.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
What a cool love affair. So how old were you
at this point? About twenty three?
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Okay, so on top of it, your stupid young and wow,
it's all twenty three years state. But I was a
complete I still am. But that was all right. So
she shows up and I mean she's moved. Sonight you
have to propose? I mean, what else you got to do?
Speaker 1 (21:33):
It was this pressure?
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Yeah, so how'd that go down?
Speaker 1 (21:36):
The proposal?
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Well, I I have known to be creative when I
get an idea about something.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
And that that gives him the juju in life, the
big dreaming moments.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
This was back in twenty eleven, a dreaming moment before
like what are they called flash mobs? Small things out
not a thing, but from twenty thirteen to about twenty
seventeen they were a thing. And I wasn't thinking I
want to do a flash mob. I just thought, how
could I get as many people in this in on
(22:13):
this as possible to surprise bless and just catch her
off guard and show her I love you so much.
And so I did a proposal that had a bunch
of people in it. My family from Georgia wasn't able
to make it. So I posted on YouTube or I
have a good buddy film it. I posted on Facebook
for my family members. That's all I was thinking about.
(22:36):
And a week later had like one hundred and fifty
thousand views. Are you getting all these things? And then
a month later it had three hundred thousand views. And
this TV network is calling us to see if they
could pay for a wedding if blah blah blah, And
then a cruise ship asks if they can record it
or whatever.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Er think, what did you do well flash mob?
Speaker 2 (22:58):
How? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Okay, So I will explain it. First off, he flew
me to Fredericksburg that morning in a private plane. It
flew me to Fredericksburg, Texas in a private plane. We
get there, go to a field, have lunch. This family
comes out, serves us, lunch, we hang, We fly back
later that evening I was supposed to or I had
(23:22):
been praying about this meeting that he was to have
with his boss's boss all week. He fooled me and
then I was walking in to have dinner with my girlfriends,
walk into this restaurant. He's there, blindfolds me, walks me
around the corner to this park, takes off my blindfold,
turns me around, and there's my family, all of our friends,
(23:46):
lots of people from different walks of life, college friends,
all that. They are all holding signs, and each sign
correlated with something significant in our relationship. The significance of
that uh, it was a date plus the event, and
so he had basically mapped out our relationship with like
a timeline, and each person that was holding the sign,
(24:09):
each set of two people were associated with that event,
so they were intimately involved in whatever kind of marketer
that was, first date, first kiss, time that he said
I loved you, We went to the CMA's, all that
kind of stuff. So it was like people would walk
up with their sign, walk back, and then they at
the end, it was my parents when he asked her,
(24:31):
there my hand in marriage. So they come up and
then he hits a knee, he proposes, and then.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
He wait, is the best part, See I just told it.
They come back, they're all there and they're all showing
their different dates, and then I kind of nod to them,
and they flip over, and now all of the cards
say that day because next.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Yes, it was the next big thing.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
And then they had the knee. She says, yes, praise
the Lord. And then we the.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
People come from a crowd, and there was a flash
mob dance kidding.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
For no reason now that I'm thinking about it, So.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Never let it be said that guys from Young Life
don't have.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Game gone gone.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
That's awesome, amazing, and honestly, I'm sitting here looking at you, guys,
and clearly this is eleven years ago, and the smiles
on your face and the way you keep slapping each
other's shoulder, finishing one another's sentences, it's obviously still a
love affair. It's beautiful, it really is. There's people in
(25:44):
this world who should envy that in you. So it's
time to get married. But before you get married, you
got to start having conversations about important stuff like how
many kids do we want? Do we want kids? Where
do we want to live? Is this the wife we
want to have? How are we going to do it?
What are finance is going to look like? And during
that conversation, Brandon got a surprise.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yep, yeah, fun surprise. We started peeling back all the layers,
and one of those was the financial conversation. I feel
like every couple goes through this where you're like, a,
how do you spend your money?
Speaker 2 (26:15):
They don't, They certainly should.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
I highly recommend they're getting hitched uff.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
You might want to understand one another's financial idea posessions. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
She essentially said, I have sixty two thousand dollars of
student loan debt, and every month I have to pay
you know whatever it was.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
I attempted to pay double, which I thought was like
I was crushing it. I was like, I'm paying double,
I could be paying the minimum.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
You know, when that interest hits, it's not really effected.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
So I thought I was like slaying the dragon like
I needed to. But he was like, Okay, when I.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Was looking at what I was making, don't make a lote.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
When you saw his reaction to you saying, yeah, when
you marry me, you're marrying sixty two thousand dollars in
student now, mister young Life got.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Mister young Life and mister Dave Ramsey also, oh boy,
And I was like, it was, I was did you
taken back?
