The Millan Foundation

Clarksville Montgomery County is one of the fastest growing communities in Tennessee. We have so many things to be thankful for. This podcast highlights the stories that make our community special. I'm Charlie Coon and this is Clarksville Conversations. Recorded live in the Travis Electrical Service Studio at five star media and sponsored by Legends Bank in Nicoletta's catering and takeaway. Thank you for having me. I'm Daniel and Leo. Welcome. Welcome back to Clarksville Conversations. It's always a good time. We've been talking for 10 minutes and we're just now getting started. Welcome. Always good to see you guys. And since Tony wanted to go first, we're going to start with Hurley. Oh, if you don't mind. Is that okay? No, but I will. I'm not going on in Clarksville middle-tancy and around the world. And the Meon Foundation is doing a lot. It's doing a lot in all these areas. And you guys recently had your Meon Foundation banquet. Really? I think it seems to me was, is that your third one? It is our third one. Yeah. So tell us about, let's start out with the banquet. What that was all about and then let's touch on some individual points about the banquet. Absolutely. So we did just celebrate our third banquet. If you remember, I think you've been to all of them. I have. We had initial launch just saying like here we are. This is what we're doing. We're building on some things that Leo and Lily have always done and giving back. But this is our full second year. And I can say from the original launch to this one, we've done a lot. For those that were at the banquet first, just thank you for being there and supporting us. And those from afar that couldn't join us, but follow our story. It means a lot. Yeah. You were there. You see all of our nonprofit partners, both local and global. And we have several initiatives. So sort of true to our name, Meon Enterprises, the foundation is the same. We say yes. And it means a lot when we say yes. We like to join those that are doing good work and help stay in the gap to help remove some barriers for them. I think one of the best things you do is the inclusion of other organizations. You're not trying to stand up and say, look at us. We're doing this. You're saying, look at us with the arms wide open and saying, look at all these organizations that we all can partner with. And they'll partner separately without you sometime. I mean, everybody's just kind of doing good. So Leo, how do you, how do you work those relationships? I know you've got an amazing team. Your family's involved. You're one of the smartest men in town, the higher Tanya. You're right. She knows what she's doing. But, but what's your vision on the inclusion of other organizations? Well, we believe that we have our strengths in certain aspects. Of life and some of these nonprofits. And I usually gravitate towards telling the story of Yapag just because we're closely knit together. But that's a perfect example of like, there's no way we could do what they do any better. So why not just partner with them and power them to do what they're doing. And then it just grows. And it doesn't matter who gets the credit as long as the community is being helped. To me, that's fulfilling. And it helps accomplish these other people, you know, what their vision is. And they have more of a passion for that certain endeavor or project that they might be working on. And that's coming alongside. Usually works out better. It's like a partnership in business. You know, if you have two strong minds, sometimes you get more results. Oh, yeah. And I think we think the same thing sometimes. We're not the smartest people in the room. You know, there are people that are really smart around us. And we need to use their knowledge to make this ball keep rolling. Yeah. What we've seen, I think, in especially in the nonprofit world, is like, there's different organizations essentially doing the same thing. And if they would just work together, we could just accomplish more with using the same resources that are being taken up. And that's one of the things that our team has done a really good job, especially Tanya is linking those organizations. And saying, hey, how can we come alongside you and partner with you? Or we might, in some cases, like one of the announcements we've made with the more clinic, a surgery center, they've maybe come to a head where maybe it's a little bit of change in leadership and adding value, adding the, we call them, let me untouch to it to help it expand is another thing that just happened as well. I think it's really cool. And Tanya, I think you can, you can kind of touch on some of these things. The more clinic and others, they're all represented at this banquet. And I know I'm summing it up in one event, but I know it's multiple, multiple events. Kind of talk about what Leo was talking about, the more clinic and some of the other partnerships you have. Well, Leo touched on a little bit. I think the amazing thing is, is everybody that we work with very closely is nobody wants the credit. And we say this a lot is, if you don't care who gets the credit, you can