Christina McKelvy: 0:13

Welcome to Apology. Stories of Hope, Healing and Resilience. I'm your host, Christina McKelvie. Today we're speaking with Britton Ripitin Blackman. Welcome, Britton, how are you?

Brittian Rivington: 0:23

Good, good, I'm awesome. This is really really fun to be on here.

Christina McKelvy: 0:26

Thank you, Thank you, yes, I appreciate you coming onto the podcast, so tell me a little bit about or me the listeners a little bit about yourself.

Brittian Rivington: 0:35

Sure, sure. So I'm born in Sholo, arizona. I'm from a small town called Snowflake. We have a long history there as far as our family goes, for my grandma and even further back. So yeah, we grew up there.

Brittian Rivington: 0:50

When I was about four years old we came down to the valley and we were living in Litchfield on the west side, and it was myself, my mom, and she was a single mom at the time and then I had two brothers, one older one and one younger one.

Brittian Rivington: 1:04

So yeah, we were all living down here. And then, after some time of being down here, my mom eventually found a pen pal who was in the military and they got together and basically built this blended family where it was my two brothers and then he had a son as well. So just four boys just all launched into a family at the same time and then we just started to rock from there. Now, with him being in the military, we eventually just started moving all over the place. I mean, we went to Germany, we were in California in the middle of the Mojave Desert, then we went to Fort Bliss, then back to Germany, then back to California. So a lot of just moving around, living that military brat style kind of life. I have a total of four siblings and along the way as the family started to develop, my mom and my dad eventually added in the blood tie which is my little sister. So four older brothers and one little girl. As far as the final piece to the puzzle.

Christina McKelvy: 2:03

That's a big family Must have had a lot of memory stories.

Brittian Rivington: 2:08

Yeah, it was pretty hectic. At times I wondered how my mom definitely when it was just her alone how she dealt with three boys. So it was nice to finally get some firm hands around us and start to kind of develop us as men.

Christina McKelvy: 2:20

Yeah, yeah. And having you said, your mom found him as a pen pal, so I was just wondering like pre-internet days then?

Brittian Rivington: 2:31

Yeah, it must have been pre-internet days. I don't know if they were doing email or exactly how the pen pal worked, but that's how it met. And as soon as he came back he was deployed, and I don't really know the dates because I was such a young kid at the time.

Christina McKelvy: 2:43

Yeah.

Brittian Rivington: 2:43

He was in Iraq in the early 2000s, okay, and when he came back it was just immediate. I mean, they started getting their wedding planned and it was pretty interesting. And then the other interesting factor to this is a lot of people don't know is he is a big black man. So it was pretty interesting being, okay, this is your dad now, yeah, and rolling right into that. So that's where the blended family came from. So we're just a mixture of white and black people that got together and I love it. I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Christina McKelvy: 3:14

So the two different cultures.

Brittian Rivington: 3:15

Oh yeah.

Christina McKelvy: 3:16

Yeah, Blended families, Like because in society we think of like the Brady Bunch or stuff like that. But it's pretty typical nowadays to have those blended families. And I'm curious, like what lessons you learned, you know, by having growing up in a blended family that you still carry with you today?

Brittian Rivington: 3:33

Well, of course. Well, I think it was kind of fate Got us together for sure, because we had not only myself and my two brothers, and we all had different dads at the same at the time. However, it was all the same storyline. My dad left me and walked out of me, my biological dad, he walked out my older brother, his dad we didn't even know. And then same with my youngest brother. His father was not in the picture.

Brittian Rivington: 3:56

So then we get this man that's such a great man that came in and his name is Walter. He came in family. He adopted us basically right off the bat, not legally, but emotionally. He had his son and his son's mom walked out on him. So we had this really great bond, as far as us coming in, that we didn't even get a chance to even focus on people walking out on us, because all of us had the same story. And now we have two parents that came together and brought that story, and then, all of a sudden, the narrative just changed. It went from us having parents that walked out on us to having a single parent, to where now we had a family that was just completely combined together.

Christina McKelvy: 4:32

Yeah, that stability.

Brittian Rivington: 4:34

Yeah, very definitely a lot of stability, so.