Speaker 2 (27:13):
What was? What was the face you.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Got, okay to stunt done done, the smile, Okay, there.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
There are some eventually some tears. But I think what
a beautiful thing was He was like immediately solid as
both of our debts, So it wasn't like you have that.
He never made me feel guilty for like I can't
believe you adopted that debt or whatever. He was like, Okay,
we are going to work out a plan. And I
was like, I feel very loved because it is not
(27:51):
your debt, but you are owning it as yours now.
And the fact that you want to, you know, devise
a place to get the monkey off our back was
very I felt very loved in the process.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
We'll be right back. Let's go back to something you
just said that I found was mister Dave Ramsey. Yeah,
how come your mister Dave Ramsey in college?
Speaker 1 (28:24):
I don't know why my dad did this, but my
freshman year of college, he like basically dropped me off
at my dorm room and inside this little like good
Luck in College packet was this book called The Total
Money Makeover. I'm like, I don't like to read at
that age. I don't want to read my even my
textbooks whatever, why would he give me this book? And
(28:44):
by the end of the freshman year I read it
cover to cover. I don't know if I had a
lot of extra time, or that was before phones or what,
but I read it and that became the foundation for me.
I mean almost naively didn't think anything else about it,
and so I started managing my money that way. And
then we get to postgrad and I'm not making a lot.
I have very little apples coming in, and it really
(29:07):
helped me, like naming every dollar and living under your
meetings and just being like, well, if you're only bringing
in fifteen hundred a month, I guess you can only
spend fourteen hundred.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
That kind of thing, to me, the Dave Ramsey thing
is just net in the first reader. I mean, it's duh, yeah,
don't spend what you don't have.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
It's Grandma style, and don't.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Allow all of what you do have get eaten up
and interest yep, yep.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
And for that to be like that's that was just
kind of true law. I was like, Okay, that's what
we'll do. And so then I think the terror in
me was like I make less than thirty grand a
year and you have more than double that in debt.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Well, let's be let's let's talk about net. Yeah, it's
probably four years of income of net.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Yes, no, And so I just it's just basic.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Math, like, so will we do box? Yeah? How do
we do four years? We could at all if we
don't eat to clothe ourselves. Yeah, so if you're going
to be naked, you might as hang around with your
financial advice because that's.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
So there was a point where I was like, maybe
I should change jobs.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Yes, for sure, he was like, how do we do this?
Speaker 2 (30:16):
But honestly, then, what did that make you feel that
maybe he was going to change your job?
Speaker 3 (30:21):
I think I should start delivering pizzas at night if
I don't. And I was like, okay, Uh, it made
me feel guilty because I felt like his job was
his calling, like I felt like God specifically. And then
if you see this guy in what he does in ministry,
you're like, he's made for this, he was put on
(30:44):
this earth design like he the way that he leads
young men is remarkable. And so I'm like, oh cool,
I'm gonna I love this man and I'm gonna take
him away from his passion and his calling. And so
it was death very overwhelming, I anchored, which in my family,
a lot of what people think coming out of college
(31:05):
with debt is very normal, and so I was told like, oh,
it's really normal, and I think that for us. We
were like, but God says, don't be sleep till linder.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Yeah, Well, let's make sure we all understand that what
societal preconceived notion about normal is is not often right.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Totally or helpful.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Yeah, or smart frankly yeah. I mean when I coached
at Manassas, it was we were on the heels of
the whole no child left behind thing, which I think
there's a lot of stuff in the world that is
(31:50):
very well intentioned, but the law of unintended consequences. As
you look back at some of those well intentioned policies,
you think, home goodness, that was terrible and stupid and
horrible policy. And the no child left behind. I get
the idea, but the narrative that came out of that
is you have to go to college to be successful,
(32:11):
no child left behind. Every child's going to graduate, and
every child has to go to college to be successful. Well,
that is a lie. When you're really not equipped to
college and you could leave and go to a trade
school for six months, or go to a truck driving
school for six weeks, and at nineteen years old be
making seventy five to one hundred thousand dollars a year
(32:31):
with no debt. The no child left behind idea is
a good idea, but the narrative that comes out it
is you have to go to college and if you
can't afford it, just get student loans because they're free.
Until you get out of college and rack up all
this debt and you end up sometimes five and ten
years financially fiscally behind where you would have been had
(32:54):
you pursued another track. Now I'm not certainly not saying
actually you should have been a chuck. Yeah, but as
it pertains to what you just said, what's normal, Well
maybe it is, but it's not always the smartest thing,
and there are other ways to go about stuff. And
I just think it's interesting that your dad put a
(33:16):
book in your freshman college thing that is Dave Ramsey,
that to me is the first reader. And then you
fall in love and you meet the antithesis of that
lesson in the love of your life. I think that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Yeah, So you married her anyway.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Yeah, nice doubt job.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
And y'all's goal was killed at because.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Of Dave Ramsey, and we wanted to start a new
kind of playing the flag in the ground of going
we want to handle money in a God centered we
trust God's word way when we start a family, so
we were like, before we have kids, we want the
monkey off our back to kind of show a we are,
(34:13):
we are doing life differently hopefully.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
It was also a what if moment, like, well, what
if we what if we led a family and we
were we didn't do debt, Like what would that even
look like? It was still the age of credit cards,
but like what if we didn't have debt? And what
if when our kids went to college we told them,
you know, you only have X amount and leading them
(34:36):
toward not not incurring exactly what you just said. And
that that helped drive us to go, okay, well before
we even bring a human into this world, let's take
care of our business first. And so that's kind of
what started the journey, the aggressive journey of trying to
live off my salary and anything she made we wouldn't touch.
