I'm getting ready to introduce it.
A great friend of mine,
a dear brother,
um,
uh,
uh,
personal road dog.
We've,
we've been through a lot the last five and a half,
six years,
um,
together,
uh,
became best friends.
Um,
but he,
he depicts that statement.
That transformation happens when your vision is greater than your pain.
You See,
rob,
um,
won't tell you,
but he's actually had to sleep on a couch for the last like year.
He won't tell you that he's been driving someone's car for the last two years.
He won't tell you that he budgets his monthly budget under $1,500 a month.
He survives off of that.
He won't tell you the sacrifices that he does every day.
You see transformation,
not just within your life.
What in other people's lives happens when your vision is greater than your pain.
He won't tell you the hard times,
the lonely times,
the times where he wanted to throw in the towel.
I'm getting ready to read his bio here in a second,
but no one how I've walked beside him.
I had the comfort of,
of you know,
having a job while he literally walked by faith every day and he believed that
something great was going to happen through city fan.
I remember he went all in and he's been going all in for the last five years
towards this vision.
When Laurie coached him and said,
you can have this life,
he says,
I can have that line.
He goes,
I'm going to do everything I can to get to where I need to go.
Stop Drinking,
stop doing whatever was holding him back.
He's been living out his vision every day.
When I'm saying every day,
I'm not saying,
you know,
three hours at a day,
I'm saying 12 to 16 hours a day.
He lives,
breathes,
eats,
sleeps city fam,
and those that live in Baltimore and that are around him can testify.
That's what he's all about is seeing lives changed and he's just a great friend
of mine.
He challenges me and so many different ways.
I'm going to read now,
read his bio.
So rob quasi is a self proclaimed,
reformed bad boy once the biggest stripper and nightclub promoter in his
hometown in Baltimore,
Maryland.
He had a radical life changing counter with Jesus and turned his life around
Rob's life of excess,
taught him many lessons and his mess has became his message.
He's the CEO and founder of CityFam,
a Baltimore based nonprofit organization that advocates for the power of
community to transform individuals,
cities,
and even the world is the author of why waiting works,
how fast sex prevents us from finding true love and longterm happiness.
Can we just give it off from Mr Rob?
Cool.
Awesome.
Yeah,
I can find,
you know a market,
thanks guys.
Appreciate it.
Let's give it up for Bill.
Thank you guys
common for invest in a,
your weekend to be here.
It's really awesome.
Really humbling to be honest,
to hear about people from all over the country,
even other countries.
It's crazy.
But,
um,
this was a dream of mine and Lori's actually probably early on,
six years ago,
we would dream about,
you know,
coaching big groups of people and really helping them find a vision for their
life back when we were on road avenue in Dundalk,
if anybody's from Maryland and knew where it's at.
It was a long,
long time ago.
So this is really,
really cool to have this come to fruition.
And I really just wanted to Kinda share my,
my testimony I guess for lack of a better term,
Lori asked me to tell you about it.
Um,
my story because,
um,
I think it's easy to see the highlight now,
you know,
but it's better to hear the origin cause it,
it might look like I have it all together and you know,
I got it going on,
but,
um,
there was a long time that I did.
So kind of just want to give you my background a little bit,
want to talk for about 20 minutes and now I want to share really what city fam
is the heart behind it and kind of how we came up with it.
So I was born and raised in Baltimore.
My mom was pregnant,
got pregnant with me at the age of 14 years old.
Um,
her and my dad actually did get married but didn't last long.
Surprise,
surprise I say.
But,
um,
I,
my grandmother raised me till I was about four or five years old and my dad,
my mom took custody of me back over I guess when she was about 19 years old.
And my dad was never in the picture.
He was never in the same state as me,
never pay child support.
So I really didn't have much of a relationship with them.
And,
um,
you know,
my mom was working,
she had an eighth grade education,
so she was kind of just trying to pay the bills,
was a waitress mostly.