Christina McKelvy: 4:38

I'm curious what the role of stability like, how else that shows up in your life, because I know that interviewing a lot of individual. Stability means safety, and safety is really important to many individuals, many people, and so I'm just curious how that theme of stability might show up in your life besides family.

Brittian Rivington: 4:54

Well, a lot of it is based around family, but I think a lot of stability just deals with a lot of actions that I guess you take, because I think that a lot of the actions that you take now are what actually develop you, and that's just more so in your day to day. What are you eating, what are you going to the gym, who are you associating with All of these different things? But that's where a lot of stability comes from is is your day predictable of who you're going to be around, what kind of conversations you're going to be having, all of these different things. But I think that's where a lot of my stability comes from is actually who I'm associated with and who I'm doing my daily needs with.

Brittian Rivington: 5:30

I should say so, but yeah, a lot of it comes from just family based. I mean, we were just told right off the bat you know, this is us, this is what we do. You guys all had the same story background and then we started to develop that stability. As far as with siblings, right, like all of my siblings and I are really close, even though we are in different areas of the state. We're all doing different things. We all kind of stick together and, when times get rough, where it goes right back to that, that basic stability that we give each other.

Christina McKelvy: 5:59

It's important to have those individuals that you can go back to, you know continuously throughout your life that same individual. Yeah, and so Britain. I'm curious about how, going from the mountain because I've been out to show though it's so beautiful out in Eastern Arizona, I feel like a lot of people don't even know it exists, it's green, it's nose, it's gorgeous to Phoenix you know which is different.

Brittian Rivington: 6:30

No, it was very different. I think my mom during the time and this is where before, even everything developed as far as our family stability my mom had moved down here and we of course moved. Now Snowflake is not like Shola where you have the nice pine trees and everything. It's 15, 20 minutes from Shola and it's I don't know what happens to the weather or the geography of it, but you go into this flat kind of land with high winds that have little brushes every now and again. But it was something that was a big change.

Brittian Rivington: 7:05

Coming to Lichfield, my mom was actually working, I think, down in Mexico at the time, so she was going down there and I was just out here and I think I had my little brother's biological grandma kind of with us at the time and she was kind of raising us until he came. But coming down from that small town up there, I mean we were like in a double-wide trailer at the time up north and coming from that my mom gave us a nice little home down here in Lichfield and I think it was a good change. But the biggest change was going from that of being a small town person and being around Lichfield and kind of knowing Arizona to all of a sudden, now you're getting on a plane and you're going all the way out to Germany. As a young oh yeah.

Brittian Rivington: 7:44

Then you get there, you're real tired, you don't know what's going on with the time. You're wide awake, it's midnight, now it's during the day and you're tired because of the time change and now you're barely understanding any of the culture. But it was such a good culture shock for me that I believe that that has so much to do with how I operate today, if I should say, just being around so many different cultures, being around there, having to learn maybe a little bit of a different language, having to see the difference in body language, how you talk, how all of that stuff works, I think it's kind of giving me a little bit of edge, even coming back to the States and we've been there twice, right, coming back to the States and actually being able to operate here.

Christina McKelvy: 8:23

Provide some more examples of how that experience has influenced you today.

Brittian Rivington: 8:28

Oh for sure, like I'll give you one. That was actually the second time we were in Germany and it actually opened me up and this is how it was kind of raised right, like your word is everything your reputation. I care of yourself. Are you doing what you're saying you're gonna do? And one of those things I saw was we were living on the Germany economy, so we were on the actual military base and when my parents went and made any type of business deal with our landlord they were the straight old German people. I mean, they didn't speak a lick of English. I don't even know how they negotiated, how much they were gonna pay and all that stuff, but I remember them just shaking hands and that was a done deal for three years. They knew we were gonna live there, they knew we were gonna buy wood from them, they knew we were gonna buy the oil for the furnace in our house. And just seeing like actual interactions like that with people started making me think that that's how it should be all the time. When you say you're gonna do something, when you're gonna go and do something, you actually fully execute it and it's off.

