 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community Matters here. Guys, and we are back live here in Hawaii. They can take studios in Hawaii, but as you guys know, I'm not in Hawaii. I'm actually in Denver, Colorado. But thank you guys for tuning in. Don't forget to hit that like, subscribe, comment, and share button, wherever you may get this on the podcast, YouTube video, or if you're catching us live. But as always, guys, I don't have a lot of time, and I definitely you guys don't have a lot of time, so we're going to jump straight into it. So today, we got on a very, very special guest. We have Mr. Ronald Davis. And the reason we have Mr. Ronald Davis on today is he's doing something very interesting, where he built the largest youth development program for student athletes, building the largest in the US. So we definitely want to hear about that. You know, being a financial literacy show, I think is very important. You guys have seen different NBA athletes and different NFL athletes and stuff like that. Come on to the show, but it'd be nice to see that someone is starting kids at a younger age, and we're going to see what that's all about. But I know you guys didn't come here to hear my mouth. Let me go to introduce my guest. Mr. Ronald Davis, how you doing today, sir? It's going good, man. Glad to be here. Glad to be involved, man. I appreciate you having me on. Definitely, definitely. So people out there who don't know who Ronald Davis is, who is Ronald Davis? Well, he's a man of many trades, I guess. Well, I'm a former athlete. I went through the ranks, man. I played in arena football, dealt with the different, I guess, business aspects of the CFL and the NFL. Definitely trying to pursue that dream of athleticism. But in the midst of all that stuff, man, I became a youth advocate. Really started caring more about the community, you know, really making a difference in kids' lives. It probably started earlier than that, but, you know, this was about the time where everything started to mold. So, you know, from there, it's just become, I was real nosy, real, real nosy. I wanted to know a lot of answers to what was going on, why kids are failing so easily. Why do kids grow up into being, you know, very consistent to how they were as a child, as a grown-up. And just really wanted to learn more. So I became a student of that world. Okay, that's a very interesting package. You went to Alabama State, right? Right, right. Alabama State University out in Montgomery, Alabama. Okay, you go to Alabama State. You know, congratulations on y'all, you know, the State of Alabama's, you know, big two last night in their college national championship. You know, me being an original Georgia war, I'm not too happy about that, but hey. Right, right, right. They got a good thing going over there, you know. Then folks, they got a good program. They do it really, really, really well. They got good support. So, you know, hats off to them. You know, the Hornets. I think our school at this point in time is probably well more known for track. And we got some fast demons out there at Alabama State. So, shout out to the Hornets. Okay, definitely. Now, the thing about it, you speak about this youth development program. What it feels like the student-athlete, you know, by you being a student-athlete and going on to the pros and winning football, what does it consist of? Like, you know, what does it do? How do you find these student-athletes or whatnot? Well, you know, the focus of it is the kid, you know, and everybody wants to help kids. There's a lot of programs out there that do things for kids. But, you know, the things that we focus on with the kids is the athletic and the educational portion. And that's what we highlight the most. Athletically, we don't focus on basketball, football, baseball. We focus on athleticism, which makes it a little bit more centralized to the specific child. You know, everybody can jump like LeBron or shoot like Steph or run down the field and make big hits. So, it's not supposed to be focused on that. But whether you're a great athlete or you're a kid that's excited about running and gunning and being energetic or you're the most intelligent child or you just like to be, you know, scientific experiments, you can leverage both ways. So, we want to be able to help the kid that's really good at sports, but they may lack in education. And we want to help the kid that has education principles pretty hand-to-handled but are not necessarily the best athlete. Okay. So, is it just in Alabama? Is it just in Baltimore, right? Am I right about that? I'm currently in Wichita, man. We're located everywhere. This thing started out, originally it started out as a gesture. You know, I just wanted to help kids. You know, I was just real passionate about it. You know, people do a lot of talking. Folks might throw a couple dollars, but folks aren't spending time doing it. So, you know, we took a lot, did a lot of research, did a lot of philanthropy work, was able to work with a lot of non-profit organizations around the country initially, and I did that in the off-season. And in the last three years, it's had more of a monetized effect on different groups. So, we're not just working with student-athletes. We're not just doing things with sports and education. We got the military involved. You know, we're reaching out to school districts and we're hands-on having conversations about, well, how can we help? Who can we bring in to help with the