do really amazing things. And literally all of our partners, the initiatives that we do and the people behind it, that's how they move forward. And I mean, they build relationships with us and they just want to help someone else. The more center, one of the videos Leo touched that we're taking a larger role in supporting them and what they do in Guatemala, just to help vulnerable children. And one of my favorite parts is when we sat down with Mike, who's the director there. And he said, every day I have the blessing to say yes to this mission. I'm part of something bigger. So every day he wakes up and he says yes to something that's that close to his heart. But if you look at all of our nonprofit partners, Sherry with YPEC, she wakes up every day and she makes a choice that she's saying yes to that mission. Yes. That mission in the message. And that really speaks to us because that's what we do. That's, we come in and we say yes that we want to stand in the gap and help them. And that just, I mean, that sort of like sums it up that we're working with these amazing people that are doing such great things. And we get to stand alongside them and help move their mission forward. You can get emotional talking about that. You can. And growing up, and I don't know what, at what point in my life that I realized I had the wrong thought process. I always thought, why are we doing missions abroad when we have so many people in our community and in our state that need help. And then when the light switch flipped one day, I realized, you know, you can do both. We can. And there are, there are needs all around the world. And after going on a couple of mission trips to Africa and wherever you start realizing a little bit goes a long way in some of these other countries. So, so we can do a lot here and we can do a lot there. We can. Yeah. One big misconception that I think people get from us is that we're doing everything abroad. It's just the dollar just goes so much further than it looks. It's so impactful. You've been there. Yeah. One of the best terms that I've used was actually for Mr. Moore. He just said in America, we just have bigger casnets, you know, for helping people and safety nets. You know, like there's more safety nets here. Like you're not going to see a kid walking around, Clarksville with a cleft lip that's eight years old. That's never even seen the doctor. You know, that's nonexistent. Now we do have needs and we actually have a lot of resources that go to those needs here. It's just unfortunate that the dollar just doesn't carry. It's further but we spend more money here than we do abroad. Yeah. You know, I'm looking at, I'm looking at the three of us while I'm picturing myself, but I'm looking at you two. And our backgrounds are completely different. And then we're sitting here today talking about the same passion and the same mission. So it just shows you people from different walks of life. There would be no reason for us even to be together. I mean, with Leo coming with the Air Force and doing the things he's doing and then you, you know, we just didn't grow up together. These are all just organic relationships. I think it just makes us all stronger. I think that's what makes the foundation, you know, it started because of something that Leo and Lily have been doing for a long time. But I think what was really special about this banquet and just looking over the past two years is there are so many people involved now. And it's all of their stories on why they're involved that make it even more meaningful. I mean, I mean, I could list so many people that served as mission trips who give to each of our initiative and nonprofit partners. You know, it's sort of done what Leo, I don't know if he was expecting it. They were telling him to share his story and he shared his story and what they were doing and the impact just continues to grow. I don't know of a bigger blessing than seeing that sort of unfold every year. It was pretty special just to have the people in the room. And I think that's the idea is that we pulled to show what we're doing, just the amount of support that we've had so far. So you mentioned the word impact. right? And you talk about people going out and physically doing the work, physically doing the work. But it takes money. And this is not a call for money. This conversation is not a call for money. This is a, listen what our partnerships and our community have done just in this three short years of your foundation. Can you talk about the economic impact? You know, just a little bit on what the money that's come in and what it's done. Well, tonight before she talks about the numbers, the one thing we always emphasize is the time, talent and treasures. You know, there's usually one that we can give because we've had people that say, well, if I was in your shoes, I would be doing the same thing. And honestly, the answer is no because we were doing this when we literally had nothing. And but at that, at one point in time, we were able to give our time. Because we've always believed and learned. We can come with it that you should be serving somebody or helping