Born Into Chaos, Built For Greatness: Nelson Tressler On Escaping Trauma & Choosing Success (Inspirational)

Can the child of a murdered cop, a teen mother, and a town scandal become a successful entrepreneur and bestselling author—or are we doomed by the circumstances we're born into? 

Revisiting this gripping powerful motivational/inspirational episode, Reginald D, sat down with Nelson Tressler, author of The Unlucky Sperm Club and founder of I Got Smarter. From being the child of a 15-year-old mother in a town rocked by tragedy—to growing up in chaos, illiteracy, and abuse—Nelson defied every odd imaginable. He shares how he went from special education and suicidal family trauma to becoming a U.S. Air Force veteran, a top commercial real estate broker, and a successful entrepreneur leading one of the most powerful goal-achievement programs in the country. 

This conversation is for anyone who’s ever believed they were stuck, cursed, or unworthy of success. Nelson proves that your past doesn't define you—your choices do. 

If you’re tired of feeling stuck, held back by your past, or silenced by shame, this episode offers a way out. Nelson’s story resonates with those struggling with identity, self-worth, and generational setbacks. In a world where trauma is often inherited, he offers a blueprint for how to rewrite your story—one decision at a time.

🌟What You’ll Gain From This Episode:

• Discover how to break free from a victim mindset and take ownership of your life.
• Learn how goal-setting, accountability, and mindset can radically transform your future.
• Be inspired by a real-life story of resilience, grit, and faith-driven personal reinvention.

Press play and hear how Nelson Tressler went from “unlucky” beginnings to building a life of purpose, power, and possibility—you’ll walk away believing you can too.

Learn More About Nelson Tressler:

 Website

IGOTSMARTER APP

The Unlucky Sperm Club: You Are Not A Victim Of Your Circumstances, But A Product Of Your Choices Book