influential side of things? You know, it's not—people focus on kids and the first person in here is charity. You know, it's like, okay, these are for the poor kids. But at the end of the day, when we're talking about the mission, it involves everybody. So, we're talking about the corporate world. How can these businesses, you know, leverage the fact that they have money, that they do want visibility, they do want credibility, they do want all of these different things? How can we take it to the next level? You know, not just do our normal sponsorship, you know, tax write-off, and then go on about our business. How can we be more visible with our hands in the community, in the school district, in the medical field? You know, we've taken the approach to involve everybody, but also find what each group needs to actually be effective. Okay. Now, in your program, what do you teach to student athletes? Do you get ready for the pros? It's just life, or what is actually like, you know? We have a slogan to learn, train, and compete. Whatever we do, we need to learn it. We need to be a master of our craft. You know, if you're going to be into the communication industry, you need to be able to talk. You need to be able to carry yourself in a certain manner and be able to speak at a different level than someone that may be. In another field, it doesn't have a lot to do with communication. So, with the kids, we're teaching them better habits of studying, better habits of understanding. You're working with someone that you probably are more likely to respect a little bit further than the actual teacher or principal or someone that you see every day. So, we really, really highlight the influence of what athletes are in our country. Not just, you know, the big-time guys. There's folks that are very influential in a normal realm. I'm not a big-time guy, but at the end of the day, you know, I stand for something that's pretty strong and kids love interacting with me. So, we're teaching athleticism, anything that can transfer over to every sport or, you know, health and wellness, you know, cycling, jogging, marathon runners. And we're also going a little further in education and focusing on math, reading, and finance. I know that everybody loves STEM. STEM is the thing. But if you can't read and count and write at a certain level, STEM doesn't really do what it can do. You know, you can't excel at that level. It just looks good. So, we're all about the look at America. And things are, the sexier things are, the better they do, nine times out of ten. So, we've incorporated activities surrounding the education activities. So, we're doing other things than just reading and writing, running, and jumping. We're having all of them. There's things that are there for the parrot on the fitness level. There's different vendors that provide their expertise, whether we're talking health and wellness, whether we're talking those nonprofit programs, corporations that want to have more visibility. So, we're talking, I guess, more small business to mid-level corporations. There's a lot for, it's a lot involved as far as coordinating these things, but there's a lot of benefit as well because everybody has their piece to the puzzle. Okay. Okay, so that's pretty cool. And it's one of the things you said that not only you're teaching athleticism, you're doing things to prepare them for life. Now, for how can someone get involved, maybe find out one locally in their area, because I know you've seen all of the United States. How can someone get involved in like, support you guys, or if someone has a child, they may want to get involved with the program or something like that. How would you, how can they do that? So, we've got a couple of different ways. First of all, we will have a lot of information coming out in the next couple of weeks through the school systems, recreational groups, more local lives information. But you can go to digsimpact.org. It's digsimpact.org. You can find us on Instagram at oprep.usa. We've got more of a corporate page, which is dig.digusa. And then we're... Man, is it oprep on Instagram? Yes, oprep.usa. Second of all, y'all only got oprep.usa? That's USA. There, we don't want to see you. All right, guys. We've got a new follower. Well, I appreciate it, man. I appreciate it. We're going to really make some noise, do some different things, have some different ways of getting people's attention. Because it is a big deal. It is an issue. Education is suffering and struggling. But when we think about business, we think about tech. We think about all these things that are constantly evolving. They have their place in it. And as we create more awareness to them, how beneficial and how much more visibility and how much more hands-on that they can be in these communities, I think a lot of companies will do better. Because now you have different eyes coming from a different location that may be more interested in what they're doing or what they're capable of doing. Some of it is psychological. A lot of it is physical. It's about investing time. Some of it is financial, of course. But overall, it's just about participating and being able to impact at a very, very frequent rate. Okay, now, going forward, you say we were speaking offline about this. People love to say, hey, you know, they see you doing well, and they automatically assume that they can do the same thing. Now, what are some of the, I would say, not setbacks, what are some of the struggles you've seen so