Back in October 2016, I was on a mission. My ass was lit, and I was hunting down entrepreneurs. I wanted to bottle that raw energy, that push to make something happen. I was scrolling through Twitter, just minding my business, when a video from some guy named Nick Brockmeyer popped up. His message was simple: if you ain't ready to change the world, he had no damn time for you. That hit me like a ton of bricks. It was exactly where I was at. Cutting ties with anyone who wasn't built to make an impact. I hit him up, got his number, and asked if he'd let me interview him. We locked it in. My girlfriend Shivhon and I were soon pointed toward Cleveland, Ohio.

My goal was clear: figure out what this kid was doing and blast it out to the audience I was building. That was the plan. But life, she's a brutal teacher, ain't she? What actually happened was a punch to the gut. I didn't interview Nick. Not really. What I did was talk to people who had been chewed up and spit out by an epidemic that had permanently scarred their home. Their city. Lorain.

The day before we were set to roll, I got a call. An invitation to speak at the Hispanic Fund, a lifeline of an organization buried deep in the community. They were fighting for change, education, unity, and progress. Now, not only was my whole plan for Nick Brockmeyer completely upside down, but I was suddenly on the hook to stand in front of doctors, community leaders, lawyers, entrepreneurs, council members. The whole damn establishment. I was shitting bricks. It was my first ever speaking gig. My first time on that stage, under that kind of pressure.

But the minute my boots hit Ohio soil, I knew this wasn't about me. Not anymore. This whole thing, this documentary, What I Want to Say to Lorain, it wasn't my story. It was about giving a voice to a community that had been silenced. It was about the sons, the mothers, the sisters, brothers, friends, daughters who had been swallowed whole by heroin overdose and addiction. It was about the possibility of safer prescription drugs that might have kept them alive. It was about ripping open the conversation, dragging into the light what wasn't working. It was about a city that people loved, a city they refused to abandon, even as it bled out.

Lorain isn't some outlier. Lorain is anywhere. It's your town, your street, your family. This documentary is a raw scream for help, a desperate fight for survival. It's the story of a war being waged in our own backyards, and too many of us are blind to it, or worse, comfortable with it.

The streets of Lorain were a mirror, showing the true cost of comfort, the brutal toll of looking away. You don't have to live there to feel the sting. This fight is everywhere.

I went to find inspiration. I found desperation. I went looking for a story of success. I found a narrative of survival. The resilience I saw in Lorain wasn't about building a new tech empire; it was about burying a child and still showing up to fight for the next one. It was about community leaders, outmatched and outgunned, still scrapping for every inch of progress, every life saved.

They say you should never meet your heroes, or something like that. I didn't meet a hero. I met an entire city full of them. People who faced the ugliest parts of humanity and still dared to believe in a better day. They didn't have corporate budgets or slick marketing campaigns. They had grit. They had loss. They had a burning need to stop the bleeding. That's the real fire, the real impact. Not some slick pitch deck. It’s the desperate fight to save what you love.

This isn't just about opioids. It's about what happens when we let our communities rot from the inside. When we prioritize profit over people. When we turn a blind eye to the suffering right outside our front door. Lorain was a wake-up call, a blaring siren I couldn't ignore. It hammered home that true impact isn't just about building something great; it's about stopping something terrible from destroying everything. It's about staring the problem in the face, no matter how ugly, and saying, "Not on my watch."

The comfort kills. It numbs us to the cries of our neighbors. It allows us to scroll past tragedy as if it's just another piece of content. Lorain forced me out of my own comfort, shattered my preconceived notions of what "impact" even meant. It showed me that sometimes, the greatest act of creation is the act of stopping destruction.

Kill the comfort today

  • Look beyond your screen: Stop doom-scrolling. Find a local issue, a local fight, that's chewing up your community. Get off your ass and find out what's really happening.
  • Demand real answers: Don't just accept the easy headlines. Dig deeper into the root causes of the problems you see. Push for solutions that address the core rot, not just the symptoms.
  • Act where you are: You don't need a national stage to make a difference. Find one person, one family, one local organization struggling, and throw your weight behind them. Your street, your neighborhood, that's your starting line.