We Are All in This Together: Building Better Communities

I love this.

Nathan, thank you so much for sharing that story.

And so there's so many pieces of this that I resonate with.

So things that I want to pull out here.

So my, my dad was a us Navy.

So thank you for your service.

Right.

And, um, so there's, you get the, the military aspect of this, you've got chamber of commerce, right? I'm a small business owner and, uh, the, the idea and the things that chambers do to help bring our communities together.

We're here in Indianola and we do stuff with Knoxville all the time.

We're supporting Knoxville and connected there.

And in fact, I was there just last weekend.

So doing all sorts of great stuff and where I really want to anchor though, really, really, really want to anchor is this idea of making communities better.

The idea of bringing us together, the idea of connecting where people are and understanding how we co-create great communities.

Because this is our life mission here at Your Clear Next Step, right? Helping people have better work days so we can co-create better communities.

So one of the messages I've heard you say over and over again is you're not alone.

Let's talk about that a little bit.

When you say that, when that resonates with you and you've heard that and you've shared that at the doors when you were running for public office, I've heard you say it in other places, what do you mean by that? And what does that do when you see people hear that, when you've heard that, where are you going with that idea of you're not alone?

Well, you know, I thought for a long time that I was doing something wrong, right? So I thought, like, why can't I afford the life that I'm trying? I have two daughters, my wife, my family.

Why is it so hard? And I remember my wife coming home for a long time going...

why she just throw her stuff down why is it so hard right and being angry and you realize when you get in when i got into politics that it was like you learn stats and you learn what's going on and you see that 60 of our population is literally living paycheck to paycheck meaning that all of us majority of the people in this state and across this country are struggling just to be able to to live the life like the american dream that we had in our heads of like hey if i could if i get a good job with good pay.

I can afford a house.

I can send my kids to college and I can retire with dignity.

That dream for so many people across this country is not a reality a lot of the time.

And so I want people to know that you're not struggling alone.

There's a lot of people that are together in the struggle together, and we're trying to find a path forward for ourselves and for our families.