>>Narrator: How do I know which path is best for me?

Is it possible to take on these challenges and obstacles?

Where do I even start?

What should I do with my life?

Sometimes, the only way to find out is to go see what's possible Since 2001, we've been sharing the stories of people who ventured out and explored different career paths and different possibilities for their futures.

This is one of those stories.

This is Roadtrip Nation.

[MUSIC] >> Daniel: We're going to Kokomo to tour the Kokomo Opalescent Glass studio.

>> Speaker 2: So this is the furnace room.

This is the heart of the operation where we produce our glass.

[MUSIC] >> Maddie: It's very satisfying to watch the workers ladle out the hot molten glass and put it on the board.

It looks like you are mixing just a big lava pancake and then rolling it out to a flat sheet of glass.

And get to see the whole process of what it looked like from being melted to cut to be ready to ship out to artists who wanted to use that for their glass work.

>> Speaker 2: Here ya go.

>> Maddie: [LAUGH] Okay, yeah, that's kinda like.

>> Speaker 2: Yeah.

>> Maddie: Whew, that's a workout, my goodness.

>> Saddie: There you go.

You probably don't need the gym after this.

>> [MUSIC] >> Speaker 2: So Karen, she does a lot of the custom work, restoration work, gift shop work, and all of it, and teaches lessons as well.

>> Karen: And it puts grooves in it.

See how fast it gets cooled?

>> Daniel: Mm-hm.

>> Karen: Isn't that cool?

>> Maddie: Uh-huh.

>> Daniel: I think I'm doing this wrong but it's funny.

>> [LAUGH] >> Saddie: After we showed the beads she actually showed how they actually cut glass and then break it apart so they can make the very intricate stained glass or other artistic things that they do with it.

I could definitely see myself doing that all day and I'd be a very happy person.

It was just a really cool thing to see.

[MUSIC] >> Speaker 2: All righty.

>> Maddie: Awesome.

>> [CROSSTALK] >> Saddie: Thanks so much.

>> Daniel: Thank you.

[MUSIC] >> Maddie: We are halfway through the trip and we are in Indianapolis.

Just kinda fun to be back close to home.

My relationship with Saddie and Daniel, we're pretty close at this point.

It's been a week in very close quarters moving and working around each other.

So we've kind of learned how to communicate best to be pretty comfortable around everyone at all times.

[MUSIC] >> Daniel: I'm really excited for all of us to show off our hometowns.

Especially since we get to talk to Faith Farms and the Boys and Girls Club, who are very prominent leaders in the community.

So I think it'll be really nice to get to highlight them.

[MUSIC] >> Saddie: I've gotten a lot of really good advice and stuff from the leaders.

A lot of them had a lot of stuff that I will be able to take with me and hopefully retain and build myself with.

Overall I feel pretty good.

I'm excited to continue on.

[SOUND] [MUSIC] >> Saddie: When you immediately think of photography, you're like you have a camera, take a shot, you're good to go, but there's so much more behind it.

The action of finding something that you can take a picture of and then develop it in a completely different way.

To change the meaning of what could have just been a landscape and making it into something completely new.

I think a lot of people sort of overlook Indiana because it's not Texas or California or New York.

[LAUGH] There's more than corn in Indiana.

[LAUGH] There's a lot that happens in Indiana that you might not be aware of.

And just the interesting people that come from the different areas that I have been able to meet.

But, also meeting just new people and being able to meet others that had those similar paths and stories but also show people what there is in Indiana.

Well, I'm learning what there is as well.

I just think that'd be super fun.

[MUSIC] >> Maddie: How are you guys?

Hey.

[SOUND] >> Maddie: It's nice to meet you.

>> Darrian: And you.

Nice to meet you.

>> Devyn: [LAUGH] All right, so I'm Devyn, our co-founder and COO here at Qualifi.

>> Darrian: And I'm Darrian, one of our co-founders and our CEO.

>> Daniel: So, can you guys tell us more about your company?

>> Devyn: Yeah, so Qualifi is a virtual interviewing platform built for high-volume recruiting.

So, if you think about hospitals, call centers, manufacturing companies that hire in the hundreds.

We help them take what used to be a slow and outdated process like phone interviews.

Have you guys ever taken phone interviews?

>> Daniel: Mm-hm >> Devyn: So, in these situations, you're talking about hundreds of phone interviews having to get done in a week.

It's impossible or it's gonna take a super long time.

So we help them automate that process by recording their voices and their questions into our platform.

And then we send it via text or email to a candidate.

Candidates take that interview within the same day they get it.

And so now you're getting hundreds of candidates taking their interviews one to two weeks faster than they would have taken them when they were doing it the old way.