And uh,
I just ran the streets a lot,
raise myself,
taught myself how to be a man.
And you know,
from the time I pretty much hit puberty,
I,
I just kinda learned from television and movies,
you know,
what,
what a man was supposed to act like,
or at least what I thought he was supposed to act like.
And I thought if I could sleep with a lot of women that are validated me.
And you know,
I remember when I was about 14 or 15 years old,
I found a video tape that my mom and her friends had rented up some male
strippers and popped it in the VCR.
And I watched it and I was like,
I didn't even know that that existed,
but I thought that's what I want to do for a living.
So from the time I was 14 or 15 years old,
I,
uh,
I think it's funny now,
but I wanted to be a stripper.
That was my,
you know,
I remember it distinctly and I told my friends about it.
So when I was 19 years old,
um,
my five year dream of becoming a male stripper became true.
And I started dancing.
I started working for all the entertainment agencies in Baltimore,
was working with a review group,
you know,
and I guess I was,
like I said,
19 for about eight years I did that.
I became the,
the most,
the biggest smile,
the busiest stripper in Baltimore.
Like I've worked for every entertainment agency.
I was in the phone book and,
uh,
life was a party,
you know,
it was everything that you think,
you know,
if anyone's seen magic,
Mike,
y'all shouldn't have seen magic Mike if you did.
But if anybody did,
it was like that.
Um,
but I,
I kind of became a transition to that voting nightclubs and in Baltimore,
and that just increased the debauchery.
And,
um,
you know,
when I,
I didn't really think much about God to be honest.
He,
I had limited exposure to them when I was younger.
My uncle put me in a couple of Christian schools,
which I,
which I got expelled from.
Um,
but thank you all.
Great.
Can you hear me better now?
Okay.
So,
um,
but when I was 27 years old,
I was in Cancun,
Mexico with a group of about 15 friends.
And,
um,
God called me.
It was the first time I heard God's voice in my life.
First Time I felt his presence and I,
I heard it.
He said he had a plan for my life and he asked me,
ask me to trust them and to follow him,
which I did.
And I did the most radical one 80 a person could do.
From that point on,
I,
uh,
I quit stripping.
I quit promoting,
I broke up with my girlfriend,
you know,
that I had been having sex with,
I call my friends and I started going to church on Sunday.
And,
um,
what makes my story different,
I always have to share is,
is when God called me,
he told me that he had a girl form of,
of why for me,
you told me you she loves,
actually it was a girl who lived in California that I knew that I never really
thought of that way.
I mean,
I,
I thought she was pretty,
but that was about it.
And um,
but he told me that,
you know,
this is your soul mate and I've tried to contact her.
She didn't reciprocate.
So I thought,
okay,
well if this is God,
you know,
he'll make it happen because you know,
everything that I read about him,
he knows the end from the beginning.
So I said,
I'll wait.
And I thought it would happen fast,
to be honest.
I thought it was going to be a couple of weeks,
maybe a month or two.
And I remember praying,
I said,
God,
I said,
okay,
I'll wait.
I mean,
cause I was,
I had a lot of sex before that if anybody suddenly genuine nuvi back then.
But I,
uh,
I was like,
oh wait,
I said God,
but you better hurry because you know,
I can't wait long.
And um,
I waited and it turned into six years and it was the loneliest six years of my
life.
I would,
you know,
went to church on Sundays and you know,
the six and a half days a week besides work,
I didn't really do much else because I was dying.
I started die like quickly within a couple of weeks.
I was like really lonely.
I went from having a very active social life to having nothing to do on the
weekends and no one to do it with.
And I was like,
all right,
we're,
where did the cool Christians hang out?
Right.
Cause that's what I was trying to find them.
And so I started and I,
they just,
I went to some Christian coffee houses and there was just nothing out there.
And so I ended up just kind of going to the movies,
you know,
on the weekends and trying to avoid trouble.
That was my strategy.
I'm like,
I'm just going to try to avoid sin because eventually he's going to bring her to
me and that will solve this problem.