Transcript

Welcome to Real Talk with Reginald. I'm your host, Reginald. In today's episode, I have a phenomenal man on the show. He is the author of the book titled, The Unlucky Sperm Club. You are not a victim of your circumstances, but a product of your choices. He is also the founder of, I Got Smarter, a goal of achievement program. Nelson is also a successful businessman and an entrepreneur with an amazing story about his life's journey. Welcome to the show, Nelson Tressler. Thank you so much for having me here. I really appreciate it. Yes, sir. It's definitely an honor to have you on the show. Man, I've been waiting on you. I actually heard you on a podcast and heard your story and it blew me away. And it was crazy because my wife actually was listening to it and she just came in there one day, she said, hey, you need to hear this, played it on the phone and walked away. I listened to it. I was like, man, I need to get him on the show for my listeners. So let's jump right in Nelson, your book, why did you title it The Unlucky Sperm Club? Can you tell us a little bit about that story? Sure, yeah, I've got quite the origin story. So my mom was one of 15 children. She became pregnant with me when she was 15 years old. And while she was pregnant with me, her father drove into the town square, their small town square in central Pennsylvania, spotted two police officers standing on the corner. He stuck a gun out the window and opened fire on those police officers, killing one and critically wounding another. And eventually my grandfather was captured and brought to stand trial where he was facing the death penalty for what he had done. And during the trial, my mom, pregnant with me, got up and testified to the jury that the reason that her father had shot and killed that police officer was that that police officer had raped her. And she was now pregnant with his baby, who was me. And my mom's testimony worked. The first trial ended in a hung jury. The state took the death penalty off the table because of my mom's testimony. My grandfather was eventually tried again. This time he was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, serving the rest of his life more than 40 years behind bars, leaving behind his family, his large family of 15 children, and now me to deal with the consequences in this small town for what he had done. And I don't know if you've ever lived in a small town, but everybody knows your business. And this was the biggest thing that ever happened in this county. So everybody knew who my family was. And because of the trial, now everybody knew who I was and what I represented. So it was definitely hard growing up in that town, lots of trials and tribulations and prejudices and all that stuff. And as bad as that was, when my mom turned 21, she went to the bars looking for a man and she found one who would eventually become my stepfather. And almost as quickly as he moved in, he kind of unpacked all of his bad habits, including he was an alcoholic. He was very physically and emotionally abusive to me and my mom almost on a daily basis. So my life kind of went from bad to worse. And so I was very happy with the introduction of my stepfather. And then my mom and my stepfather quickly had four children, four kids in four years. And because of the lifestyle that they were living, a lot of those basic needs of my siblings fell upon me as the oldest. And from a very early age, I was doing bottle feeding and diaper changing and even waking up in the middle of the night to comfort crying babies. It was our household in total chaos, very poor, like no food in the refrigerator, poor. But it was a crap shoot whether or not the lights would turn on because we never paid the bill and they'd shut it off. I remember winters in Pennsylvania gets cold and I remember we didn't have money to get oil, but the power was on so we'd nail a blanket over the kitchen door and we would turn on the oven and the stove and try to heat up the house that way. So it was total chaos, very rough. And my mom, she would rather me stay home and help her with babies than go to school. And I hated school because I was no good at it. So I stayed home a lot. And until one day, the last day of fourth grade, everybody remembers how the last day of school was in elementary school. You'd be excited to go and find out, okay, who am I gonna have for fifth grade or any of my buddies gonna be there with me? And I remember going to school that day and I remember getting my report card and looking down and I had straight Fs. I had failed every single class. And in fact, I wasn't going on to fifth grade. I was being held back in the fourth grade. And it shouldn't have surprised me. I'd probably missed 60 days of school that year. And the following year, they placed me into special ed because I couldn't read, I couldn't write, I couldn't spell and come to find out I had dyslexia. So that's the way my life kind of went until one day, my stepfather was walking home drunk from a bar on a dark country road. Somebody else was driving home drunk from that bar and they ended up hitting and killing my stepfather. And as hard as our life was with our stepfather, I mean, losing him broke my mom. And my mom dropped out of school in the eighth grade. She had never worked outside of the home. Now she had five small children to try to raise on her own and no matter at how many different angles she tried to look at the issue, the circumstances she was in, there was no way she could figure out how she was gonna care for all of us by herself. And a few days after the funeral, my mom came home. She cleaned the house spotless, which wasn't usually the case at our house. Then she cooked this incredible dinner. Like I said, we never had great dinners. She cooked that and then it was awesome. And then she cleaned up and then took us, each one of us kids up to bed and tucked us in and gave