(34:59):
It was like I would have scratched your back for
five dollars and it just would have went straight to
o you straight to Norman.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
That sounds like a lot of beans and ramen noodles.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Yep, it was. I mean, I can't remember what our
grocery I think we had, but it was two hundred
bucks a month for food.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
Yeap read a lot of topia.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Did you go out to eat?
Speaker 3 (35:26):
Ever, we didn't know we had fifty dollars to eat
out to eat or maybe like forty I think it
was forty, and so we were like, maybe once a
month we'll go out to eat.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Oh, but for forty bucks, you're still going eat it
like cheaper.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Yeah, But we were like, no for now, not forever.
So we will sacrifice for the time being, but it
doesn't have to be the way we live the rest
of our life.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
That's a real commitment at twenty three or four years old.
Was that a shock to your world for sure? Well?
Speaker 3 (36:04):
I had never really group in Dallas group kind of
having whatever I wanted or needed, not like in the
crazy abundance, but just a normal life where everything was
kind of like provided for me. Didn't really have a
lot of financial background and how I would manage money.
(36:25):
But I think that learning from him, I was like, Wow,
you can actually have more freedom managing the money than
not managing the money. And so once we started naming
our dollars and say, you know, this was a little
bit more posted at. But the more you name it,
the more freedom it actually creates, rather than you just spend,
(36:48):
spend spend. You're like, oh, man, where's all of our
money going. I'm like, oh, we know where our money's going.
So and we can name the dollars so we can
build in freedoms in what we want.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
I want you to quick segue thanks for being so
candid and open about it, because personal finances and money
is stuff that a lot of people don't want to
talk about because it can be embarrassing. And you guys
talk about it with grins on your faces and it's
just absolutely cute. Really. So, I own a business. I
(37:22):
started it in two thousand and one with seventeen thousand
dollars and it was Lisa and me with a two
year old, of three ye old to four year old
and five year old. All right, there's no such thing
as not taken on debt. Start a business. I've been
in business since two thousand and one. I'm fifty six
years old. I have enjoyed and been blessed by a
(37:43):
certain level of success in business, But you never really
get out of lines of credit or debt. There's always
in business the burden of the bank. Even FedEx has debt,
even Amazon has debt. You just there's just about no
(38:03):
such thing as a growing company that doesn't incur debt.
Cap X stuff, investment debt, that debt, And even at
fifty six, there are times that I still really feel
the weight of debt. But in the same respect, I've
(38:30):
got one hundred and forty employees, and I've got a
business that's doing I do business in over forty countries
in the world, and my children, my wife and I
and many of the people that work for me are
enjoying a life that maybe they would not have otherwise
enjoyed if it weren't for the creation of this company.
So there's a balance right on a business side of things.
(38:56):
But I really do struggle with how much of that
debt and how much of the burden of that debt
is fruitful versus how much of that is responsible. It's
(39:18):
really the truth. What would you guys say, Since you're
a young life guy and I know you've moved on
but you're still in the ministry. What would you say
that your faith says about debt, given that the debt
(39:38):
we're talking about as a student loan debt that you
guys dealt with as a young married couple, versus the
debt I just described, there's a wide range of that
world debt.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Yeah, I I do think there is a difference between
using money to make money versus using money to live
outside your means, and so leverage is.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Really a great answer, dude, Well, that really is. I
was wondering what you were going to say, and I'm
not sure I even had an answer in my mind.
I expected, but there's one way of using debt to
make money and build things versus using debt to live
outside your means.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Yeah, one feels like a wise use of borrowed funds,
and one feels like a foolish, uncontrolled, undisciplined use of
funds that will come after.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
You and haunt you. Do you think debt's sinful?
Speaker 1 (40:40):
I don't think so. I don't think that. I think
the use of I think we money, in my opinion,
is a moral anyways. So it's not that money is sinful,
it's what we maybe do with it, or intentions of it,
or where our heart wants to There's is deeper issues
inside me than you know the money that I'm holding
in my hands, whether it's from the bank or from myself.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
I had a guest recently and I can't even remember who.
