Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Nick Schultz, the Bryan County Director at Xcel Mentoring, joins Stephen on the podcast for this episode. Today, they discuss Xcel's unique strategies for reaching new people, both mentors and mentees, stepping out in faith to meet a need, and Nick shares an example of what mentoring looks like while discouraged.
Show Notes
- Xcel Mentoring: https://xceltoday.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/XcelMentoring
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/xcelmentoring/
- Youtube: Fueled with Purpose Podcast
- #Fueledwithpurpose
Creators and Guests
What is You Can Mentor: A Christian Youth Mentoring Podcast?
You Can Mentor is a network that equips and encourages mentors and mentoring leaders through resources and relationships to love God, love others, and make disciples in their own community. We want to see Christian mentors thrive.
We want to hear from you! Send any mentoring questions to hello@youcanmentor.com, and we'll answer them on our podcast. We want to help you become the best possible mentor you can be. Also, if you are a mentoring organization, church, or non-profit, connect with us to join our mentoring network or to be spotlighted on our show.
Please find out more at www.youcanmentor.com or find us on social media. You will find more resources on our website to help equip and encourage mentors. We have downloadable resources, cohort opportunities, and an opportunity to build relationships with other Christian mentoring leaders.
You can mentor is a podcast about the power of building relationships with kids from hard places in the name of Jesus. Every episode will help you overcome common mentoring obstacles and give you the confidence you need to invest in the lives of others. You can mentor.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to the You Can Mentor podcast. My name is Steven, and I'm here with a very special guest from Excel Strategies in Bryan County, Georgia, Nick Schultz. Nick Schultz, how the heck are you?
Speaker 3:Hey. What's going on, everybody? And just so you know, Bryan County is right outside Savannah. So if you're wondering where the heck Bryan County is, it is, Savannah, Georgia.
Speaker 2:It's awesome. I love it, man. Well, how's the weather over in in Savannah right now?
Speaker 3:Yeah. We're doing good, man. It's it's cooling down a little bit. So, you know, 85 up to 90, so that's good for us. If it's, 99% humidity, we do get a little bit of a break from the typical 100 to a 150% humidity.
Speaker 3:But, I don't know. We I like it down here. I like the heat, so it's much better than when I was in Cincinnati, and it was cold and gray for 3 months. And you went to work. It was dark.
Speaker 3:You came home. It was dark, and you're just miserable in between because you
Speaker 2:That is your life. So
Speaker 3:I'm I'm I'm not complaining.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's awesome. We woke up this morning. This podcast is being recorded in September. We woke up.
Speaker 2:It was 50 degrees in Dallas. We were like, what the heck is going on? So 2020, hell has frozen over, and we're we're excited about what's going on with the weather. Nick, would love for you to kinda give our listeners an overview of what Excel Strategies, Excel Mentoring is all about, if anyone's not aware of what you guys are doing. So could you give us a quick overview?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So we are a a double one c three nonprofit, and we are specifically, targeting young men ages about high school age and up. A lot of times we like to say 15 to 25, but honestly it's just high school and up. We're a long term mentoring strategy. It's not a quick fix kind of program.
Speaker 3:We do these three things or we we tune in these, lessons, which we have. But it's let's get them through, give you a piece of paper, and go on and live your life. We know that we're dealing with a lot of broken young men and broken individuals. We're broken ourselves and the the way that they're gonna succeed is building a network. So we use that word a lot.
Speaker 3:The building a network around young men because I can't do everything for them even if I'm their personal mentor. I can do certain things really well, but some of the best things I can do for them is bring around other men in the community that have resources and ways for them to succeed, whether it's from an academic perspective, trade skill, getting them opportunities to get into the workforce, just teach them something I don't know how to do and that's really where we excel at. No pun intended for the name, but is building a network. So we partner with everybody in the community. We work with other nonprofits, churches, businesses, the court system, schools.
Speaker 3:We're we're in all those places because, one, we wanna be an asset to our community, and we don't wanna just be be a positive force just for for one section. We want everybody to feel like they can come together and support young men because a lot of times, young young men, once they get over a team, those are the ones that are kind of, like, the least helped, and people don't know what to do with them because it's really messy. And there's very few programs for how to how to help them. And, you know, if they're in the church, they're usually out of the church when they're 18. If they're in foster care or some other kind of government thing, a lot of times those things run out at 18.
Speaker 3:And so that's just a a crucial age where there's not a lot of people and especially a lot of men raising their hands saying, hey. I wanna get involved in that kind of mess. But we love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. With I I love how you started with, we have a long term, like, plan for for the kids that you're mentoring that you wanna create this network. I I think when it comes to mentoring kids from hard places, it's really easy to see the short term need and just focus on, well, what's what's the thing right in front of them that I can meet and just stay there and not develop, like, the long term vision for how am I connecting this kid to relationships, and how am I creating, yeah, not not just a safety net, but a network of relationships for for this kid as he develops into adulthood to have everything that he needs to succeed. And so I I wonder if you could just speak to what does that mean when you say a mentor is joining that network? What what does that mean for them?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, I come from the church background. I used to be a pastor before I I joined Excel. And my my boss, my CEO, he started it, 9, 10 years ago while he was still working at church as well. And it was he he came from a broken home where his father left and his his now father basically adopted him through marrying his mother and gave him opportunities that he wasn't gonna have because a man stepped in his life.