somebody out. So at points and people's lives, you might have just time that you can donate your time, which is sometimes more valuable. Yapax, a perfect example where volunteers are sometimes needed at the last minute. And it doesn't matter if you, you can't send the check to unload trucks, etc. When it's already there. And you know, the talent is another one, you know, counseling, you know, we have nurses that go with us, doctors, ultrasound texts, as you know, those people are, are needed. So sometimes it's not about the money. And then sometimes I think that's where nonprofits miss it. Sometimes it's like they want to start a nonprofit. And then it's like, hey, just send me a check. Well, the checks not always answer. It helps carry the mission forward. But I'll let you know I agree 100%. I do. I mean, we were briefly talking about, I mean, just take Operation Holland Hope and I'm going to let you sort of talk on the impact outside of that. You know, on the program we were talking about what do shipping costs, you know, are we covering? Yeah. You know, that dollar amounts on there. But really, what's the impact beyond that? Like what's in that truck that it might be a thousand dollars for the shipping cost that, you know, our donors might cover. But what is that giving soldiers effort? Campbell that that extends far behind what that number is. We started the banquet, you know, one to share our story, but Nick Lavery, he's doing a podcast for us for our foundation. It's really the cost of admission. So he talks about one, do you have a purpose? What is that purpose? If it's not hard to achieve, then it's probably not worthwhile and anybody can do it. So if you're going to, if you're going to want to make change in the world, it's, there's going to be some difficulty. So how are you going to push through to do it? And that's really what we're calling others where, you know, it's not just about money. It's actually, even if it's not a cause with us, more than being what is it about? What are you doing to make the world better? What's your next kind thing to get you off of the bleachers as Ralph? Yeah. For a manual, Haiti said in a couple of think what's it go to have you partake in something that means, you know, I think the impact with that goes farther than us putting any dollar amount on our program. It's it's so good. Just I've I've met a lot of the people that that you're talking about and their passion and their sacrifice, right? These folks that that travel the world to help, you know, that time away. Just time away from your family. And to make a difference for other people, it's amazing, even not even across like the what I don't think a lot of people when we were showing the builders of hope video and our second house, Josephine is house that photo of all this in front of that really run down house of Leo's. Yeah, is a unit from Fort Campbell. They spent their entire Saturday with us. Taking all of that down so we could build that second builders of hope house and like I still send photos. They've all now there's different spots on some of them are not even at Fort Campbell, but I look at that photo. And I'll send them updates and he's just like that was one of the best days of us together just as a team. He's like, but knowing that we got to do something that's going to be helping whatever mother and child and family in the future. It means a lot. So I mean, you can't even put you can't put a dollar amount on that like that's I look, I get to you. I really like time. I look at that photo. That's a pretty special pretty special thing. We've been able to scale that way because you know, we can put up the house, but we've had a lot of our vendors that we use for our construction company and just people in the community that I have said, Hey, I can maybe Do drywall I can put cabinets in like there's a don't want to start naming them because I miss them. So a great community that we have and that's the other thing that that you know, we're not originally from here. Yeah, and Clarkson was been so good to myself and my family that we believe that there's a debt to be paid and and we want to make it a special community that because in the next couple years. I mean, I strongly believe that there's going to be a lot of community saying like, how in the heck are you guys providing this? I had a conversation with Sherry that some of these things and and initiatives that were part of our because of our story and you know, you heard myself and Lily talk about it's either services we received or services that would have been really nice to have that we needed that we didn't know we needed at the time. So it's great to have our community come together and again, I'm strongly passionate about this and know that there's going to be people coming from out of town and saying, like who's doing this and it's going to be like everybody like the whole community not just one organization. A friend of a mutual friend of ours and we're going to talk about him in a minute. We were talking the other day and he's in Nashville and runs a big organization right and he said, Charlie. I don't think you