So after about six years,
uh,
I was starting to run out of gas.
Um,
but my determination was starting to wear off and I've been abstinent that whole
time.
Sheltering myself from the world for the most part.
And um,
I had this idea though,
cause I started to see my old friends lives starting to fall apart from the bad
decisions that,
that I was making previously also.
But there were,
their lives were starting to fall apart.
And meanwhile,
you know,
I'm trying to get them to get sober and go to go to recovery or come to church
with me because I feel like that was that what's,
what they need it.
But I could not get on the,
come from the life of me.
And here I was,
I was the leader of the pack.
You know,
when God called me up,
I was the guy that,
you know,
pretty much said I was a promoter.
So it was the one that was saying,
okay,
this we're party here this night here this night.
And pretty much people came,
but,
and I could not get them to come to this,
those places.
And I'm so I thought I prayed a lot about it and I can,
I'm sorry if you guys aren't believers,
but I can't help not talk about God because it was such an integral part of the
story.
But I,
uh,
I really felt led back into the club scene.
Like,
like God was giving me the green light to go back to promoting,
which was shocking to me because I,
I didn't think that I'd ever do it again.
And I got back into it.
I started promoting.
It was,
uh,
it was summer of 2006.
So I've been out of the scene for six years.
Nobody even really knew who I was anymore when I got back into it.
But I had the hot,
like within about three months,
I literally took over the nightlife scene in Baltimore and I had the hottest
club in the city on Saturday nights.
It was a place called CAS boss.
I mean you all might remember,
but on Thursday nights I had a smaller group and the nightclub and we were
reading purpose driven life and we would go out to homeless park and we would
feed the homeless people after the small group.
And anybody that came to the small group on Thursday,
I would let it in for free to the nightclub on Saturday.
Didn't make them wait in line,
treat it like the Ip and it was awesome.
And all of a sudden my small group blew up and went from like eight people to
like 50 people.
And I had drug dealers and strippers come into my small group when I was like,
this is awesome.
These are my vehicle.
And um,
but it was so edgy.
It was right when I met Laurie and pastor Chris.
I just started going to church.
And it was so edgy though and I,
because I didn't have good,
uh,
accountability and I hadn't set good boundaries,
it just,
it sucked me in.
I slept with a girl,
I was still drinking at the time.
I slept with a girl,
I broke my six year streak and then once I lost that badge because it was a
badge of like,
almost like that is pride.
Once I lost that,
it became easier to make mistakes.
So about a month later I slept with the second girl and some people in my group
found out about it and they judge me fairly,
pretty,
pretty harshly and rightfully so.
So I stepped down from leadership and once I did that,
it was like stepping back into the shadows and my life started the spiral
because here I was now it was the biggest promoter in the city again.
I was making all this money,
I was popular.
I,
it was like the perfect storm,
you know,
came together and the devil got me and I just,
for the most part over the next five years,
I ended up right back to where I was when I started,
before I met the Lord,
except now I just was really guilty because I knew I was,
I was wrong and he was disappointed in me.
So it was,
uh,
toward the end of 2011 and my dad got diagnosed with cancer and,
um,
through a series of events,
God brought me to my knees and I rededicated my life to him and that's when I
started meeting with Lori.
And if is unnatural as it felt for me to go back to that life cause I tried,
I've given it everything.
I had to be a good Christian boy and I couldn't do it,
but it was better than the alternative because I had made such a mess.
Um,
and I just didn't like the way that I felt about myself.
So I read dedicated and uh,
you know,
Laurie and I,
she,
I remember she offered to coach me.
She said,
you know,
let's meet up and you know,
life coaching or whatever.
And I remember how cynical I was driving to that first meeting because I was
like,
what's a life coach?
What does this,
this is going to be a waste of time.
Literally I thought that as like this is going to be a waste.
So we,
I got there and she,
you know,
she told me about the six areas of my life and she broke it down for me and she
asked me several questions for each area of my life and I answered them
honestly.