far dealing with going forward with your program? Honestly, that's a great question, man. I mean, I might piss a few people off, but everybody wants to get paid. I think that's the biggest issue. We take our America, we take the opportunities that we can do just by listening to someone, a kid in general, which is what our focus is. Kids just want to be heard sometimes. I think when they talk about discipline and behavior, they go into a certain aspect, oh, this kid is in the hood or this kid has this problem because of XYZ. A lot of our issues has been the mere fact that people haven't taken enough time to look at how they can do things. So in the medical world, nine times out of ten medically, if a kid's not hurt, injured, or sick, you don't feel as if medically there's anything that they can do for a child. But, you know, when we talk about interest level, when we talk about activities and things of that nature, the medical world has so much more that they can give to a kid that's seven, eight, nine, or ten. I got an eight-year-old daughter. She's so, you know, aware and so open to learning things that anything I give her, nine times out of ten, even if she doesn't like it, she's open to doing it. So therefore, there's an opportunity for her to, you know, be more involved with that. I think it's the same thing business-wise. It's the same thing inside some of these communities because it's just lack of awareness and lack of understanding of what people are capable of doing. Okay. Now, you said that everybody wants to get paid. Can you elaborate on that when you say everybody wants to get paid? How is that an issue? It becomes an issue because if it's not part of my agenda, then I'm not so open to being involved. And, you know, credibility is an important thing in America. We want to know that the person that I'm dealing with is going to follow through. And I've come across a lot of pros that at that time, maybe four years ago where I was, I didn't have that same sincerity. So therefore, the follow-through wasn't necessarily as convenient back then. And I think that that was part of my growth. You know, a lot of the things where I failed or that I might have had a setback, you know, it was a great learning lesson because that's where I learned more about contracts. That's where I learned more about the legality side of things and what can and can't be done. Working with different groups, nonprofit, government, it's different. And when you want to help and when you want to be able to do things for people or shall I say kids or whomever, you're going with the more of a passion mindset instead of a business mindset. And so as I've grown, even being a business major, I mean, I still don't believe that some of the things that we have, a part of these curriculums, actually prepare me for the different things that were in this field because they require different things. I'm working with athletes. I'm working with governmental agencies. I'm working with nonprofit organizations. And since everybody's system is different, to be able to, you know, chop it up, chop that pie up, you know, to the point where, you know, everybody's getting the same amount of attention. If there is a return, that everybody's return is coming to them in the manner that they feel, I guess, happy with and did we succeed with the kid? There's a lot of fly-by-night programs. I'm not one of those. You know, when kids leave these activities, when people and parents leave these activities, everybody has a little better understanding of something, you know, health and wellness, you know, what it takes to be an athlete, what it takes as far as athletic responsibility. All of those things are key components into it being successful or it's a waste. It's a waste of time completely. At least that's my opinion. Maybe somebody out there that looks at the business fund and says, well, that doesn't matter as much, but when I started this, man, I started it, you know, for free. Kids, gay, donations. So where we are now, our mission has really, really overshadowed the business aspects of it. Okay. So is it a nonprofit organization that you guys operate under? No, sir, I'm an LLC. Okay. I've been an LLC for the last couple of years. I've been working with several nonprofits around the country. A lot of them are middle-level. I have worked with the Boys and Girls Club Systems in different aspects of the U.S. I've worked with the Salvation Army in different locations, but I really love working with more mom-and-pop type nonprofits. I just opened a partnership with Operation Lunchbox. They're a nonprofit out of Atlanta, Georgia. They do a lot of activity with feeding kids that are not able to feed themselves when school's not in. So they get free lunch at school, but then when school's not going on, these kids are hungry. So how you find them is very... Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's difficult depending on the knowledge of the resource. But they were... that brought me to them because they were getting kids running noodles, pop tarts, you know, they was getting kids pop type of food, and they said, at the end of the day, what they're doing is amazing, but they got to be able to feed these kids healthy food. I mean, we take the kids and stuff, pop tarts and run the noodles and not to discredit those brands because they fit in a snack form. But we're talking about nutrients, we're talking about vitamins and minerals. So to be able to work with a nonprofit like that and find, you know, looking for a sponsor for them to be able to work with because what they're doing, they started out of their own pocket. They developed and they figured out how to be able to help kids and why it was important. So, you know, that was something that became important to me was, I know there's more nonprofits out there that are doing things that are not consistent in our society. And so we started searching for them and we started looking a little deeper and of course, word of mouth, LinkedIn, of course, has been a great source and it's caught fire. I think we're, it's probably a total of somewhere around 29 nonprofits that we have supporting us as far as we're trying to help them execute what they're doing and of course they're providing something for the kids or something for the program. Okay, sure. Now, what you've done so far we're starting LLC branching out to other nonprofits around the United States and you know, feeding kids, educating kids, things like that. What is it that you see in the future going forward? Or what is the goal of the 2018 or what do you want to take in next? What do you want to help like every major city or what is the, what is the goal with this? I want to, I think the program needs to be where it's welcome. You know, there's a lot of places that you deal with when you're on the local level dealing with kids. So you got your, I want my kid over here or I want my kid over there. So it's not something that I necessarily deal with. The M-type tool it'll spread every year we'll look to do more. There's been some contact from Canada as far as, you know, utilizing the program and the activities that we're doing. It's not so much of us helping kids. People are helping kids all over the country. It's more of what's involved in the program. Kind of the ingredients that kind of make it taste good. And I think that that's the big deal because it's not normal. It doesn't exist. There's no, there's no group or activity like it with this type of focus. So, you know, as far as what's going forward, we'll continue to exercise different markets. We'll definitely have activity going forward on a day-to-day basis with certain areas. Dallas, the Dallas area being one of those areas. We'll have, we'll utilize the program on a day-to-day basis in the Central Dallas area and we'll be able to collect more data. We'll be able to collect more insight on what's working well or what may need to be improved at the end of the day. It's about scholarships and championships. You know, we want to put kids in college or give kids a two-way go to decide what they're going to do with their life. And whether that be athletically, whether that be through education and I guess you could go a third one as far as jumping into the corporate world. You know, exercising the mind. Millennials that are doing big things, you know, that we witness every day. But I think that there's an area of kid that might come from a cubby-hole type location or a cubby-hole type area that might lack motivation, might lack the confidence that they can do things. So I believe that we'll create a lot of different avenues because we'll be able to touch kids that really didn't believe in themselves or, you know, just wasn't in the right situation. So being that resource for the world I think would probably be the end result. You know, being able to have access into a lot of different areas more than what we have. I think right now we're getting ready for 30 this year. Last year we were at 12. So one, to repeat in different locations where we have an 85% success rate there. So we have 85% of all the cities that we worked with last year. We have them confirmed for this year. And, you know, we just kind of continue to grow. You know, continue to find the right people to be involved, continue to make my team stronger. I got to draw and get a team, bro. Honestly I shouldn't I did this by myself for five years literally every single aspect by myself. Last year was the most success we had. I had the most help. I had the most support. I had the probably the best type of professionals that I had come in contact with at the time and it gave opportunity for this year. So I think with anything you're doing the growth aspect just depends on who you got in your new business and how well y'all work together. Okay. Now what's the biggest thing that you would say that you'd like to need right now that you would say, hey, this is going forward right now to help us go forward. This is probably what we need and this is how people can help us out. What is that? The biggest need is awareness and we're getting better at this is a great opportunity, a great platform to educate people on not only what we're doing but how they can be involved. So it's really awareness getting more corporate groups involved. They're CEOs all over the country and regardless of what their purpose or their thing that draws them to the tour, there is so much help. They're helping their area. Everybody, national groups, regional groups, local groups, they're putting something in their community that's not there right now. They're giving a resource that's not there right now, whether they are involved with $1,000, $50,000 in kind donations. We've definitely been looking for wholesale groups around the country. We want to work with more nonprofits. So you're saying that someone can have their own franchise into their own community? I don't understand. That's what it's about. It's all community first. Now, there is such