Speaker 3:And so that was the heart behind it. And having that relationship through his childhood, through his adolescence, through his teenage years to being a young adult, how that was able to mold him and keep him on a path to succeed because he had a male figure who cared about him in his life. But that took time. It wasn't just because he stepped in his life immediately, everything was fixed and better. It was pouring into him for a period of time.
Speaker 3:And so our strategy, especially coming from the church world, is, like, we really we love the quick easy fix and to give ourselves a pat on the back sometimes where it's like, hey. Let's hand out the food, which nothing's wrong with that because people need to eat and they're starving sometimes. We like to hand out the clothes. We like to give money to fix something. We like to find a need, fix a need, feel good about it, and move on with our with our day and with our lives.
Speaker 3:But, really, the relationship is messy, and and that's what's needed. It's it's entering someone's life, a young man's life, and being there for him through the ups and downs. It's finding the network to provide him food if he needs it, the clothes he needs it, the job opportunities if he needs it, but it's also being there when he makes really bad choices and being there to help him out through those and not moving on to the next thing. And that's where the mess is. And so we like to say we're a long term strategy because we're not kicking you out of Excel.
Speaker 3:It's, like, if you don't wanna communicate with us or you don't wanna be a part of what we're doing anymore, that's fine. We're not we really don't like to call it a program. We like to call it a network and a community because that's what you're in. Even if you get married, like, my boss, Jay, he he'd been mentoring this kid for a few years. He just married him 2 week 2 or 3 weekends ago.
Speaker 3:But now this young man's gonna come back and and help mentor. Like, that's the that's the dream. Like, he's fulfilling his dreams, but our dream is that they're able to take care of a family, get a job, sustain that, be healthy, have a strong relationship, you know, hopefully hopefully love the Lord and love their family and and love their community and give back. And and it comes full circle. So you might be 30, but you can still be a part of Excel.
Speaker 3:Now you're you're the one giving back and mentoring some of these other younger men. And so it's we want them to realize what their dream is. We don't wanna tell them, hey. You need to go to a a trade company, which is our strong suit of of helping them get trade jobs. We don't wanna tell them they shouldn't go to college.
Speaker 3:They should go to college. It's like, what is your dream? Who are you as the person? We wanna help with that. We're not gonna tell you what you should do.
Speaker 3:Here are options we can help you with. But we do wanna say there is a certain way that you need to treat family and friends and females. You you should have the desire to give back. So even though, like, you're getting a lot of help right now, you should have that desire that you can make it on your own, sustain your own family, be healthy, but then then then when you're ready, you come back and do the same thing for someone else. And that's that's kind of our long term strategy is is pushing that in their minds and helping them and helping them get there and make sure they know it's a possibility.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And character character development is like a lifelong journey. And so if you're seeing somebody in your program who's 30 now giving back, they're still developing character as they're mentoring and seeing that value of just how the network, I I guess, equips mentors to grow as men, not just the the kids that they're mentoring. And you you had kinda mentioned that that you guys do trades. And so can you can you unpack a little bit more about what you guys are doing?
Speaker 2:Because I just have this image of, like, you holding a chainsaw, like, chopping a tree down and showing kids how to start a a, like, a business. So what does that look like for you guys?
Speaker 3:That does sound really badass. That's kinda cool. Let's just do a promo piece with that Excel chainsaw. So it's really cool. I like that.
Speaker 2:You can mentor.
Speaker 3:Well, again, my boss, Jay, he, when he started Excel, you know, he worked really hard in a sugar refinery when he started. And then he got plugged into, like, trades and and how important that was. And what we found out is, 1, there's a shortage in trade jobs. The the employment is the the numbers are crazy. Like, there's so many employers out there that are electrical, that are construction, that are that are, welding.
Speaker 3:All these all these trade companies are looking for people constantly, and they make really good money. The problem is they can't find people to fill those jobs who wanna stay there, have a good work ethic, show up on time, and and they don't realize the possibilities that are there. So that was a kind of a match made in heaven for us where these young men, they're not a lot of the men we're working with, they're not exposed to those things. They don't know that those are possibilities. They don't realize that if they just know how to read a tape measure and use a hammer and saw and they can show up on time and pay attention, they'll you can start with a company and they'll teach you everything you need to know as long as you know those basic things, and you'll start making 12, $13 an hour.
Speaker 3:It can go up really quick. So for these these young men that we're working with, a lot of them, college isn't their thing. They don't wanna go to college. They still need to know what the possibilities are so they're not just sitting on the streets and don't know what to do. And so we're exposing them to our business partners and our network of these companies that support us, but they also want these young men to come work for them.