And the next time we got together she said,
I want you to close your eyes.
And she said,
this is your vision statement.
And she read it to me.
I think I have it with me.
And she read it to me and it was the most perfect life because it was based on
my answers,
but it was the most perfect life that you could imagine for me.
And I was too.
It was almost too good to be true.
It was just like,
I don't know if that could actually happen,
but she helped me believe it enough that I said,
if,
if it's even possible,
I'll do anything to get there.
So I quit drinking.
A few months later I broke up with my girlfriend,
um,
uh,
not long after that so I could be abstinent.
I quit promoting,
which was my only source of livelihood.
And you know,
I just,
I did everything basically that I could,
everything that I have been ever since for the last six years.
Um,
I don't even look at my notes,
but
I really want to share.
I want to share the,
uh,
I want to share the ladder of city family,
kind of where that came from.
But
I guess the point that I really wanted to make was if you,
if you look at my life,
you know,
first when I started coaching,
when I found,
when I discovered the vision for my life,
I was,
I was an alcoholic at the time.
I was a Christian.
I was just very backslide.
But I was an alcoholic.
I was using drugs.
I was probably a sex addict.
I was an old promoter,
which is really bad.
You know what I mean?
It's too old to be doing no idea what I was going to do with my life for my
future.
You know,
I had some vague ideas,
but the vision is what propelled,
push me through.
It's like really sad.
It pushed me through all the pain.
And that's why I'm really excited about this weekend because I know that each
one of you here has been created for a purpose.
And when you find it,
it's gonna Change your life and it's going to change the lives of the people
that are around you.
So when we started city fam,
we kind of had this idea,
and this is,
this is pretty much what we operate by for the ladder.
So what we believe is
we put fulfillment at the top that everybody wants to get to this point.
Everybody wants to wake up,
excited to get out of bed,
living their best life now,
right?
What we believe is you don't get there without this community.
It's possible for you to reach your full potential unless you have a group of
people around you to inspire you,
encourage you and support you.
Because if you don't,
sooner or later you'll run on the gas.
Like I bet you know,
I white knuckled it for six years.
I want you to,
I was the most permission was person.
I knew it.
No sex for six years.
Like that's hell of a lot of determination.
Thank you.
So you have to have that cheering section.
You've got to have a group of people around you just to do life with.
Okay.
But the way that we see it as well,
first off,
everybody wants to be here.
Everybody wants to reach their full potential.
And it takes healthy community,
not just community,
but that takes healthy community.
People that bring out the best in you.
We believe that,
you know,
the way it exists now is this is what we ask people to do.
We ask people to take this huge first step.
Churches do that are the worst people with us.
We're like,
hey.
And that,
that was the same thing for me.
I was trying to get my friends to come to church so they can become better
versions of themselves,
but it's too big of a step for people.
It's too,
a lot of times it's too big of a step for people to get sober and go to
recovery.
Nobody gets sober until shit falls apart.
You know what I mean?
Like,
or your court ordered and that's a terrible strategy to wait until you hit rock
bottom.
People don't go to church until they're in crisis a lot of times.
So did city fam.
We did.
We said,
let's,
let's do this.
Let's just meet people where they're at.
Let's do something social.
Let's do something fun together.
We call it fun without regret.
And then let's follow it up with something followed up a service because,
so when I went,
when I rededicated my life in 2011 and I started meeting with Lori,
I was staying home alone every night by myself.
I was renting redbox movies.
Now if I wasn't committed to waiting,
my story would be completely different because I would have Netflix and chill.
I would've called up a girl when he got on Tinder or whatever and I would have
had sex.
You know this,
if I were to spend time alone with a girl,
I knew that would happen.
So that wasn't an option for me.
And,
and that's what people do when they hit that point and loneliness is that the
date they date out of loneliness and then they end up having sex and then they
get a baby's Mama or baby daddy or they get broken.