a heavy business situation involved because one, money, two, we're talking about kids, we're talking about safety, we're talking about insurance. You got all those type of things involved. But at the end of the day, you're empowering your area. You're empowering the kids that your kids are around. You're empowering the corporate groups that you either shop at, that you want to be able to support. The community first aspect is very, very important especially to a lot of corporations. Okay. And that is very important how you went to Alabama State and became a professional athlete with the rental football and NFL and whatnot. And that's your turning around and using your expertise to show a lot of kids along the way. On the financial literacy aspect, do you have a financial literacy program or are you looking at doing a financial literacy program? How do you feel about the financial literacy aspect of kids having that going to adulthood or college or becoming a pro athlete? The financial literacy part is really important. As far as our program and what we provide, we give the basics of what maybe even some grown-ups don't know. It's not just about adding accounting. We wanted to be aware of what they can do on a low level for banks what they can do to save money for themselves, learn to put things aside, learn to control some of those urges. It's a big deal. It's a big deal because we see it happen every day. We see people going broke every day. We see businesses going bankrupt. The things that are in our economy, some areas are just weaker than others. Understanding the global scheme of the financial world has been something that I had to learn. I had to grow from a place of what I was taught basically, the habits that I learned as I was growing up. It definitely held a lot to the success of what we've been able to do. But as far as the program itself we've had a lot of financial groups reach out to us. We've been put in place for financial advisors to kind of help their visibility by volunteering for the local area. And that way we have professional teachers doing it. That's not my world even as a management major. Like I said it's about being in your crab. So we really reach out to different groups. Of course you can go to digsimpact.org and sign up as a volunteer and we try to appreciate our volunteers in many different ways. Awesome, awesome. That is amazing you know what you're doing bringing that you know here I'll show us one of the things that we preach and we talk about is financial literacy because it doesn't matter what year you go into in life whether you become an athlete, become a doctor, a lawyer or whatnot. You're going to need some type of financial literacy somewhere down the line, right? And now before we close this out, is there anything what's the biggest thing that you want to do in tick away from this? And also how can they get in contact with you all of the great stuff like that? Well you know I think the biggest thing not just from this interview but from the grand scheme of things is that there's something you can do there's something you can provide it doesn't matter what level of your life yet it doesn't matter how much money you have there's involvement that you can give to your community and then when you take that mindset if you can monetize it then of course by all means that's what you should do because you got to take care of yourself first but at the same time it doesn't take a lot to talk to a kid it doesn't take a lot to sit up here and give constructive criticism or good advice and you know the making impact tour is about just that bringing different aspects of our life bringing different aspects of our community together to uplift the youth because the youth have a lot to do with what we're doing in America and where we're heading as far as finding us we're on digsandpack.org you can find us at oprep.usa on Instagram and we're also the corporate page for Dave's integration group is dig.dig USA and that's also on Instagram and then we're on Facebook as well at our channels what was the Facebook again? the Facebook was dig.dig USA dig.dig okay I'm going to look that up so dig.dig we're doing real time there we go we said dig.dig am I right on it? dig.dig USA can I see any space in it dig.dig USA make sure I got it right alright okay boom we got you there so I got them on Facebook there's also a new follow on Instagram definitely we are big and supporting our kids and teaching our kids because they are our future and I'm big on telling people too if it was something you was missing in your childhood and you don't see around how about you created yourself and that's exactly what you did so I definitely want to give you a big thumbs up and I appreciate everything you're doing and what you're talking around teaching kids and teaching them and helping them grow and things like that and with that being said guys this is the investor show you guys know how to get involved with digs the largest student athlete program in USA thought about pro athlete so you can't beat that so get involved find ways to get involved and I want to shine light on companies like this that are doing great things for the community and is there anything we can do to support you don't want to fall and call away and always guys this is the investor show this is your host Prince Dikes the Prince of Investing thank you for tuning in and to the next video podcast whatever you see us do crazy around the globe peace, be safe, I'm out and thank you