What is Circular Inspiration?A Key to Inspiring a Lost Generation! | Sole Bros

so we see you all looking you think that our generation's lost don't you well we're not lost you just haven't inspired us yet and if you want to inspire us there is a way we are sobros we are scholars athletes published authors and international philanthropists we founded a non-profit as 8th graders and in the process found a generation we are the generation that many of you refer to as lost gen z the tick tock generation the participation trophy generation the iphone baby status generation but since 2015 instead of being stereotypical gen zers we have donated over seven thousand pairs of shoes to kids all around the world spoken in dozens of churches and schools written a book but most importantly we found the lost generation you see we aren't lost we just seek to be inspired while we didn't exactly set out to inspire anyone we simply wanted to put shoes on kids feet we accidentally discovered along the way how to inspire our generation there are some critical repeatable steps to recreating our successes our journey begins with our sixth grade basketball team that's where we learn how to trust one another and win we want to defeat it that season but the best thing that happened to us that season besides going undefeated is that we went to an event with magic johnson as the speaker of course we all thought we might be professional athletes all middle school basketball players believe that but according to our research only one in four will be over six six anyway at the talk magic made us realize that to whom much is given much is required he talked about giving back then he did something amazing he says hey boys come on up here and he was pointing at us he went on to say that he was so inspired by seeing young guys like us in the audience you see inspiration is sort of like a give and go you ditch the ball off to your teammate and they set you up to get a bucket if you want to inspire a jinzier you have to show us that we are important to you and you know what else he promised us all signed jerseys and five days later we all received them in the mail see if you want to inspire a ginzier you can't just talk about it you have to be about it so we started soul bros in the back seat of my mom's little blue chevy cobalt on the way to a polo match in 2015. we were talking about all the latest shoes that were being released and we were super excited about it and my mom got super annoyed with our teenage sneaker head banter so she dropped some bad news on us she told us that there were kids in jamaica that had cardboard for shoes and i'm going to keep it real with all of you guys she had told me that story before but it never sparked me to any action but when the big guy with the big heart heard that story he just couldn't let it go i just couldn't imagine that there were kids out there that another fresh privilege used to wear it broke my heart i said miss jackie i have some shoes at home i've outgrown do you know someone in jamaica maybe i can donate my shoes to them so then we started to think about all the kids that we knew with perfectly good and even high-end sneakers see my mom showed us a problem and we could have just talked about it we could have posted it on social media but that day we all decided to be about it if you want to inspire us you have to do more than tell us you have to show us so let me tell you about that polo match that day it was a big fundraiser there are a lot of professional athletes philanthropists entrepreneurs tons more type of people but we were the only kids so when we got there we started telling people about our idea we were talking to a guinea and venture capitalist above room and we told them hey [ __ ] we want to send some shoes to less fortunate kids in jamaica he looked at us and he smiled and he said oh so you guys want to start a non-profit well you're going to build a website and fundraise and this and that and remember we were all 12 but he never told us we couldn't do it he just told us how to do it we went that day with an idea but we left inspired if you want to inspire us tell us that we can so after that polo match we all decided together that we would collect a thousand pairs of sneakers to send to these kids in jamaica that had cardboard for shoes we knew that we had to inspire people to help us so you see i was a point guard on that championship middle school basketball team so i knew better than anyone that it was going to take some handles to get this ball across the court so after that i also had my 13th birthday coming up so i decided that i would have this big party with all of our friends and family and we were in eighth grade at the time and eighth graders live for a party with the dj but here's what we pulled a punk fake on them they never saw it coming we told them that instead of bringing me a gift that they should donate to this cause that's the thing about inspiration it's contagious that party was fun big fun we got those people into a room and we told them about the kids with no shoes some of those kids left they told their parents and their brothers and sisters and inspired them after that we got lots of donations and then really dug in the work was like pre-season training we're running full court sprints in that storage unit we're cleaning through all breaks through the freezing cold but the image of kids with cardboard shoes and spiders to push through even when it felt nearly impossible so we pushed through and we pushed through we kept pushing about a month before shipping day we were still coming up just a little bit short we only had 800 pairs of sneakers and more importantly shipping was gonna be nearly three thousand dollars and we didn't have it at all think about it like this the clock was ticking and we were all down by three and we wanted to win this game so i remember that the poll match that day that someone told us that we were going to need a shipping partner in order to get all the work done that we wanted to get done so we decided to pull up from half court and reach out to the president of dhl and we knew that we could make that half court shot if we could inspire him then we would still be in the game so i reached out to him we told him what our idea was and the work that we wanted done and he loved it he wrote back within an hour and agreed to sponsor all of our shipping costs that right there put us in overtime but it just keeps getting better they were so inspired by what we were doing they also donated 400 pair of brand new sneakers that right there helped us win the ball game that's the thing about inspiration it moves in circles we inspired dhl and they inspired us we went to jamaica with the original foundation where we don't have the shoes but then we realized it was about the shoes anymore it was about inspiring those kids and giving them hope my little sisters basketball teammates growing inspirational coach to go along with the shoes they said things like you can do it and keep your head up you see inspired people inspire people that's circular inspiration by the time we got back from jamaica we knew that this inspiration thing was everything so we decided to journal about our experience and we ended up writing a children's book it's called soul bros change the world and since it's for kids we even took our time and made it rhyme we've been on book tours all over ohio to share our story and our book sales by more sneakers and inspire more kids some congregations even recognize that inspiration is everything so they started buying books for us to give to the kids who receive these sneakers now that's circular inspiration it never stops we've inspired kids in ghana they became the ghanaian soul bros and distributed shoes to their villages we have a friend named alex whose 14 year old little sister was so inspired by what we do that when she won her mission trip to haiti she took 100 pairs of shoes with her we inspired a congregation in dc and they had a sneaker drive for us where we collected a thousand pairs of sneakers in just one day and we sent them to hurricane harvey victims in houston and beaumont texas it keeps going and going like a basketball drill just keep passing so don't you guys see we inspired a generation but in doing so we realized something even bigger than expected we realize that inspiration is truly the solution to everything that's wrong in the world but it's also at the core of every single thing that's going well in this world don't listen to people out there that say our generation's lost our generation's not lost we just need to be inspired when you leave today we challenge you to take the ball the inspiration ball and just keep passing it be inspired and be an inspiration you