Speaker 3:And so we're providing opportunities that after after they go through our training, which is another key component of those character skills and those life skills and those job skills like you're talking about, they can be better prepared to go to some of these job opportunities that we have for them in the community and then make some really good money as opposed to going to college even though they didn't want to, accumulating tons of debt, not sure what they want to do, and go into a construction field or welding field and make, you know, probably 6 figures in a few years without any debt from school and have an incredible way to support themselves and their family and have skills. And and the other thing we tell them too is, like, once you learn skills, even if you don't wanna be, a welder, you don't wanna do construction, just knowing how to fix things and having skills gives you something that somebody can't take away. You can use it for your own home. You can use it to bless somebody else who needs that help. And if you have them, you you have the ability to maybe get a job anywhere at any time because you do have those skills.
Speaker 3:And that's why we've we've developed our our mobile training units, which I'm sure we'll we'll talk about in a minute too of we have partnerships in the community where we're now taking these trailers and we're forming them into these mobile training units. We have a construction one, and now we're we have a automotive one we're developing through a partnership with with, Chevrolet, their damn favorite Chevrolet here in Savannah. So we can take these trailers and go train youth and and young men in our community wherever they're at at alternative schools or at teen centers or at foster homes, we can go to them and partner with people that are already taking care of these youth and now teach them skills, but also bring in men from the community to give back and help do that. And that's what's really exciting is that we can bring all these components together and get men around, young men, which is one of the hardest things to do, is to get men to to mentor. And, really, mentor is showing up and teaching something and just be in there.
Speaker 3:But and now we have an avenue in in order to make that a lot easier.
Speaker 2:So you just said the hardest thing to do is to get men to mentor. Can you go unpack
Speaker 3:why it's up? As men, we're just I thank men. And, again, coming from a church background, men love titles. We love to overseer position. We love helping people organize and network, and men love being on boards and having labels and helping out from a from a very high level, 30,000 feet above.
Speaker 3:But when it comes to getting down and dirty and and mentoring or discipling or teaching a young man in a 1 on 1 setting or or being in a group environment, like, that's messy and more women do that and messy we see that all the time when we do community stuff or we're in collaborative things in our in just in Bryan County. It's it's me, maybe one other guy, and there's 20 other women in the room who are trying to help people in the community through nonprofit work or government work. And there's not a lot of men, even in the church, who are prepared and wanting to do that. So we're trying to simplify it. We're trying to say, we have a very easy way for you to serve, for you to mentor, and it's not go sit at Starbucks for 3 hours staring at a kid across the table who who you have no idea how to have a conversation with.
Speaker 3:Why don't you come over here, build a birdhouse together, and you're doing you're working on a project together. You're showing up. You're there. You're present. And you might not even have a whole lot to say, but trust me, that kid knows that you care because you're there.
Speaker 3:You don't have to be there. So now you're getting something out of it. He's getting something out of it, and you show up and do it again the next time. And part of the battle is just showing up. But if you're working on something together, it's not as overwhelming.
Speaker 3:And then if there's other men there doing that, other young men doing that, then you're building a natural network in a community, and it's not awkward. We're all working on something together.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's good, man. And I just think, like, how many kids in our program and your program who don't have a father figure in their life who's asking them questions, who's who's even just doing things with them, which I love what you're saying. I've been listening to a bunch of Jordan Peterson this last weekend, and he talks about how men, like, have a are just bent toward things more than people. And and women are just bent more toward people than things.
Speaker 2:And that's why the engineering industry, that's how the trade industries, they're all predominantly men. And when it comes to the the difficulty of connecting with men to mentoring, which is primarily seen as like a people thing, that if if you provide a life skill, a trade, an activity that men are more likely to come do something with younger men. And that functions as, like, your invitation into mentoring, not, hey. Come have this conversation about your feelings, but, like, hey. Come Weld can show a young boy how to get a job.
Speaker 2:That may be something that that men are more passionate about. Would is that what you would say?
Speaker 3:Yeah. If if they can get their hands on and do something as opposed to just sitting around in a circle. Absolutely. It's it's much more effective. And and we're trying to simplify it, man.
Speaker 3:I mean, I'm a used to be a pastor of the church. It's like, I want it I man. I mean, I'm a used to be a pastor of the church. It's like, I wanna I wanna see men involved. What other what other situations in life do young men without fathers, or even if they have fathers and they're not good fathers, do they have a group of men who are coming together in in one period of time for 2 hours to just say we care about you and are pouring into you in some way?
Speaker 3:What what setting do they ever have that in? It doesn't exist. The closest thing might be, like, a football practice or something, but that's not the goal of it. It's you're playing something, you're getting yelled at, you're separated, you have one coach over here doing something, you have another coach over here. But when do you have 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 15 men who are saying, hey, we all care about you.
Speaker 3:We wanna help you achieve something and or just for you. That that doesn't ever happen. And we don't realize how powerful thing that is, just visually, but also just even emotionally for for a young man to see. Like, woah. There's men in my community that care and wanna be here and do this, it's it's a big deal.
Speaker 3:We don't realize how powerful it is.
Speaker 2:So do you do you have guys show up that are not the rough and tumble engineer trade guy, but, like, the feeler that's just kinda, like, wanting to gauge how people are feeling or, like, wanting to have deep conversations. Do you have those guys show up to your events? Or is it all just, like, your manly men?
Speaker 3:No. No. They're definitely not all manly. We,
Speaker 2:I hope they don't listen to this.