us a hug and a kiss and told us how much she loved us. And I remember in my little nine-year-old mind, just thinking, you know what? This is the way life's gonna be from now on. My stepfather was the one who prevented my mom from living this type of life. So I remember laying in bed, trying not to fall asleep because I had just lived the best day of my life. And eventually I did fall asleep. And then I woke up from screams coming downstairs. And the first thing that I thought was, I had dreamt that my stepfather had died, that he really wasn't dead and that he had come back because I'd been woken up hundreds of times with him and my mom fighting and screams coming from downstairs. So I got out of bed, I went down the stairs and kind of peeked around the corner and I see our next door neighbor. We lived in a duplex, so the lady lived on the other side of the wall. I saw her over my mom trying to wake her up and my mom was laying on the floor on responsive and come to find out that my mom had committed suicide. And the neighbor lady was trying to wake her up and revive her. And eventually the ambulance came and we're able to revive her and get her to the hospital. So she wasn't successful in her suicide bid. But when she got out of the hospital, it was at that time that she determined there was no way she was gonna be able to care for all five of us on her own. So that's the time my family got split up and I went to go live with my grandmother who was the wife of the man who shot and killed that police officer. So I moved in with her. At this time, like I said, she had 15 kids. A few of those were still living at home but she had a few more. My cousins move in with her, sane of a woman, just incredible. And even though my bed was a sleeping bag next to her bed, next to me was a cousin on a mattress and then there were kids scattered throughout this small three bedroom house with one bathroom. At least I didn't have to worry about somebody coming home drunk and beating me or my mom. I didn't have to worry about food. I didn't have to worry about heat or electricity. So for the first time in my life, I felt safe. And one of my Gram's rules was, you're going to school unless there's blood coming out of both your eyes and your ears. And so I started to go to school on a consistent basis. And one thing I quickly realized was I wasn't as dumb as I thought I was, that I could learn. I still struggled reading and writing and spelling and struggled with the dyslexia but I realized that I could learn. And so I started to do better at school and started to enjoy it a little bit more. And that's the way my life went until one day a college counselor came from the local university and they talked about what it would take to get into college. And for whatever reason, in my mind, I thought, you know what, that's the answer. I had been struggling with kind of where I knew I was going to end up if I stayed on the course that I was going on and I didn't like it. I didn't like where a lot of the male role models that I had seen growing up, where they had ended up, I didn't want to end up there. I love those guys, but it wasn't for me. And so I thought, you know what, that's my answer. I'm going to go to college. And you know what happens when you tell yourself you're going to do something that's hard and difficult? That voice in the back of your head just starts screaming at you all the reasons you shouldn't even think about doing what you're thinking about doing. And I remember hearing that voice screaming at me like, Nelson, you're an idiot. Like, you can't read, you can't write, you can't spell. You're in special ed, you have dyslexia. Of the family that I came from, my mom's 15 brothers and sisters, only two had ever graduated high school. None had ever even attended a college. But I knew what the alternative was. I knew where I was going to end up if I didn't do something. So I'm like, you know what, I'm going for it. And the next day, I started to do the things that I thought would get me to college. And my life didn't change overnight, but the direction of my life absolutely changed that day. And I know we don't have a lot of time, so I'll flash forward in the story. It took me 12 years. It took me four different universities. It took me four years in the United States Air Force. But eventually, I became that first person in my family to get that college degree and graduate from college. So you've been going through all this as a kid. Were you angry that all this is going on? You know what I was? I definitely looked at it as why me? I was a why me for a lot of times. Like, why did I have to grow up like this? Why couldn't I have a dad? Why couldn't we have money? Why couldn't we have food? Like, yeah, it sucked growing up. And I definitely think I took that victim mindset that everything that was happening to me in my life wasn't my fault because of the circumstances that I was in. Now, I definitely have changed that mindset, and that's probably one of the biggest reasons that I've been able to kind of cut the chains of that life and start to live a new life and become a better version of myself by understanding that that wasn't who I was. That was just where I was. And I could become the person that I wanted to become. All I had to do was start making those types of choices, and that's what I did. After college, I became obsessed with self-help and goals. I realized, like, holy cow, if somebody like me that came from where I came from, if I could set a goal, even though I didn't even really know what a goal was, if I could set a goal to graduate college and actually see it through and achieve that goal, what else could I do with goals? I think one of my superpowers is I don't give up. Once I set my mind at doing something, I'm gonna get it done, and it may take me longer. It might be harder than I thought. I might have to sacrifice a lot more than I