Brittian Rivington: 9:25

Just a lot of verbal Nowadays, a lot of things are contracts, you gotta make sure everything you know the eyes are gotta tease across. But a lot of that, and I think that a lot of the spirit there too, whenever I was in Europe, was, I mean, the holiday season. Man, it is insane to see the holiday season here the Christmas markets, the food, the smells, it's freezing, cold but everyone's still out having a good time. You know the October Fest. There's just so many different things. But those examples of seeing a different culture and then actually coming back us moving every three years like that and reestablishing ourselves, it made a. I had to adapt to the situation. So it wasn't just something you can go on and be the same person. You had to kind of change maybe a little bit of what you did, maybe wrong and right, in that base, and now it's time to go to a new place and you get to kind of redefine yourself. So I think that that constant every three years of changing forced me into the person I am today and it keeps me from being stagnant in my own life, right Like I never want to be the same person over and over and over. I want to have the basics of being the same person, but I also want to know that there's a better version of me out there. There's not always going to be this same version and my happiness is not going to be the same as it is today, as maybe as it is tomorrow and it could be even better tomorrow as far as actually looking at it.

Brittian Rivington: 10:36

So just those actual interactions of being a military brat and being around a lot of other families, right Like while you're in the military, there's so many different stories. I mean you will know so many different stories. I mean at one point I think my dad's platoonity was with, I mean we had Dominican people, we had Puerto Rican people. I mean it was just all different races and we never even saw it like that. We just saw it.

Brittian Rivington: 10:58

As you know, our community that's what our community was. It was a big blended community. So I think that transition from one being a blended family now going into the military and being around a bunch of other blended people and never crossed anybody's minds of, okay, that's weird, there's three white kids and there's two black kids and then there's one black girl, you know what I mean. So it was never like that. It was like it was just so normal for us. But a lot of those experiences of being a military brat definitely, definitely defined who we are and just seeing the interactions and seeing the different cultures, seeing my dad speak a little bit of German and I know he did- something like that so.

Christina McKelvy: 11:34

Yeah yeah.

Christina McKelvy: 11:35

Exposure to a lot of different like you mentioned the different cultures within the military base and also just the culture of Germany. Going from Sholo to Phoenix or, excuse me, Snowflake to Phoenix, to Germany, as a little kid definitely could be a little jolting, but at the same time it helped you learn to adapt. And so you mentioned that you wanna continue to grow, and I agree that as individuals we should be able to be willing to grow and change every point or perspectives, and we're never the same as we were five years ago, and so I think that's a really cool skill that you were able to learn how to adapt there and just continue to take that throughout your life.

Brittian Rivington: 12:19

Right, yeah, I know and I agree, and I think a lot of it had to deal with once. I started seeing that and at first it was horrible. Right, like you know, you're moving, you're about to leave, you have all your friends, you have everything there. You just got maybe established. Just after a year and a half you started building your little entourage of who you're hanging around with and now it's time to go move again. Well, now it's like I didn't realize it when I was younger, but now that I'm starting to get older, I'm like I can be around anybody. I can be around in any situation, any type of belief, and it doesn't shake or affect me personally and I can listen to anybody say anything and it just allows me to just process it, take my own opinion of it and then actually apply it to how I wanna move forward, based off of whatever information I'm taking in.

Christina McKelvy: 13:03

We're getting so much information nowadays, you know, oh yeah, social media, tv, friends, family and it's really hard to be able to sort through what we wanna take or what we should take, because there might be some things I know where I'm like. Oh, I guess I should learn a little more about that.

Brittian Rivington: 13:22

Yes, yeah, a lot of people do that. They'll take and I've been guilty of it myself too right, it's everybody that's out there, everyone's been guilty of it where they'll hear something and then repeat it before actually even knowing what's going on or just deciding what the majority of what people are actually saying is true. So I'm a big believer in and I think that that's what's molded as we went through the military career, right?

Christina McKelvy: 13:45

Yeah.

Brittian Rivington: 13:47

My dad, the last duty station was Fort Irwin, which is probably the worst space to go and live on. I mean, it's four miles into the Mojave Desert. It's hot, hot, hot. We had high school, or our high school was 45 minutes outside the base, so it was a 45 minute drive there and a 45 minute drive back. But as we started to, I graduated and moved and then came to Arizona in 2015,.