Speaker 3:I hope they do. We, we have everybody, man. And it's we're not the thing is, we're not trying to find a specific man. That's the thing about it. Because, like, we're presenting this and saying, hey, just because we're gonna build a school or a bird feeder in this you you can know as much as the young man who hasn't used the hammer to come here and be a part of it with him.
Speaker 3:You know? So you you come here and just walk alongside when he's doing it. If you're the feeler, you can be like, hey, man. What's going on? And you can talk and have questions.
Speaker 3:If if you're the guy that's like, man, I got nothing to say, but I'll bird build a bird feeder with them, then do that too. We're not looking for a specific a specific one because, honestly, we all need to give back and play our play our part. So there's some that have very specific skills, and they know how to do construction. They wanna do it. There's some like, man, I don't know what can I I just show up and be like, yes?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. We wanna make it as easy as possible so that men don't have an excuse. If men in the church or men in businesses or other parts of the community are like, man, we're we really wanna give back to some of these young men who don't have fathers and they're they're they're struggling. K. Good.
Speaker 3:Because Excel is we're your conduit. We are your bridge to do it, and you have to have no ability, no skill, no prior knowledge of mentoring. You just need to show up and be okay with just being in the same space as a as a teenage boy or a a young man. That's it. And we're gonna provide those opportunities.
Speaker 3:So so don't say there there aren't any. There are now.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's really good. Now, Nick, what is it what is it like pursuing the young men to become involved? Because I I imagine if the ask is like, hey. We're a mentoring organization, and we wanna mentor you.
Speaker 2:They they might even have a conception of what that looks like. They might know not know what what you're even asking. But if you invite them into, hey, come learn this skill with other men, is that something that is a more engaging invitation? Or what does that invitation look like for you guys?
Speaker 3:Yeah. It depends on the the environment and the situation. Like, sometimes it's a one on one conversation with a student at a school or outside of a school through another connection because I might get a con I get get a call from a a caseworker or something. It's like, hey. We've really you know, we get a we get a lot of calls sometimes from the the places where they don't know what else to do anymore.
Speaker 3:And that's when they call us, which is really exciting. That's where I love to be. It's, like, hey. School don't know what to do. The the court doesn't know what to do.
Speaker 3:Can you guys see if he'll be a part of Excel? Heck, yeah. Let's do this. So it might be a 1 on 1 presentation. But sometimes, it is going into the the high school, the alternative school, or some other setting where we're presenting in front of, like, maybe 10 students saying, here's what Excel is, here's what we do.
Speaker 3:And we try to make it real simple and honest and say, we do mentoring, but it's not, you know we're not gonna just put you in a room and sit in front of your face for 2 hours and talk. We wanna do that at some point. Like, we wanna get to know you personally, but here are all the opportunities of how we mentor. It's we do we might do group class stuff where we go through our curriculum as a group. We might do it individually if if you prefer doing that.
Speaker 3:Because, I mean, I do all sorts of stuff. Sometimes it's group teaching. Sometimes it's the they doing stuff on the trailer. Sometimes it's 1 on 1, like at alternate school where the principal lets me take a student at a time and really talk through some of our curriculum, but also what they're going through because they don't have a comfortable outlet to share, like, what's going on at home. So it can almost be like counselors sometimes.
Speaker 3:We we don't cross the line and pretend we're counselors, but it's like we listen and and and try to give advice and and things like that too. So it it comes from all over, and we try not to put ourselves in a box to say, like, we are only this. Because different kids need different things. And part of providing a network is to be able to give them what they need that we don't have and partner with other people. But that's the number one question we get a lot of times is where do you get the young men?
Speaker 3:And it's through partnerships with with the schools, the courts, churches, and other places. And now that we're out in the community and people see what we're doing, you know, we don't really have a hard time time having young men in our in our network and our program anymore. It's it's more figuring out how to balance everything out now and because we do wanna give them individual attention sometimes too with mentors and then not just always be in a group setting, always building something. But now that that's kinda helped you get your foot in the door, hey. Let's let's something.
Speaker 3:But now that that's kinda helped you get your foot in the door, hey. Let's let's start having personal conversations so you feel like, you know, someone wants to hear hear you out with what's really going on. You know what I mean? Yeah. A lot of times I've matched mentors with mentees, and we'll
Speaker 2:have this meeting where I'm like, oh, share your life story. And I'm starting to reconsider this strategy of, like, trying to go so deep in their first interaction. It's like, we should just do something like, I mean, go play basketball or like what you're saying, build build a birdhouse, do basketball or like what you're saying, build build a birdhouse, do something together that then leads to the deeper connection. And I I am interested in what you're saying about schools, churches, courts saying, hey. This kid has needs help, and you're the one that they call, Mike.
Speaker 2:And and you're just like, your eyes light up when I'm talking to you. So what is it about you that that's just like, what's in your story that that makes you light up, that you're getting to ask in a situation that seems hopeless or this kid has no option left. We gotta get someone involved like Excel.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So try to make it a short short version, but I mean, I have have a great life, have an awesome father, still have an awesome father, have awesome family. And so I did not have any kind of tragic upbringing, where I wasn't loved. And so that's that's not my version of the story. Mine kinda came more from after graduating, my version of the story.