anticipated, but I'm gonna see it through to the end. And because of that, I've been able to achieve massive goals and have huge success, more success than I ever could have imagined growing up because of that. And that all came from learning how to set goals and then learning how to achieve them and just never giving up on those goals and seeing them through to the end. I truly believe with enough energy, enough time, enough focus, we can achieve any goal that we set. Right, because the reason I ask that question is that I grew up poor. Single mother, and my family is a huge family. And they would always tell me that I would never amount to nothing because I was born out of wet law. That's the religious side of it. So I kept that chip on my shoulder. I was like, who tells a kid that at nine years old? I kept that chip on my shoulder, and basically I just took it and I just worked and I grinded and I said, you know what? I'm gonna be more successful than anybody in this family just because of what they said. And as I got older and I matured, it's all about me, my success, my family. The chip is no longer there, but that's what really drove me. So with that being said, how can someone reject the victim mindset and take control of things like that? Because a lot of people don't make it out of this kind of stuff. When you go through what you've been through, I mean, it's crazy. They don't make it out of this. So what did you say to that? Well, first of all, like with your story, there was a lot of that. I mean, people always told me I was gonna end up in jail or I wasn't gonna amount to nothing. My uncle owned a garbage truck and they all said that's where I was gonna end up on the back of the garbage truck. And you know what? I use that as fuel. Like tell me I can't do something. I dare you. Just tell me I can't and I'll show you. And I think it's about having that growth mindset. We are not our circumstances. We are our choices. And although we can't help what happens to us, we absolutely can help how we react to it and how we choose to look at that issue or problem or whatever it is. That's why the subtitle of my book, The Unlucky Spoon Club, you're not a victim of your circumstances but a product of your choices. I think there's way too many people out there that they're in tough circumstances. And I don't wanna make light of tough circumstances. I'm sure there's thousands of people out there who have harder circumstances than I did growing up. But there's also millions of people out there that have better circumstances. And it doesn't matter. I mean, I can show you people who were born in the perfect household with the perfect parents and they end up living a horrible life because of the choices they make. And it all comes down to that. It all comes down to what choices we are. I believe the sum of our choices will make up our lives and that's what's gonna happen. We just need to have that mindset that I'm not the circumstances I'm in. I'm somebody else, I'm who I wanna choose. And then we need to just start making those choices and start doing the things that we know or think can get us to where we wanna be. Nobody is shackled to the life that they're living right now. They can bust those chains if they don't like where they are, if they don't like the circumstances that they're in. Knowledge is not our problem. I mean, we're inundated with knowledge now on the internet. Like you literally can find out anything about anything. Our problem is we have an execution problem. We just don't do what we know we should do. And that's one of the things with my program, I Got Smarter, that it actually helps people understand that. And finally have a system to achieve their goals and have that little bit of knowledge and especially the support and the mindset to finally understand that, you know what? I can achieve these goals. I can become a better version of myself and I don't need anybody else. I don't need anything else. It doesn't matter what's going on outside. I can do this with my choices and how I end up going throughout my life because of what I wanna do. So what was the biggest opportunity that changed your life? Yeah, you know what? One, I think living with my Graham, my Graham and me had a special connection our entire lives. And I'm sure my Graham made everybody feel like they were her favorite, but I really know I was her favorite. But seriously, we had this special connection and my Graham would look at me with her big eyes and she would say, Nelson, you're gonna do something with your life. And she said it so passionately and she believed it so much that I didn't wanna let her down. And I wanted to make sure that I did do something with my life because she believes so much in me. So I think living with somebody who believed in you and kind of saw the best in you. And I had so many things in my life that kind of led me to where I am now. But I think the Air Force, getting out of that small town where my last name had so much baggage attached to it and everybody kind of had me pigeon-toed into the certain life that they thought I was gonna live. I have a saying, like, there's no sense in swatting at flies while you're standing in a pile of crap. And that's a lot of us, we wanna have better lives, we wanna do better things, but we find ourselves standing in a pile of crap. And that might be the town you live in, that might be the family you're around, that might be your friends, it might be your job, but we're sitting there swatting at flies and we're getting irritated because the flies are the issues and the problems and the addictions and the struggles that we have. But the reason they're there is because of where we're standing. We're standing in a pile of crap and you're never gonna get rid of those flies, i.e. the problems and the struggles if you stay standing in a pile of crap. So a lot of times you just need to get out of