>> Daniel: Did you guys ever imagine building a company like this?

>> Devyn: Yeah.

[LAUGH] Yeah, I mean, honestly, yeah.

>> Darrian: We both are entrepreneurs and had different backgrounds before we started Qualifi.

I was at another startup company and was helping that team scale up.

It was a company that was growing really fast and I oversaw a lot of the internal operations, including the recruiting function, as well as HR.

But it's through that experience that I saw firsthand how challenging it is to just recruit in general.

And landed on this pain point of phone interviews being a big area where I was spending a lot of time, but I thought it could be more efficient.

>> Devyn: So my side hustle was running a territory for senior care.

I'm in the Terre Haute area and I hire caregivers for that.

So, most of my time with that job was spent asking the same ten questions to candidates over and over and over again for them to get hired and then leave within two days.

So, I felt this like hamster wheel that we help recruiters now fight against.

>> Darrian: I've always said somebody is going to do this.

Why can't it be us?

Meaning someone is gonna figure out how to build a product like ours in this space.

Why shouldn't it be us?

Why can't it be us?

>> Saddie: One of the biggest things that's really important to me is how I'm fulfilled within my job.

So, I'm asking most everybody how they feel fulfilled with what they're currently doing.

So, what do you guys feel?

>> Devyn: I have two jobs.

I have coaching and I have Qualifi, right?

Qualifi is my second favorite job.

Being honest.

He knows this.

I've already told him this many times.

Doesn't make the second favorite job any less important or it doesn't mean I'm putting less effort.

It just means I enjoy coaching a lot.

Like a lot, a lot.

To me I'm ultimately fulfilled because I'm getting to live out the things that I really enjoy as a person.

But now we have a whole company that people are paying us for, that people work for, that people are enjoying working for.

This is all stuff Is didn't think was gonna be the case.

I remember being like, yeah, we're probably not gonna be here next year.

And that was early days I'm like, I don't think we could ever get to a $100,000 in revenue.

And, we're far past that.

There's those moments of fulfillment of hitting a goal that you can very easily forget that you set out to achieve.

>> Darrian: After this I'll probably take a little break and then.

[LAUGH].

Go right back at it cuz I plan to do this for the rest of my life.

[MUSIC] >> Saddie: They were super, super fun guys to talk to.

Being brothers they have that sibling dynamic and they were very honest about how things went for them when they started Qualifi.

But the biggest thing I took from them was to just go for it.

I keep making excuses for myself to start projects.

That's the biggest thing, is once I start, I have to keep going.

That's just something I need to do.

That's something I need to go for.

And so, that's something to take away from them, is to just go for it.

[MUSIC] >> Daniel: Gary is a community that has had a massive flux of negativity since we were the murder capital of the country.

The people who were around to see that aspect of Gary, they knew what it was.

But the generations that are closer to mine, Gen Z or the Millennials.

They really just wanna leave because they see the aftermath of that and they just think that there's nothing here.

There's no reason to build anything because that's a trap that we've all, I think, fallen into.

We just need to come together as a community and break this cycle of negativity.

And I want to be that person who can change the narrative and change that mindset and inspire other youth who may be going through what I have, and have the power to make that change but are entirely too scared to do it [MUSIC] [INAUDIBLE] >> Saddie: Yeah.

>> Freida: Just push it right through the fence.

>> Saddie: Right.

And just.

>> Freida: Just drop it in.

>> Saddie: Just drop it [LAUGH] >> Freida: Uh-huh.

Come here.

>> Saddie: Through here.

>> Freida: Yeah.

>> Saddie: Okay.

>> [LAUGH] >> Freida: They're gonna make sure they get it.

>> Saddie: [LAUGH] >> Freida: They're not gonna let anything go to waste.

>> Freida: We started Faith Farms 10 years ago because we had so many abandoned properties and buildings that were torn down.

How can we regenerate the land?

How can we reuse the land?

How can we repurpose the land and still give people something that's healthy?

I totally believe that we can sustain ourselves and re-educate ourselves and learn about healthy eating, healthy food by growing in our own community.

So that's what we're doing here.

We're doing several projects at once.

We're growing food.

We're doing food as medicine.

We're doing fresh frozen.

We're new urban ag generation, which got a chance that we teach in the summertime.

We're doing pollinator parks.

We're doing grow parks.

So there's several things that we do all at one time that we want to get out to the community because we feel like Gary can sustain itself and grow by these things we are doing.

>> Daniel: Have you ever gotten any testimonials about the things that you're doing here at Faith Farms?

>> Freida: Absolutely.

Absolutely.

There are people that come back year after year for kale.