Speaker 3:Mine kind of came more from after graduating high school, then college. Really felt like I was going to get into to ministry. Married, got married, and then as soon as we got married, I immediately got with a lot of youth that were underprivileged and had really bad home lives. And that was the first kind of eye opening thing here in America. I mean, I've been to Haiti on, like, mission trip and stuff like that, so I've seen extreme some really extreme stuff.
Speaker 3:But as far as, like, in my own backyard, that was the first kinda eye opening thing for doing that for 2 years, and then I ended up working for for a church, got into ministry, doing youth and children's stuff in Cincinnati, finally moved down to Savannah. And and my heart just developed over time for 4 kids, and it what I noticed was it didn't really matter if they were from a privileged, kind of white, upper middle class neighborhood environment or they were poor living in the inner city. There's different socioeconomic things going on, but if they weren't being being loved by a father or they didn't have good, parents or male role models in their lives, they were still craving the same thing, and a lot of the same outcomes were still gonna happen. So that that was what was very eye opening for me. And then I was pastor down here in Savannah for for 4 years, and I just god was tugging on my heart.
Speaker 3:Been to Rwanda, like, 5 times and learned a lot about healing, forgiveness, reconciliation, and neglect, and what that all really meant. And my my heart just got pulled to actually be outside the church a lot more instead of inside of it and worrying about Sundays and stuff like that. And instead of inside of it and worrying about Sundays and stuff like that. And finally just made the the switch where we decided to to leave my position at the church without having a job. And at the time, we were we had 4 kids.
Speaker 3:1 of them was a newborn, and we and we also were fostering 2 toddler girls at the same time too. My wife was a stay at home wife, still is. And so we weren't gonna have a job or an income because I felt that strongly that God was wanting me to be outside in the community. Because I I was seeing and feeling the needs of the community that the church was not meet meeting. Even though even though there's all these churches around, there's a big church around, like, we're not meeting some of these needs.
Speaker 3:Somebody else can do my job at the church, but nobody's doing what I think needs to be done out there. And then that's where I found my boss, Jay. But a couple weeks later, he got to us through a mutual contact and said, here's what I'm doing with Excel. I wish I could just give you a salary and pay you, but we raised our own money. So you'd have to raise your own money to do it.
Speaker 3:And I was like, k. That kinda sucks and haven't done it before, but I don't care. Like, we're gonna we're gonna do this. My wife was on board, and that got us started. And it was just the again, the neglect of coming from the church background, not seeing translation from people's faith to serving the people in the in the community that are faith to serving the people in the in the community that are the most vulnerable, whether it's the orphan, the widow, the the fatherless young man, like, we're not doing it.
Speaker 3:So I'm supposed to be a part of doing that. And that and that's how it happened. We had to raise our own money, still are, and and get out there and do it. And, honestly, it's been it's been the best thing ever. So everything I thought the church should be and want it to be, like, I'm now out there getting to do it.
Speaker 3:And and I get to do it with all all aspects of our community, and that's why I keep bringing it up because that's the beautiful thing to me. It's like there's there's no places that we can't be a part of when it comes to to businesses and other nonprofits. There's no there's no competition. There's no animosity. It's trying to bring people together in order to help these young men who are really struggling and need and need a So that's kinda where my my passion came from.
Speaker 2:Wow. It's incredible, man. And I don't know. I mean, I don't know how many mentors get a chance to go, you know, 5 times to Rwanda, hang out with some Hutus and Tutsis and learn about forgiveness. That's just an insane story of just what God has done in you and shown you and and, like, what you value actually becomes an encouragement to the church.
Speaker 2:And I I know, obviously, there's some tension with, like, hey. Can you guys just see what I'm seeing, see the needs, and let let's let's engage and meet? But I I think I feel I feel like mentors are an encouragement to the church to recognize, hey. We can have an influence in the community. And when we see a need, Jesus is calling us to be to man up and not just meet short term needs, but see it and respond in a in a significant way.
Speaker 2:And so I I love that story, man.
Speaker 3:That's so Yeah. It is encouraging. I mean and and I love our church. We still go to it, and it's it's not just ours. It's every church.
Speaker 3:And and, really, we I get to be an extension of the church now and do things that they can't do. And I can be a bridge now to help them come do what we're doing and help fill that need when it's hard for the church to do it on its own. Now we get to be a resource for them to get involved to do it. So, like
Speaker 2:Yeah. Facilitating it for them. Yeah. I love that, man. Well, I wanna ask you go back to the the mobile units because I just think that that's just such an interesting strategy.
Speaker 2:I don't know of very many mentoring organizations that just have a trailer where they have all their activities, and you could just pull up on a place and and do a do a mentoring activity. So could you just kinda unpack what what that looks like? And I don't know. Just was that a dream sitting in y'all's tank for a while and y'all just pulled the trigger?
Speaker 3:Yeah. We got really fortunate, honestly. My my boss, Jay, was talking about it for a while. He came up kind of with idea just because we're trying to get some of these young men to see the possibility in in the trade jobs around here. And he's a dreamer.