understand how awesome the Clarksville Montgomery County community is and I said, well, yeah, I kind of think I do he goes, no, you don't you don't understand he said because you're in the thick middle of it. And you don't see what I see, you know, you guys have all different types of walks walks of life coming together to do things no other community around here is doing. And I said, well, I think I see they said, well, you don't see it the way I said because y'all are awesome and not y'all as in me and you and correct, you know, but our community. So it's kind of it's kind of neat and you you guys probably heard all the time, the different perspectives unsolicited because you know, a lot of times people will tell you when you mess up. They don't always tell you when you do it. So to see that from someone that's organization is investing a lot in our community. It's pretty awesome. And we still have work to do, obviously like any community would and I think we can get there faster working together again. Yeah, who cares who who gets a credit, but let's. Let's work together like one of the things that I'm passionate about and Sherry spearheads is imagine knowing that any foster kid in Montgomery County is not going to lack good clothing. Yeah. And I think that's what I think is the way to get a good job of choosing to choose resources to get it ahead in life. That may sound minimal to most but to someone like myself and loyalty. That grew up needing those things and they make a difference when you're in school, you know, just a more meal or or having a nice pair of shoes goes goes a long way to to giving you the self confidence. And then you know, just a couple of things are really the big things right just do something nice give some of us my hand up. I mean, Sherry, Sherry and the banquet, I mean, she did such a great job. She gave something, you know, so small as being able to provide baby formula from Operation Hall and hope. And then you know, just a huge and a home for a mother, leaving you know a bad situation. I think that's the beauty of it too like you know us being able to stay in that gap, whether it's something small by a partnership. You and legends and the A pack to do something like just provide water or baby formula to be able to provide a safe haven for someone in a tough situation. That's time and time again what we see across the board with all of our nonprofit partners and that's pretty special. You think it's small but in reality it's really not small. It's actually really big to the person in the moment. And that's what I love about what you guys are doing and the thing I've been thinking about the whole time we're talking is the word vision. And we've all got ideas. But sometimes our vision comes from other people right or just the thought comes from and then we can expand on that and Leo you you mentioned something the other night about a partnership with Ascension St. Thomas and if you could give us a little bit of that man it'd be great. Yeah, whereas the community I think most of us are excited that we're going to have great hospitals were in the past maybe we may have not had the greatest service that we're excited about that and St. Thomas in particular with Fahad you know I've grown to have a relationship with him and you know I believe that he is passionate about helping people. And we've built this relationship where we decided that hey, Clarksville should have another clinic here that serves the underserved people that can. of forward regular services. So we're in the talks of how does that look and how do we put this together. So we're going to partner with them. And you know, again, the how sometimes it comes after the Y for us. And so we're really good about saying yes, we don't know exactly how it's going to look. But we've already toured some facilities that they have in Nashville, which are great. And they helped us underserved communities. And then we believe we're going to have it here sooner than later. And then so we already said yes. And then now we just need to figure out the how. And it'll require some community help. And that's where, as I said at the banquet, just like in business, I over commit to do things. But it's hard when you have the R or I and not on money, but on results of helping people. It's impossible almost to say no. And that's where some of our closest friends that that talk this into doing this foundation and get in more people involved makes us think scale. You know, and again, we don't care if someone wants to name it whatever, as long as it's being done, like let's do it. And we'll partner next to you. And again, super excited about St. Thomas and in particular, just because they are, they're going to get involved in the community and great relationship there. And it's just the just the beginning of everything. That's going to be exciting just to watch this unfold. Because you don't just get a building and throw a hospital bed in there. I mean, you there was a lot to it. Now I'm not a medical person, but there's a lot to that. Well, that's the advantage we have. We always say that we don't have experts. The digging