And there's people that come back year after year for different things in the farm as the farm has grown.

And the biggest testimony is we are getting from this program we're doing now is Faith Food is medicine.

About people's cholesterol being lowered.

Weight loss or the gentleman came in and they say, I lost a few pounds.

I feel so much better and people feeling more energetic.

And being able to reverse your diagnosis, some of your diagnosis.

Because we wanna work with the physicians not against the physicians.

That's what touches my heart.

That's what keeps me going.

>> Daniel: Yeah, and I think I feel the exact same way because my family has benefited from the blessing box out there many times and that has literally kept us alive at times.

>> Freida: I'm not crying on camera but go on.

[LAUGH] >> Daniel: I think it's really nice to have the youth in the community reconnected with things like this because we already have adults that don't know.

>> Freida: Uh-huh.

>> Daniel: so now we can start with the youth and then they can keep telling the future.

>> Freida: There we go.

>> Daniel: And so on and so forth, so we can end this cycle of ignorance and negativity and to just see them out there.

When I came up to grab the box and I saw all these youth here willingly, it was just an amazing thing to see.

>> Freida: Absolutely.

>> Maddie: Okay, so maybe one last question is, what advice would you give to people our age as we're making these decisions for our future?

>> Freida: Go with your heart because if you're into something that you love, and it took me to ten years ago to find something, but I love this.

This is a different thing.

Well go with your heart and don't give up, don't give up.

It's gonna get hard, you're gonna get pressed.

Keep living.

Things are going to happen.

But go with your heart.

[MUSIC] >> Maddie: Freida was a great person to teach us about what urban farming is and what it is Faith Farms does.

Talking about the mission of the program wanting the food to ultimately benefit the health of those in the community itself.

>> Freida: Find your peace in what you love.

I think that's good.

>> Maddie: Mm-hm.

>> Daniel: Yeah.

>> Freida: That's good.

[MUSIC] >> Maddie: At this point in life, one of the most pressing points of pressure is what are you gonna do next?

So what comes after college?

And a lot of people are expecting an answer.

I am expecting an answer of myself at some point other than, I really don't know.

But again learning to be okay with that answer because that's a valid answer.

Hi girl.

Hey.

How are you?

I think some other pressure in my life right now is, whatever I end up doing, I want it to have meaning and be impactful for people and for the world.

So, I wanna do something great.

And what does that look like?

I don't know.

And how do I measure will it be great enough?

Will it ever be enough?

[MUSIC] >> Maddie: This is one of my favorite titles.

[LAUGH] The rabbit ambassador.

Often times I'll still feel pressure to be perfect.

And I have to deal with that by going back to, it's okay that I am not arrived or I'm not at this point.

I don't even know what my idea of arrival or perfection would look like.

So how can I expect myself to attain something that's undefinable?

[MUSIC] >> Maddie: [LAUGH] I'm excited to learn about general life advice.

I think that's always important to listen to people that have gone before and failed and not succeeded in different areas.

So to learn what that process looked like.

There's always gonna be important things to learn.

>> [MUSIC] >> Daniel: Up next we are interviewing Ken Barry the club director of the John Will Anderson Boys and Girls Club in Gary.

And I am very excited to talk to him because I have actually known him for a few months thanks to my second internship.

But I don't know too much about what he does so I'm curious to learn more about him.

But also to interview an important leader in my own city and highlighting some of the things that we're doing at an establishment that I think is very important to the youth here.

[MUSIC] >> Ken: I found my passion probably around your age.

Somebody told me a television station was hiring.

I had no experience whatsoever.

And one of the stories that they sent me out on, to make a long story short, was a young man who was gang-affiliated, who was working for Habitat for Humanity as a diversion program.

So it was either go to jail or help Habitat build houses.

I do the interview and then probably for the next 20, 30 minutes me and this young man just sat on the roof.

I grew up in Inglewood.

I grew up in one of the worst neighborhoods you could grow up in in Chicago.

And I was just telling him how really in my life I just made different decisions than everybody else around me.

We finished the conversation.

I climbed down the ladder and as soon as my feet hit the ground, I looked back up at that roof and I said, that's all I want to do with my life.

I knew at that moment, that's all I wanted to do.

I didn't really understand what it was at the time.

But I knew that the reason I was on planet Earth was to help young people maximize their life's potential.

And it's literally all I've been doing ever since.

>> Maddie: That's really inspiring.

That's neat to hear.

What happened for you next?

How did you change your career path?

>> Ken: So I just started kind of going to church.

So I went to my church and I asked the pastor, I said, hey, I want to work with young people.

He said, what do you want to do?

I said, [SOUND] I just want to work with young people.