Alex sitting over there will probably scream out their name
in a minute, because he's like Encyclopedia Brown of guests.
But this guess is our podcast, we should know that
it's probably. He was quick to point out on three
(41:25):
different occasions a piece of scripture that I'm the worst
at quoting scripture, by the way, So I'm going to
butcher this, but you guys can clean it up for me.
That money is not the root of evil. It's the
love of money that's the root of evil. Is that
paraface correctly?
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (41:47):
I think that maybe can that distinct. Todd Komerniki, the
director of the movie Bond Hoffer, said that I knew that.
I told you you'd scream it.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
Yeah, you called it.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
But the point of it all is I think debt
can be looked at kind of the same way. Debt
for debt, so that you can have bigger, nicer things
and impress your friends is probably sinful debt to try
to grow and make more money maybe is a distinction
(42:24):
that's different.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Yeah, I would think so.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Yeah. So in Ashley's case, it was to get an
education so that she can make a living, not so
that she could buy a fancy, nice car. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
Well, actually would have been different. I think we would
had a longer, bigger conversation if she said, let's say
the number was less, and this is common, I have
fifteen sixteen thousand dollars of credit card debt. We're going
to pay that off whatever, But like why or what's
driving that?
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Because of my shoes are nice.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
My shoes rock, you know, I mean I shoot, oh
that's fair, you know, let's pay it off. So I
think for her it was fairly innocent of like, yeah,
I just I went to school and like I got
a communications degree. Until your credit they don't really pay
that good, And so how do we do it? So
we just kind of devised as simple plans is how
we're going to get rid of it.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
But I and actually until this conversation, I had not
even added up like what I owed. I just was
like blindly kind of like toil.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
The conversation that the pre marital conversation of let's talk
about finances. Yes, you hadn't even thought about it.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
I hadn't even like added it all up. I had,
and so anyways, I had like this panic moment. I
found out like the sum of the number, and I
was like, oh, that is.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
So much money.
Speaker 3 (43:46):
I didn't even make that now in a year, and
so you know, and then what I'm the ten year
plan of paying it off. I'm like, that's a long
time to pay off all this. I don't really want
that for myself or for us.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Isn't that interesting? Because that's the slippery slope of all
of it, is that it just becomes part of life.
And if you make enough money every week or every
month to make the payments, and he got a little
left over, it's okay.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
But I knew when I was marrying, so I knew
there wouldn't be enough for payments. And I moved without
a job, and so I was like, ah, there's a point.
And I was living with this family. I was paying
double on my payments. I had to because I couldn't
like defer them, you know, once the payment started that
(44:37):
I had like run out of the funds that I
had moving to Austin, and I was like, what do
I do? What do I do? I started riding my
bike places. Then my bike tiretop popped and so I
was like, okay, I won't pay for gas whatever, And
my sweet sweet husband didn't speak or a boyfriend at
the time didn't speak up, and at some point I
(44:58):
had to come to him and I'd say, hey, I like,
I literally don't have any money, and he was like,
I've actually patiently been waiting for you to ask, because
I know but you you need to ask when you
need help.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
And I was like, goe.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
So he was like patiently waiting knew that there was
a need, but he was like, I want you to.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
Like ask, why Why did you want to ask?
Speaker 1 (45:22):
I was thinking about that just now. Why do I
ask that? I actually think I remember thinking, yeah, all
these puzzle pieces, you know, you're kind of sniffing out,
you're about to marry somebody, Like are they you know
who they say they are?
Speaker 2 (45:35):
What?
Speaker 1 (45:36):
She had sixty two thousand dollars worth of debt. She
was kind of unsure about that initially, didn't even know
then all these things are happening, there's no money in
the bank, I'm like, is there you almost kind of
like is there something I'm not seeing? Am I blinded
by the beauty? And like she's actually just terrible with money?
Is she just terrible with money? And the more and
(45:57):
more I just was learning and smelling, it was like, no,
she just I mean, these those unfortunate circumstances were just life,
and life just happens, and that doesn't mean you're bad
with money if it just keeps happening. So I think
when she asked, it felt like that she was just
humble and honest enough to go this is where I'm at,
(46:21):
I think, and I valued that.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
I think at the time also you were like I
want you to communicate your needs to the father also
like I want not saying not he was putting himself
as as a father, but he's like, you need to
be honest and like if you need help, like go
to the father, and so not saying like and I
(46:45):
wanted to play the role of the father, but no
it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
So yeah, yeah, but just.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
Ask for help when you need help, and you need
of the father of people whenever. And so I was like, okay, wow, yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
And that concludes part one of my conversation with Brandon
and Ashley Stathus, and you do not want to miss
Part two that's now available to listen to, as you're
about to hear some extraordinary stories of amazing generosity. Together, guys,
we can change the country, but it starts with you.
I'll see in Part two
Host
Bill Courtney
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