Audio File
Transcript
My name is Brian Eberhardt.
My name is Chris Dotson.
My name is Adam Keene.
My name is Shyheim Banks. I’m 15 years old.
I interviewed…
I interviewed…
I interviewed Neil Martin…
Neil Martin…
Neil Martin…
on June 26, 2012.
My life growing up here has always been part of the church organization, coming here with my son, and he would sit there. He’s like “Dad, you know what? I really like coming to this place, you know?” He said. “This is the first time I came to church and understood all that the pastor was saying,” you know, so it was kind of nice, you know? So it was a place to come. And, you know, we’re still here. It’s been good.
This community, you see the brokenness. When you see the whole… you know, when my son, when he was in the 9th grade, is… his mom had put him out, and he been in my care since then. And I had came to center of life, and they were here morally, spiritually and financially. They helped, you know, him through that process and just the things that he needed. And it doesn’t matter what you go through, doesn’t matter what type of struggle you have in life, as long as-as an end, there’s a win. And I look at this community, and I look at all the positive things that are going on now, regardless of all the negative things that have been going on, this community has so much potential. The people coming together and working together, there’s endless possibilities of success for the next generations to come. For some of the programs and things that are going on, I just think that this community can constantly evolve to different things at different times. You know, I think the possibilities are endless, and I think the most important thing is when people come together on one accord and work together. I see that in Hazelwood. I see that young guys coming up and they’re the future.
Well, there was a lot of adversities to my life growing up. You know, a lot of the drugs was on the frontier was, you know, it was there for everyone to get into. And I always thought back on, you know, some of the things that my father had instilled in us, you know, far as working hard and being able to work on houses. Those were some of the things that I resorted to, you know. When he passed, he had all these tools, and he had trucks sitting around, and a lot of things that I had learned from him, I started applying it to neighbors or friends. Whereas a lot of my other friends, they didn’t really have that out. The right thing came out of it. Being responsible, came out of it.
I’m a licensed contractor. I’ve been in this work for about 25 years now, and I used to work for a wholesale restaurant supply company, and I worked there for seven years. I always wanted to start my own business, never knew what it would be one day. It was always a dream of mine. So the one day I had to call in a refrigeration company to come in and fix one of the coolers that had broke down, and the guy came in and he may have been there for maybe 10 or 15 minutes. He had this little box, and he took this little part out and he fixed this huge cooler and then he left. He handed us a bill for about $1500, you know? And I thought that was pretty extraordinary. And I’ve been doing this type of work for a long time, and I really enjoy it. And I’m really enjoying the aspect of teaching others how to do it now, you know, which is a greater benefit. It’s like if you have a business idea and you really want to do this, put it on paper and then research everything about it. If you wrote it down and you thought of it, the manifestation process starts right then. The biggest fear about starting a business is the unknown, and I will tell you this: That’s just the beginning. You know, the fear is just the beginning. But it cannot progress unless you go through that fear. I don’t care what it is. If you have any fear in life about any ideas, the only fear in it really, truly, is that you’re gonna have to do it. You got to go through it. I don’t care what level of fear it is. I don’t care what it is that you have to do. If you just do it, you’ll see at the end, you’ll win. And I really, truly believe that if God gave it to you, it is for you. You know, when we live our lives, and we have these ideas, and we can’t get them off the ground because we don’t execute. We have to execute our ideas and in the end, even if you fail, the experience that you gain out of your failure is great. So the next time around, you’re not going to make the same mistakes that cause you to fail. Business, life, everything comes together because you enjoy what you’re doing and you learn it and you become good at it. A lot of greatness is going to come out of it because somebody’s always going to be watching you. Somebody’s going to be watching you win. Somebody’s always gonna be watching when you fail. So there’s a lesson out of that from everybody, but it comes from your action, from the action that you put forward. So get your education, get your ideas and figure out what you want to do in life. Take that and be, you know, real strong on making decisions for yourself.