Brittian Rivington: 14:11

I was going to ASU and working at the dealership and the dealership has a huge impact on our family as far as cars and stuff like that, because my grandpa that's where he started his main career after he transitioned from England to Canada so immediately jumped right into the dealership world and started out at a corporate kind of area and I won't name who they are, but I started out in the kind of the corporate area and then I've been working for the Coulter family for the last nine years after that and that's before I actually went into the entrepreneurship, which goes into a lot of, why I believe that you should go and start to think for yourself. Start to think what are the possibilities, imagine if, imagine if, imagine, if, imagine, if kind of mentality all the time.

Christina McKelvy: 14:59

So yeah, thinking for yourself, and that can be really difficult, again when we're so inundated with different ideologies. Is there anything where, if you want to answer, like where you're like yeah, I definitely differ from my family on these thoughts or my close friends, that has been something that stood out for you, that has helped you move forward, I guess Mom.

Brittian Rivington: 15:20

I've been trying to think I would probably say that taking risk. I've always been kind of a bigger risk taker. A lot of the times I was told college is kind of the way to go. You start with college, the norm that everybody gets. But college just didn't work out for me. It was not something. So then I decided to go full time into the dealership I just wanted. Maybe I wasn't disciplined enough or I wasn't being coached well enough through the process of it and had a good enough support staff around me as far as in my immediate range of it. But as far as something I differ is I'm definitely a risk taker. I'll go. If I see something that there's a good reward, I'll take a big risk on it. So that's probably one of the biggest things.

Christina McKelvy: 16:07

And I think risk taking kind of leads into. When I asked you kind of what you wanted to talk about a little bit, you know, that email that I sent you mentioned how anyone can reach their dreams or how you want to inspire people to reach their dreams. So I'm curious what the connection of risk picking and being able to reach your dream is.

Brittian Rivington: 16:26

Sure, and I love this conversation. This is it's actually my favorite thing to talk about whenever. So in my mentality it wasn't always this way. It's funny how we have to change, you have to change. So, going on mine, it's going to be my ninth year here at the dealership.

Brittian Rivington: 16:40

Two years ago, I met with one of the most beautiful human beings on the planet and he really inspired me. His name is Kenna McCrae. He sat down with me and it was originally just to actually sit down in our entrepreneurship as far as in the financial market. So I was just trying to look how to be smart with my finances. You know, covid was going on. There were so many different things.

Brittian Rivington: 17:02

The stock market was crashing, who know how things were going to be and I wanted to start setting my family up for the future and start planning for that stuff. So we kind of sat down, we started going through the process of it and I really liked it. He shared such valuable information, but a lot of it didn't even deal with finances. To begin with Was I thought it was kind of weird. He was asking me what I want, where are your dreams, what are your goals, things, and, like dude, I didn't ask for that. I asked for us to sit down and you show me how to stash my money safely, so me and my family are protected in the future.

Christina McKelvy: 17:31

Yeah.

Brittian Rivington: 17:32

My whole mind and he said Brit, it doesn't matter how much interest, how much any of this I show you If you don't have an end goal. What are your goals? What are your dreams? And then I did something my wife and I had never done. We sat down and actually started writing these dreams out. You know, he challenged me. He said write down your top 25 dreams and how vivid you can start getting on these. What dates can you put on them? How are they going to look?

Brittian Rivington: 17:55

So we started just getting into that mentality of, okay, we go from kids where people encourage us to go and walk and get up and everyone claps and when you fall down they say it's okay, it's okay, Get back up, right. And then we fast forward into adults and then we don't really do that to each other anymore. We don't encourage adults like, hey, go chase that dream, Go make that happen, and you can make it happen, right. The kind of things that we go into the opposite like, oh, you'll never have that happen, you can. We just wanted to change that whole dialogue and we want to continue to do it for somebody that has done it to us. It just passed that forward. So as we sat down and he started showing me this stuff. He's like hey, man, I know you're really attached to the dealership, I know you love the cultures, I know you love that whole family, but would you be willing to look at something where you can go and make a huge impact into the world?

Christina McKelvy: 18:45

And I knew.

Brittian Rivington: 18:45

That's just more important. I knew it was important to teach. However, I didn't realize how much it was actually tied to the actual dream selling of things and in dreams can be. You know, like my wife and I mine of course already knows what mine is I want to be so successful and take as many people with me as possible, but then I look at my wife's and we just want to go open up a little coffee truck together.