From that point on was working with young people.

So I was a mentor at one organization.

I was a training manager at another organization, teaching young people how interview skills and how to get and keep a job.

And like I said, every time it was just kinda another step up.

Every organization I moved to, kids would get off the bus and I can hear their feet and the noise and I'm in my office, and I don't care how the day went, everything just starts changing and I get excited and energized.

So it's just always in pursuit of that.

I have not worked in 30 years.

In my mind, right?

Because for 30 years I've been doing what I absolutely love to do and then the other stuff, the hobbies, do that stuff on the weekend.

So, I mean I don't have all the money in the world, but I'm living my best life.

[LAUGH] So, yeah.

>> Daniel: A major issue that I noticed that we have in Gary is not necessarily that we don't have resources but that people are not aware that the resources exist.

And I feel like that's a very prominent issue among youth because we just don't listen.

A lot of us are not interested in some of the things that would be beneficial to us.

And it sometimes takes being in things like the Boys and Girls Club and honestly some of those things that our parents put us in to just naturally become exposed to those things.

And I'm curious if you have any advice or ideas of how we could expose more youth to the resources that would ultimately benefit them?

>> Ken: Even in a club the traditional way of doing thing is, we're going to do this program, they're gonna come in this room, and they're gonna sit down.

They're gonna do X, Y and Z, right?

What I keep telling my staff is, nope, just watch them.

I believe you meet them where they are.

Why can't you do mentoring while they're walking down the hall, right?

People always ask me, how do you have so much success with young people?

I say, hello.

And I lean into being the old lame guy, right?

I'm an old man, so they just assume I'm lame.

I'm really one of the coolest old people you ever gonna meet in your life.

[LAUGH] But we have to learn how to take the content to them.

How do they function in their own organic spaces, right?

I would love to take this elements of this club to every school in the city and say hey, here's this cool thing we do at the club.

Let's fly some drones.

Let's fly drones through the lunchroom or the gym or whatever.

They fall in love with the drones and now they like, man, mom, at the boys and girls club they flying drones.

And I heard they playing basketball.

And I heard they got a STEM lab and and and and right?

And then, the most beautiful thing in the world happens.

They become the evangelists.

And especially in Gary because it's really hard to market in this city.

So you gotta turn young people into your evangelists because you guys literally are next up, in my mind.

And I think as adults we got to stop hoarding all of the information and leadership.

Somebody did that for me.

When I was your age somebody said, you want the shot?

You got the shot.

And so I kinda owe it to them and to you guys to make sure that whatever I can do, and after this interview, you got my email address, you got my phone number.

I think you might have my personal phone number.

Call me.

[MUSIC] >> Ken: Doesn't matter when, where, where you at, where I'm at and I'm here for you.

And that's real.

[MUSIC] >> Daniel: After talking to Ken Barry I am very surprised that we had so much in common.

It seems like he's going through the exact same things I have but our experiences are sort of expressed in a different way.

And the fact that there was just this one moment that clicked for him where he was like he wants to do for youth gives me a lot more inspiration and motivation.

But I'm definitely gonna keep doing what I'm doing now that I've talked to him.

Roadtrip Nation, y'all need y'all microphone, don't you?

>> Maddie: [LAUGH] >> [MUSIC] >> Maddie: Honestly, I think going back home is gonna be a little weird.

It's gonna be different not to sit down and have these deep interview type conversations all the time.

[LAUGH] >> Daniel: I saw you and I was like, wait.

>> Maddie: I don't have an exact plan for what life will look like next.

But I'm more excited about the options than I am scared about it because there are neat things to do.

And as long as I try something I can either go with it or try something else.

I made Daniel a bracelet out of this [LAUGH] corn.

>> Daniel: I'm just trying to get us out of here.

>> Maddie: [LAUGH] >> Daniel: I don't know what's happening.

[MUSIC] >> Saddie: I definitely think I have a mini plan sort of set in my mind.

I just have to well, do it.

The biggest thing is to start.

Don't stick yourself into the same thing.

It's not a requirement.

You don't have to stay put.

It doesn't matter where you are in your career.

If you're not happy you can leave and start somewhere new.

The biggest thing is to do it.

Start.

>> Daniel: Indiana.

What I originally wanted to get from the road trip was to figure out how to do for myself without forgetting about others and vice versa.

But also see what's happening in other places in Indiana and bring that information back to Gary to help it.

We are a state of change and a state of innovation.

So everything was a new experience for me.

So I don't think I'm ever gonna forget how each individual city felt.

And I'm definitely not gonna forget Indianapolis because now my urge to get there is a lot stronger than it was before.

[MUSIC]