there. You just need to find a different place, a different group of friends. Sometimes it requires you not only moving out of your town, but out of your state and starting over and getting rid of all that baggage that's been weighing you down. So I think joining the Air Force and getting out of that small town, I remember sitting on that airplane, never flown before. I think I'd been out of the state a couple of times, but never more than one state over. But I remember sitting on that airplane and looking out the window and thinking, Nelson, you can be anybody you wanna be right now. And I took that to heart. Nobody knew about that story I just told you about my mom and my grandfather and all that. The only person I ever told was my wife before we got married. And I figured, you know what? She deserves to know that before she gets committed to me. I never told my kids, never told my in-laws, never told any friends because it had weighed me down. It had shackled me for my entire life. And I was running from it and I didn't want anybody else to know. But then I got to a point in my life where I started to reflect upon that. And I thought to myself, you know what? You live that life for a reason. You live that life so that other people can know that it's possible to get out of very hard circumstances and do hard things. And another one of my favorite quotes is, things only have the meaning you're willing to give them. And with this situation, I had given it a negative meaning for the first 45 years of my life. And now for the first time, I started to give it a positive meaning. And now instead of me being embarrassed of it or hiding it from people, you know, now I'm sharing it. I'm on podcasts and sharing it with anybody who wants to listen because I know it will help people and help them live better, more fulfilling lives because of what I was able to do in the circumstances that I came from. Absolutely. And that's one thing we have in common. My grandparents were my biggest chile. You know, they always spoke into me. We had a great relationship. And then one of the best things that ever happened to me is when I left my hometown, took a career move. I think one of those things is when you leave the familiar and get into the unfamiliar, you know then, you got to put up a shut up because all you got is you at this point. So that's interesting that you said that. Now, let's talk about this. So you went through all of this stuff in your life and you ended up being a commercial real estate broker. And I heard you was pretty darn good at it. So tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, I did well. I was going to college and I needed an internship to graduate. And of course, I didn't realize that until my last semester. And by this time I had a child with my wife and I needed to graduate. I was washing windows in Las Vegas. It was 115 degrees out. Like I did not want to do that any longer than I had to. And I had a finance degree. I was planning on going out and doing something in finance, a stock broker or something like that. And I looked for an internship and no one had one in the finance industry. And so I just started looking for anybody that I could get in with to fulfill those three credits. And a commercial real estate firm had an internship available or they had one the year before or something like that. And so I tried with that and I didn't even know what commercial real estate was. I mean, I figured, you know what? I'd like to own a couple of houses one day and rent them out and have some income come in off of that. So I ended up interviewing with one of the top guys at this firm. He liked me and said, you know what, let me think about it and then I'll get back to you. And I waited over the weekend. He never got back to me. I called him, never called me back, called him again, called him again. Eventually I just stopped into his office one day and I was out washing windows and it was hot. And I'm like, I am getting this thing. And I just stopped in and asked if he was in and he was, and he knew he had ignored me. And I'm like, hey, I just wanted to stop in to see what time I start on Monday. And he kind of saw that I had the temperament for sales and that I wasn't willing to take no for an answer. And he ended up giving me the position. And then I flourished at that. I wasn't afraid to talk to people. I loved cold calling. I played all kinds of tricks with my mind to deal with the nos and the rejections that you get in that. But I got good at it. And at the end of my internship, he offered me a position to come in. And I had saw some of the checks that had gone across his desk. And I'm like, man, if I could ever make one of those checks, I mean, it was more than I was making in two or three years at that time. So I knew if I could get good in that industry that I could make a good living for my family. I remember one time he had a check on the corner of his desk. It was for $7,000. And I remember going home and telling my wife like, man, he had a check on the corner of his desk for $7,000. It didn't even faze him. And me and my wife just laid in bed and we just started making, oh man, if we had $7,000, we'd buy this and we'd go there. We'd get air conditioning in our car in Las Vegas, like all these things. And we just had a good time just dreaming about that. So that's how I got into commercial real estate. I worked with that partner for about seven years. We were number one in the world several times for that top five firm that we worked for. And then eventually I went out on my own, started my own team. And then I eventually became the top broker locally, which I was for over 20 years. And then also top for the company worldwide several times as well. That's awesome. So you went from being a commercial real estate broker, making a good living, and all of a sudden, Nelson says, hey, I'm gonna start my own business. You know