Speaker 3:He likes looking for those new ideas. I'm more the the number 2, and I help make sure things happen on the on the on the back end of everything. And he kept talking about it. And, you know, the more he would talk about it, he he was looking to actually just get a trade on. Let's go forward and and try it and then get businesses to help sponsor making that happen because it's not necessarily a cheap thing either to to get it all get it all going.
Speaker 3:But the beauty of it was we really pulled the trigger on her and started it right before the pandemic happened. So here we are. Pandemic's about to happen. Everybody's getting told to go home, kicked out of schools. You can't be face to face with anybody.
Speaker 3:And now we are developing partnerships to get our 1st trailer and outfit it for construction stuff, and people are still giving. Like, people wanna provide the the workstations on the inside of help pay for the tools, help donate tools and make this thing a reality. And then all of a sudden, couple months later, we have this construction trailer we call our mobile mobile training unit. And we go do it a couple times with some some partners in the community that goes really, really well. Well, at the same time, we start developing the idea of doing the next one, being an automotive one, and we partner with, Dan Bayton Chevrolet here in Savannah.
Speaker 3:And they ended up giving us a truck to use for the next couple years, all outfitted, you know, say in XL and Dan Bayton on it with included a a trailer that they're fully outfitted and sponsoring because they see it as a way to give back to the community and teach teach young men these these skills because they want they want to impact the schools. They want to impact the other nonprofits in these places where there's foster youth that they're aged out. Like, they wanna have a good name to impact them, but they don't necessarily know how to do it. Again, it's the same thing with the church. The church might not know how to do it.
Speaker 3:This business might not know how to do it. Well, we have an idea in a way to be that bridge in order to make their dream and vision happen, and some other people can help out with it, but we facilitate it. So now we just made a big announcement over at, Chevrolet last week where they officially gave us the truck and the the trailer now we're getting it all outfitted so we can take that to places too. But it's been perfect timing because of the pandemic, and we are not a a brick and mortar nonprofit. Like, we don't say, hey.
Speaker 3:Come to our building. We don't have one. We just have this little office space right now and then another one where we do a podcast and share it with somebody. But other than that, it's like, we go we go wherever we need to in our accountings that we're in charge of. And that's the the beauty of it.
Speaker 3:There's not a lot of overhead, and we can spend our money on on on doing that in those dreams. And a lot of people have caught the vision for it and wanna help us get the other trailers, like a utilities trailer or, eventually, a welding trailer or electrical trailer. And so that we can take them all around Savannah and do trainings either, you know, during school during school hour for for some of these kids or on Sunday afternoon. But it's, again, another opportunity to get more men involved to go be a part of these things. Well, man, electrical stuff is my thing.
Speaker 3:Maybe not a construction. Cool. We're gonna have one of those, and you can go help out with that one. And it's just again, it's it's building the network in a really creative way that's meeting a lot of needs. It goes to where the the youth are.
Speaker 3:It helps out other nonprofits or schools. It helps businesses get involved with helping them. And we're doing it on a somewhat smaller scale where we're doing, like, 6 to 10 students at a time. So it's still a group setting, but it's still intimate. And we're men can be involved in helping with it.
Speaker 3:So it's meeting all of those needs that we wanna be a part of.
Speaker 2:I just I can't think of a, I guess, a comprehensive a more comprehensive kind of vision, particularly the part where you're connecting businesses to the mentoring organization to give back. But then also, these events are essentially a job fair as well of, like, casting a vision for these these kids to join the workforce and become more responsible in not just learning trades, but realizing that you have what it takes to get a job and not just not just a job, but, like, a career in casting that vision. I think for a lot of mentoring organizations, we just I think the tendency is to talk about the value of it, not necessarily make the connection. And I I just think that that's that's a game changer, man, just in in walking your kids through opportunities for them to get involved in the workforce. And and that's gonna be the thing that prevents the cycle of fatherlessness, of brokenness to continue.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And I was just gonna say the socioeconomic thing is a lot of times the thing that we have the hardest time with with mentoring is, like, man, you can give them you can help them with their faith. You can help them with their their just being fed and and providing clothes and stuff like that and giving them even, like, character skills and stuff like that. But if they're still stuck in a bad neighborhood or a bad home environment and they can't go live on their own or go take care of themselves, Like, they're still stuck in that socioeconomic situation, and sometimes that's the one that keeps them the most stuck. And and the like you said, the job and being able to find those opportunities, that's the avenue to get out of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It like that verse where Jesus says, well, you will always have the poor. Like, I I don't think what Jesus is saying is, like, well, just give up. Like, don't you can't you can't mentor, like, kids out of poverty or help them, like, I don't know, like, gain skills, knowledge, character that isn't represented in their family or or whatever. And it's not to discount the families that our kids live within because in many ways, they're gaining assets through the the trials and the difficulties that they're walking through in life.