wells is a good example. As you guys know, George Watson, his great friend and great ambassador for the foundation. Yeah. It is. We didn't know what the heck we were doing. And I think if we would have, we would have not pursued and been as ambitious. But once we were deep in it, there was no way to stop, especially on the first project we took on was like a whole community that had had engineering school actually come in and do a water system. And they basically gave up on it. And then we just came on, came along like dummies and said, "Oh, we can do it." And it's been a struggle, but we got it to where there's now a whole water system, basically utilities ran to a whole community. In that, you can put a price on. I'm not going to quote George, because there's no telling what I would say. But I can see him saying, "Well, it can't be that hard. Let's just go." He always starts with like, "Let me ask you a question." I don't let me ask you this. And then it's like, "Why couldn't we do this?" And I'm like, "Yeah, so he's actually, I'm crazy, and I do a lot of ambitious things, but he's actually pushed me further to think outside the box. The surgery center is another perfect example." It's like, we're not medical people. And when we were talking to some people, they're like, "Oh, like about doing these wells and whatever, they're like, "Are you an engineer or are you a doctor?" And it's like, as I know, those people just get in our way, as we don't need experts sometimes. But you do need them once you decide that you are going to go with that mission. And we've been so blessed at these doctors and nurses and engineers, and these people come alongside us to help us because they know we surely need the help. But it's been a great ride. And it's only the beginning. That's the best part about the surgery. It's so good. Every step is a new step. Well, and I like how Steve Moore, he started the Moore Center, he says, "God qualifies you when he calls you." And so that's how I feel. And I feel like that's how everybody on our ambassador board and that get involved with us. We might not know, but if it was easy, everybody would do it. But we do say yes. And I don't know, he directs our steps. And it always, it turns out how it's supposed to. That statement about you might not feel qualified, but you'll get qualified, right? You better. God, man, Gully, the things, I'm going back to one of my African trips and all of a sudden, I'm on this stage with all these guys, right? That I look up to. And they're like, all right, you're turning. I'm like, whoa. And you know, you don't tell me, Pastor Mike, no. And you don't say you're not qualified. It's just, you just go do it. And man, I tell you what, you'll have a little internal fear. Of some reason, you get through it, you know? And when you come out on the other side, like, pretty good. And whatever your particular belief system is, obviously, you know, ours and in our Christian walk, but just doing good, you can never go wrong by doing the right thing. It's something myself and Jeff Truett always says, but it's also funny because we overcommit to these things. And then someone asks me, he's like, man, are you going to like, like, do this? And it's like, well, it actually becomes easier because then you're just like, well, that's not my problem. That's God's problem. And he's going to use these dummies to figure it out. And honestly, just gives them more glory because it's like, man, if this dummy can do it, like surely, it's God doing this and not us. That's part, that's part of the answer to the question I'm about to ask you. And this is about you and everybody at your foundation and your family on how do you maintain physical and mental health when you have so many irons in the fire? We're talking about the foundation. We're not even talking business. I mean, your individual businesses. So at the end of the day, how do you maintain your physical and mental health with aligning yourself with great people? So myself and Lily get a lot of the credit a lot of times. And that's part of owning the business, but people don't realize that, you know, the leaders we have like Jim Duret and, you know, like, like, like, the Rylian and Tom. And I can name a, like, I sit here and name them all because they're all way smarter than me, but aligning yourself with those like-minded people. That's key too. Because you can have smart people, but that might not be aligned and it might not be a good fit, right? Because we, yeah, we're all over the place, but that's, that's key to anything is having good partnerships and leaders alongside you. That'll say, like, hey, this at times, I'm no, I've sound like a madman. Yeah, but it's like, you're going to leave that room and say, okay, we're, we're going to be aligned and fulfill this mission. And I think they see it. So one of the most proud things I'm, I'm proud of, I guess, if that's how you word it is, that every, every one on our foundation, board or ambassadors, nobody gets paid. Yeah. So 100% of the money goes directly to whatever cause. And that's humbling because if you've seen our ambassadors and people on our