what? It wasn't all of a sudden, it was and. So I was doing the commercial real estate thing and these opportunities were coming up. Like I had made a bunch of landlords, a bunch of money. So I'm like, I wanna be the landlord. So eventually I would make enough money. And then I started looking for investments and I invested with a daycare operator who ended up to be crooked and embezzled a million dollars from me and my father-in-law. And we had to take that business over to save it. So that's how I got into that business. And then I owned a commercial building that I talked to a lady about a doggy daycare and she ended up going somewhere else. But me being the deal junkie that I am, I'm like, I believe in this now. And this was 20 years ago. So it was in its infancy. So it was kind of a crazy idea, but I saw that that demand was coming and how my wife treated our dogs. And I'm like, yes, this business would work. And so I started that business and we started some trampoline parks and started commercial rock yard, a tanning salon. I was just looking for opportunities. The one thing I think I'm really good at is delegating and building great teams. And that's what I did. I just met with some clients this week and they were kind of asking me a little bit. They had read my book and they're like, how did you do it all at one time? And I'm like, I didn't. I just kind of come up with the ideas and I would get the ball rolling and catch it on fire. And then I'd hope that my team could do the best with what I kind of left them with. I'm the type of guy that if I jump out of an airplane, I figure I can kind of knit the parachute on the way down. And that's how I ended up starting a lot of these businesses was, yeah, that's a good idea. Let's do it. And then I just went around and I built an awesome team around me. And then I delegated everything and just kind of quarterback a lot of this stuff. And it allowed me to do a lot of things at a high level all at the same time. So when you started on your own and left commercial real estate, been a broker there, were you nervous? Did it really make you nervous? Like I'm testing the waters here? It's far as nervous leaving commercial real estate or nervous doing these other deals. Nervous doing these other deals, your own thing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was not all sunshine and rainbows with these businesses. Like I said, with the daycare operator, that first business, I was just an investor. So I had nothing to do with the operations of it for the first five years of that business. And then 2008 happened and the crash came. And all of a sudden, the operator of that business started asking for money. And because of that, and commercial real estate was at a standstill. So I'm like, I have time. I wanna get in there and kind of see how we can turn this thing around. And when I got in there and started looking around, I realized this guy was paying each one of his daughters a hundred thousand dollars out of the business. They weren't working there. He was paying all of his household bills through that. He had done just so many crooked things. And then it got to the point where I was gonna sue him. But if we sued him, we were gonna lose all of it because business was horrible. So I ended up having to buy him out of that business, which is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do, to pay somebody to leave after they've embezzled all that money and were dishonest with you. It was just super hard. But my father-in-law was involved in that business. He was a dentist and he had just had a kidney transplant and had to retire. And most of his retirement was tied up in this business. And if it went away, he was gonna have a tough retirement. So that's the reason I got into that business. And then I just learned as I went, I didn't know how to manage people. And part of my book is about my hiring practices and not knowing how to hire and the struggles because of that. I don't wanna give away all the book, but I did about the worst thing you could do in a daycare. So I had to overcome that. And again, I think my superpower is just not quitting and trying to figure out a way and getting creative to make things work. And I've been able to do that with a lot of these businesses. But yeah, absolutely. I was nervous lots of sleepless nights and the doggy daycare was about to fail. And then I ended up bringing in my real estate partner slash brother-in-law. And he was that member of the team that I needed to turn that business around. So another one of my favorite quotes, and I have a ton of them, I love quotes, but when you're in trouble, don't always think what, maybe think who. And I've done that throughout my career is who do I need to help me take this business to the next level? Who do I need to help me get through this? And starting to think, because I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed. I'm not a genius. I don't even know what my IQ is, but I can guarantee it's probably barely average. I still have dyslexia. I still cannot spell. I am so glad I was born in this time and age because of spell check and all that. But I have to find good people to do the things that I know that I will be no good at. And because of that, it saved a lot of my businesses, helped me grow them a lot more and a lot more profitable than I could have done. But yeah, lots of sleepless nights. If anybody tells you being a business owner is easy and you have all this free time and you make all this money, that might be the case eventually, but it certainly is not always the case early on in the businesses. So let's talk about the I Got Smarter app. Yeah, so like I said, I've been a gold guy my entire life, especially after I graduated college. And every New Year's, I would sit down and I would do my goals and figure out what I wanted to do and review what happened last year and all of