You know,
somebody leaves him in this cycle.
So it's a bad strategy if you're dating that a loneliness.
So we,
it takes community to make it through that,
that wilderness period.
Right.
Cause it got will take,
wants to take you through a process before he brings you into your promised land
because he wants to prepare you for,
but you can't get through the wilderness by yourself.
You know,
I talk about it in one of the videos I made about the truth about sex is like if
you look at wagon trains back in,
you know,
the 18 hundreds like when people wanted to cross the country,
they didn't try to go alone.
They wanted the wagon train because it was safer and it was probably a lot more
enjoyable to trek across the country with,
with some people.
It's the same way with this.
You got to go through a process.
You've got to have to go through some ups and downs and emotional emotional
roller coaster.
And if you don't have a group of people,
you ain't making it.
But the thing is is like,
you know,
people,
people don't go to these fine,
seek out these healthy communities typically until,
like I said,
until things hit rock bottom and sometimes they never get to that point.
Sometimes they just kind of teed her along the bottom and they never hit their
fault.
They never had.
They never,
you know,
really touched down to the point where I'm like,
ah,
I need to quit doing drugs or I need to stop bouncing from relationship to
relationship.
So what we did,
we do is we started doing social events and that really started out as just
selfish reasons because like I said,
I was,
I was rambling,
but then what we realized was like,
this is easy.
Like I said,
it's easy to get this person a lot,
let's just say it's a lot easier to get them to a social event than it is to get
them here.
Wherever here is,
maybe if it's recovery,
maybe it's church,
whatever,
whatever healthy you identify as a healthy community,
it's a lot harder to get them to those places.
But these,
these people that are members of this community are living in their law,
their,
their board.
Also,
they're renting dolphin tale on the weekends.
So if you start organizing fun events,
fun without regret,
they'll come down.
And this is where the magic happens when those two people me,
because you know what they always say when it comes to city family.
That's it man.
Everybody's so nice because like billing and I talk about the culture of a
healthy community is what can I do for you,
right?
The culture of what they're used to is what can I get from you so when they feel
it's like,
man,
that's refreshing.
I it feels good.
I want more of that.
And we're like,
yeah,
everybody is really nice.
Guess what we're doing next week we're going to go feed some homeless people.
You want to come?
And I'm like,
man,
I've always wanted to do something like that.
I just know how to get started and then take another step and by the time they
get up here,
they start feeling different about themselves.
They made some healthy friendships.
They have something to do on Friday night besides the wrong thing and you see
him walk right up the ladder and they get off of drugs.
They quit,
they break up with that crappy boyfriend or girlfriend.
They leave that dead end job to pursue.
A dream cause now they have,
they see other people that are going after it.
But that's the magic.
It's community.
It just changes people and it makes the process of becoming the best version of
yourself.
So much easier and so much more enjoyable.
So that's really what city,
fam is.
That's where our heart behind it.
And I'm gonna wrap it up here in a second.
I guess the one point I really wanted to leave you with is just,
you know,
trust God because there were so many times that when I was going through this
and I just,
I didn't understand what was going on in the first six years.
I was just,
I was so lonely and,
and like I felt like an alien in the world,
but I just kept trusting them.
I just kept kept them in the first place.
I was like,
he knows something that I don't.
So even if you're not a believer here,
trust that voice inside because that's how he speaks to you.
You know,
it's that gut instinct.
You know what feels right,
not your,
not your head or what you think or were hard even cause that will lie to you,
but your gut,
you know.
So I don't think just because you don't believe in God that he stops
communicating with you.
I still think that if you lead you,
but I would just say continue to trust him because that to me is the greatest
gift that you can give.
And it's really the only thing that you can hold back as the trust.
Um,
but when you,
when you give that to him,
he'll honor and he'll write a beautiful story with your life regardless of where
you were.
Cause I'm living proof.
So thank you all for being here.
Give it up for Mr Rob Walsh.
You one more time.
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