Speaker 2:If we can translate those those difficulties into recognizing how much that's developed them as people and not just see it as a sad traumatic story, but, like, hey. You've gone through a lot, and that's that endurance that you've had is raising you up to to be persevering when you face trials later on in life. But I I just think that that idea of what you always have the poor leads us to to just, like, well, disconnect from our capacity to to help people rise up into another, yeah, like, socioeconomic status. I I just I feel like that that's that's really encouraging and hopeful and not just like, well, it's just always gonna be that way.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, you and I, we we we see all the opportunities that are out there in the world in our community to do something, to get a job. There's a lot of young men that don't. Like, we we think they know everything that's out there because they have access to a computer and a phone and can Google anything, so they can do whatever they want. But they don't really believe sometimes that this kind of a job of doing this is a possibility until you you get exposed to it.
Speaker 3:And sometimes, you know, poverty is forced upon you and sometimes you keep your mind in a state of poverty where you just assume that's what it is even though you have the you have the possibilities to get out of it. Like, you have to be shown the opportunity so your mind doesn't stay, like, in a poverty mindset. And a lot of those young men are in there and we can't we can't assume they're not. Like, we don't think the same way that they do sometimes. We don't come from the same background or in the same situations.
Speaker 3:And so you have to it it's it's helped us to be creative and, again, show opportunities. And and, man, some of them latch onto it. Some of them go for it. Some of them fall on their face. And we're I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that we haven't had some fail at the jobs they do or not show up for things.
Speaker 3:And, I mean, we have all sorts of crap happens, but, you know, we're not leaving you. We're not gonna enable you, but we're also not gonna not gonna leave you either. So it's it's being there for the the grind, man. You know, it's messy.
Speaker 2:Can can you share a story of just mentoring in the mess? I don't know if you have, a story that comes to mind when you think about a kid that you're investing in that that many times mentors are just discouraged and wanna tap out.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, I definitely have a few stories, but one of them one of them was, well, when I first got started, it was just a a a few months in. I had got a relationship developed with one of the high schools, and, the the counselor of the school, she she called me up and said, we got this kid, and he's about to drop out. He doesn't have the father. He died many years ago.
Speaker 3:His mom is sick, battling cancer, and school is not for him. He's getting a lot of trouble. He's angry. He doesn't wanna pay attention. He wants wants to go work.
Speaker 3:Blah blah blah. Like, we we don't know what to do. It was one of those calls, like, we don't know what to do. You come to this meeting at the school. I'm gonna be there.
Speaker 3:We're gonna have 2 other ladies that are experts in certain social things and whatever that are gonna be there. But can you just sit in here and because if he leaves, we want we wanna know there's somebody out there for him. And, again, that's the beauty of it being a mentoring organization network is that, hey. They leave the church, they leave the school, they get aged out of the foster care system. Who is out there helping them out?
Speaker 3:We are. We we're willing to. So he come I come in there, and he's like he's like, I'm dropping out. I mean, he was set on it. And part of the reason he's dropping out is because his his mom only got a certain amount of money from the government, from disabilities, or wherever, but she's going through chemotherapy.
Speaker 3:She can't work anywhere else. And he's he's gotta work to provide money for he and his mom for the for where they're living, for the food, and for other things to take care of stuff. K. That's legit. You know, you can't just go into a school and talk to every single kid and be like, hey.
Speaker 3:You have to stay here. You have to do this. Some have really difficult life situations that you can't apply the same answer to for everybody. Can't just say everybody go to college. You can't say everybody you have to go to high school.
Speaker 3:Some of them might have to get a GED and take care of things for the family because it's it's that bad. So they don't want him to leave, obviously, because they've got eyes on him. Right? Once he if he leaves, they don't have eyes on him. He says, I'm leaving.
Speaker 3:And they said, well, mister Nick, tell him what you do. So I I told him. I was like, I I end up saying this to all the young man when I talk to him, is that, yeah, I know you don't know me. You don't know me very well. I don't know you, but here's what I do, and I can tell you that I care about you.
Speaker 3:And then I'm willing to be there for you. Not every day I can be, but I'm willing to be there for you and help build a network around you with other people that will be willing to be there for you too. And I care about you. And just saying that, you don't realize how powerful that is to some people. That might sound really hokey, but to sit down in front of a young man in the eye to eye setting and say I care about you, man, that might never hurt heard another male tell him that.
Speaker 3:And so that's what I did with him, and he's like he's like, I'll be happy to mentor you, man. And he said he's like, okay. I'll do that. So he dropped out, signed got his mom's sign. Affairs dropped out.
Speaker 3:I began to mentor him. Well, he ended up getting a job. He was the youngest youngest kid working at a, HVAC company. That's at 17, within a year, he was leading his own crew, driving his own truck, taking care of his mom. Didn't mean there weren't other issues going on.
Speaker 3:She ended up passing away this past December before Christmas. So now he has no parent. His mom's been going through chemo as she passes away. So trying to figure out life and the funeral and where he's gonna live and all that stuff with him, but I was able to do that with him. Still working at the company, making good money, has dreams and all that stuff.
Speaker 3:But the process wasn't easy, but it was so worth it. He's still at that company right now doing a great job at his HVAC company. Last year, he was our Bryan County man of the year at our annual Excel summit where we presented him the the man of the year trophy because of what he went through. And this was even before his mom died, so his mom was there with him to see him get this award showing, like, how hard he's been working. And he was at our house this past Saturday.