that. And I listened to self-help all the time in my car, on my commute. I was always listening to a new book. And so I just became passionate about it and loved it and understood it. And it gave me that knowledge that, you know what, I can become more and I can become a better version of myself. So I used all these gold programs, some work, some didn't work as well, some there were different aspects of it. So eventually, whenever I ended up selling a few of these businesses and being able to retire from commercial real estate, I knew that I didn't wanna retire. I don't typically enjoy playing golf. And if I have too much time on my hands, my wife will not enjoy me as much, putting it lightly. So I knew I had still a lot in the tank and I didn't wanna just kind of rust away. I wanted to go out there and help other people. And the way that I decided to do that was to build my goal achievement program. I put it in an app, it's called, I Got Smarter. I Got Smarter is an acronym and it's all the things that I learned over the last 25 years to go from where I started to where I am now. And it's to help other people live that better, more fulfilling life and become that version of themselves that they wanna become. Each one teach one, that's what they say, right? Absolutely. So I'm gonna get a little personal real quick. So how's your mom today? I know she's remarkable, you know, doing all the situational stuff she's been through and overcoming, how's everything going with her? She's living the life of her dreams now. Just one thing I wanna touch on, a lot of people out there blame their parents for not doing their best job. And you know what, I could have done that. And I did do that early on. I blame my mom for a lot of stuff and didn't enjoy that. But as I matured and I got older and I looked back and I saw what type of life she had to live. And she was really doing the best that she could do under the circumstances she found herself in. And me and my mom were great friends. She comes out to Vegas all the time. She used to come out and watch our kids when they were smaller. But she ended up meeting a man who became my stepfather who treated her like a queen that she is. And she's living a life now she couldn't have imagined. She's a incredible grandma. She's a great mom, great person. And yeah, we spend lots of time. In fact, we're going on a cruise next month together to Alaska. And yeah, enjoy being around her. My kids love her. Think she's just an incredible grandma. She's doing good. And no one would have thought that 50 years ago whenever she was going through all these things that she was going through. Nelson, that's so amazing. It's so amazing. It's touching, really. So in this last two minutes, what would you say to someone who is living a life and it seems like there's no hope? How do they create the person that they are capable of becoming? You gotta live life with purpose. You've gotta take control of your success. In fact, you have to be 100% in charge of your own success. Nothing else can matter. Once you do that, once you realize that I am responsible for my success, my choices matter. I think a lot of people out there don't think that the choices that they make matter. And there's absolutely some choices that make a big difference in your life. And there's some choices that are barely a blip on your life, but every single choice has a consequence and it's either good or it's bad. So just understanding that you're in charge and understanding that your choices matter. And one of the things that is part of my program is we develop an alter ego. The alter ego is that version of ourselves that we wanna become. It's that perfect version of ourselves. My alter ego is the perfect dad, the perfect husband, the perfect son, the perfect boss, the perfect employee. When I have a question on what I wanna do, I ask my alter ego, okay, what would my alter ego do in this situation? And if I wanna become that perfect version of myself, I try to make as many choices as my alter ego would make. And what happens is I start to become more and more and more like that alter ego. So it's all up to your choices. It's about having that strong growth mindset and understanding that you're not as good as you can be. You can get better. All it takes is hard work, focus, and just don't quit. If you have a worthy goal that you wanna achieve, don't quit, just keep going after it. Get knocked down, but get back up and just keep plugging away and eventually you will get there and eventually you will become that person that can achieve that goal. Well said, well said. Nelson, where can people purchase your book? I'll join you, I Got Smarter program and find you on social media. Yeah, so they can purchase the book on Amazon. They can listen to it on Audible. It's available on both of those platforms. The best way to reach me is at nelsontressler.com. That's my website. Unfortunately, we're full on I Got Smarter and the sister one, Six Months to Success, but we are hoping to open some of those up, hopefully early fall and start allowing more people into the program. And to the listeners, you can find the links to his book, social media, and I Got Smarter program in the show notes. Man, thank you so much for coming on the show. It has been an honor to have you. It has been an honor to listen to you. I mean, you life changing, man, life changing. I appreciate it and thank you so much for having me on and letting me share this story and I hope that your listeners get something out of it and understand that they're in control of their own success and live a better life because they listened to this podcast. Yes, sir, thank you. Thank you for tuning in to Real Talk with Reginald. If you enjoyed the show, please share with anyone you feel needs to take this journey with us on becoming a better you. See you next time.

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