board, it's, it's, it's people that I would pay to hang out with. So it's, it's super, super humbling. And that's how it does, but again, going back to the relationship, they didn't start where like, hey, let me just go find what I deem super important people in the community. That's the organic mission-minded, et cetera. And it took years to get to this, to this level where they would trust us because that's the other humbling part is like, not only it's easy to get family bought in, which that's another blessing that our kids are involved with the mission troops and doing all that. That's another segment for how I'm proud of that. But like to get these people to say, hey, we're bought in and trust you. You know, it's one thing to trust you to get paid to work for you, but to trust you to give, not only give money, but also come alongside you on an endeavor like this. It's humbling. It's so good. It's so good. It's special. Well, I know I could talk to you. I mean, that's in here all day. All day. I love all this stuff. Is there anything, Tonya, that you've got that I don't want to forget something. And this is so, this is really fun and rewarding for me just to talk about this stuff. I mean, we do so many things that can't even list all of them. You know, our tagline if that's what you want to call it is lifting visions, crafting change, and we've talked about vision a little bit because all these nonprofit partners, they have their own vision. That's literally what we're doing. We're lifting their vision. We're standing in the gap and trying to create more change for them. But it's mainly what we can all do something to help change somebody's life. So whether it's sharing our story, joining us in either serving time, talent treasure, what Leo said, or just finding what your purpose is to do better in our community and even farther than that. I think that's that was our biggest message from the banquet. Every speaker that you heard every video was what what are you doing? You know, where are you standing in the gap? That's what I would leave on is is that so good. I would say get plugged in and then you know, I'm not like, hey, follow us, but we, Tony said we have so much going on, like almost too much. and we do need help and it's not money. We just need partnerships. - Yeah. - We have a lot of initiatives. So if you follow us on either Facebook or Instagram or get on our mailing list, and hopefully we would get people interested in plugging in in different areas. We have a lot of new initiatives that we're starting one that we're super proud of as a Food Impact Center at Austin P. We're just gonna help food insecurities and there's just gonna be a whole impact center. So it's not just like a handout type deal. That's one thing we've also been big on of not creating handouts, but hand ups and helping people come along. Another one that's newer is a boys and girls club. The recently approached me about like a donation, but boys and girls club was a huge part of us growing up in California and being part of that. So when they mention that, I was like, okay, I'm gonna figure out how to get involved with this. So here we go. So we're excited about bringing the boys and girls club to Clarksville. Many other partnerships I mentioned the St. Thomas partnership, but there's many more and we have something for anybody trying to get involved and would love to get a more info. Again, I could sit here for three hours and discuss this and-- - On each one. - No, this is great. This is great. There's opportunities out there. Follow the Meon Foundation on social media. Look them up on the website. If you've got time talent treasure, whatever you wanna give, however you wanna give your time. Come on, sign up. Let's go. - Yeah, there's sometimes family served as you bring a family, yourself, mission trip, just getting plugged in, helping with cleaning up a house to putting on a roof, et cetera. So we're so blessed to have a great community that has come along. And honestly, I'm not joking. We're just getting started. - Yeah, yeah. - We're gonna do great things. And again, the best compliment we'll get is we'll be a test model for a case study. - There you go. - For other people to say. - How are they doing it? - Yeah. - Well, somebody's gotta be first. Somebody's gotta be bass. Let's go with it. - That's right. - Well, I think we all go thinking that we're gonna bless and time and time again, everybody says, we leave a lot more blessed than we went to go give. And I don't know if that means a lot. - Yeah, yeah. Well, thank y'all for being here. I appreciate your time. - Thank you, Trevor. - You come back anytime, 'cause there's so many stories and so many good things to talk about. - There is. - Yeah, we'd love to come with Fahad at some point. - Let's do it. - Let's discuss our how versus our why. - He can come if Tony comes back. - Yes, sir. - I'll sit on the side. - All right, thank you. - Thank you, Charlie. - Thanks for listening to Clarksville Conversations, recorded live in the Travis Electrical Service studio at Five Star Media and sponsored by Legends Bank in Nicoletta's catering and takeaway.