Speaker 3:We celebrated his 19th birthday. So there's a personal aspect to it as well. It's not just, like, hey. This is my job. This is, like, you're part of our family.
Speaker 3:You can come in here too. One of his mentors, who's a Latino man and a friend of mine, his family came to celebrate his birthday with him. And it's just the the beautiful picture of what you hope building people around him looks like. And he's got a dream. He's trying to get a grant to go to North Carolina for a couple years to work on a, like, a NASCAR crew program to learn how to do the mechanics for that, and we're thinking he might be able to get into it and do it because that's his dream is to go kinda that next level and and work work that way.
Speaker 3:So something that started off in in a really could've been a horrible situation where he just went out on his own after dropping out of school. Who knows who he would've connected with. And he even said afterwards when we met, I don't have any other men that care about me or looking out for me. That's what he said in our first one on one meeting when we went to Zach's piece. I don't I don't have anybody.
Speaker 3:No, man. I said, you do now. And then a week later, I brought Jose, and I said, now you have too. And we started from that. And he's actually come to one of our our mobile construction trailer workshops where he's helped mentor and and helped facilitate the other young men building stuff, and he's given back a little bit.
Speaker 3:And, again, he's not perfect. I'm not perfect. There's a lot of stuff to work through, but that's the that's the kind of the grand scale full picture of what that can look like of him not being lost, coming under our network, and walking through all this mess in his life to to go through these victories and now do something really positive.
Speaker 2:So good, Nick. So good. Man, just love that story. Thanks for sharing. I mean, every every kid's in process, but to to be able to enter into someone's story at probably one of the darkest moments and hopeless situations to then see how much attention, connection, network, and, I mean, to a place where that kid's now thriving.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's just incredible. For for a mentor who who you're speaking with, what would you what would you say is success as a mentor? Like, if if they ask you, hey. Like, what what does it mean to be a successful mentor? But what would be your answer to them?
Speaker 3:Well, the first one is just showing up and have having a a good attitude where you're just there to learn, not coming in to, like, fix anything, not tell not come in and, like, instantly be the daddy and tell tell this young man all the things he needs to do and he needs to fix and what's wrong with him. We're we don't take that approach. We're not trying to immediately fix them or make them be like us or something. It's it's showing up, finding out what makes them tick, and that and listening and being there and being consistent for some things. Obviously, there's different roles mentors play where, you know, if you're mentoring a a kid, then, like, you need to see him a couple times a month at least in person.
Speaker 3:But some of our mentors, it's just showing up occasionally for when we do our projects and stuff, and that's okay too. We don't wanna we don't want you to say you have to fit in this this exact box because that's what turns away a lot of men too. They're saying, like, you need to do exactly this. So we don't wanna do that. Like, tell us your engagement level, and we'll we'll keep working up from there.
Speaker 3:But it's it's coming in with a learning a learning attitude and being humble because the the youth that we're working with, they really respond to that. When they know, like, you show up and you care and you're there to just be there for them and listen first, even for the first few times, that's what that's what opens doors. They can sense whether you care or not. You come in there sharing a bunch of stuff and telling them, like, yeah. You're gonna share parts of your life and your story, but if it's in order to try to change them, they know what your motive is.
Speaker 3:Are you there genuinely for them and you care holistically about them? Like, mister Nick and mister j are saying you do because that's what we're saying. And I think we really complicate mentoring a lot, and that's why people are scared of it. It's a scary word for a lot of them because it's in we we have this mission of how tense it is, how intimidated it is, the time commitment it is, the the skills you have to have, socials you have to be able to do it. And we really need to dumb down that word so people understand that it's it's about being there, being present, caring, and listening first, and then the other stuff will come.
Speaker 3:And then I think when we model that while we're explaining that, then more people will get involved.
Speaker 2:Nick Schultz, Excel Strategies, Excel Mentoring. How can people connect with you guys if they've listened today and are just like, man, I wanna buy them a trailer or I wanna I wanna go mentor. I wanna go weld something. How can they connect with you?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So you can go to our website. It's exceltoday.com. Xceltoday.com. We are on Facebook and Instagram.
Speaker 3:It's at excel mentoring and our hashtag is fueled with purpose. So any of those three avenues you can find us or also on YouTube. We just started a video podcast on YouTube as well called the fuel of purpose podcast. So YouTube, Facebook, Instagram at excel mentoring and excel today dot com. And you will see me, you'll see our students, you'll see what we're doing.
Speaker 3:And we'd love to just hear any feedback or find ways that we can continue to build our network. So and help other people as well because we don't have it all figured out either.
Speaker 2:It's awesome. Well, we'll leave all that information in the show notes if you wanna connect with Nick. But, Nick, just thank you so much for taking the time today to share with our listeners. You're the man.
Speaker 3:Yeah, man. I really appreciate the time and, love what you guys are doing as well. It's been fun getting to know, what you guys are up to and with, Forerunner and you can mentor and some good stuff going on down there. So I'm excited about just partnering and throwing ideas and it's all about helping each other out because we're better that way.