Christina McKelvy: 19:03

Oh, that sounds nice.

Brittian Rivington: 19:05

Yes, it does, and that's that's our goal right To be able to support ourselves and be able to go do some of these things that maybe aren't the biggest things in the world but they're so important to us and it's such a, such a huge dream of ours to actually go and accomplish.

Brittian Rivington: 19:18

So now that we've gotten that down, we're starting to go and it's crazy if you fast forward two years, I never was one to write down my dreams, write down my goals, start to plan and start to do any of that. Now we have to go back and now we have to add to our top 25 dreams If our wedding's done, all of these things are starting to get accomplished that we had on that Dreams list traveling a little bit more. We've been able to travel so much this year and it just really stuck with me like man, if a lot of people, if I wasn't doing this, how many other people are not out there doing this? How many other people have gone, dream dead and are not actually going out and remembering that excitement that they had at one point, that they knew this was going to happen for them, but then they got a little bit of turbulence, maybe a little bit of big waves and then they got scared and backed off of it. So Hmm.

Brittian Rivington: 20:08

But yeah, it's one of my biggest biggest, I guess life missions right now is to just get around as many people, find out what their dreams and goals are and then start to convince them that it can come possible.

Christina McKelvy: 20:20

Yeah, you used a term called dream dead. What does that mean?

Brittian Rivington: 20:25

Dream dead. Dream dead means you get complacent. That means that maybe you've reached a point in your life or maybe you've accomplished a few things that you set out to do, and it can happen without you even trying to do it. It could be you just wrapped up, maybe, in something that is not as inspiring to you, or maybe, as there's a ceiling above your roof, you've reached your peak. There's nowhere left to go, so you just kind of sit at that little mountain, but you forget to remember that there's so many other mountaintops out there that you need to go and climb and make happen.

Brittian Rivington: 20:54

So that dream dead is like there has to be something that you're continuously searching for, is something that you know is going to happen, that is going to give you huge happiness, like, for instance, mine. Mine is just going and actually doing what this generation before has not done for me, and that's just developing a nice tight niche one and done family. You know none of this heartache that we had in the beginning, and then my parents eventually got it together. They were able to put together the pieces and make a good outcome of it, and then also just going in and trying to travel and see the world and all these different things. And can my current position get me there? Or am I just being complacent and waiting for it to actually come back to me?

Brittian Rivington: 21:36

So dream dead is actually like getting up and being excited about the day. You're excited because you know something good is going to come. You're not having a dream and you're just like oh man, it's Monday, I have to get up on a Monday. No, I like to change my verbiage a little bit. I like to say I get to get up on Monday, I get to do this, I get to do these things. So that's where the dream dead comes from. And dreams can be the same way. They can die very fast, they can be read just as fast. You just got to be around the proper people to actually reunite that.

Christina McKelvy: 22:08

Yeah, that's that circle of influence. Yes, it's connected to those that can help with your dreams and help provide that stability and safety.

Brittian Rivington: 22:16

Exactly yeah.

Christina McKelvy: 22:18

And it's interesting. You know, you mentioned like you wanted to basically change your family trade. That was the quote that came in mind and I always found that really powerful, because we look back at like you know how we grew up, or you know how our parents grew up or grandparents grew up, and there's patterns that happen and it sounds like you're like yeah, if I could reach my dreams and go this direction, then I can have that stability that I didn't have until you were actually don't know what your parents met?

Brittian Rivington: 22:47

No, they met at four and it's crazy because I didn't go back into that. When they met, it got so much more stable than it was before.

Christina McKelvy: 22:54

Yeah.

Brittian Rivington: 22:55

And it was hectic the time before. I mean it was. It was probably one of the hardest points and my mom was trying to be a good mom. She was a young mom and she was trying to figure it out and I hold no ill towards any of those scenarios we're in as far as her not having somebody in the household, she was trying to work and support us in the attention as a kid right that you need as far as working through emotions, working through the understanding of the world, all these different things. But even then still, when my parents first met, they were still fighting their own gaps inside the family tree as far as what they were dealing with and trying to start to build a new family tree, right. So this stability hit.

Brittian Rivington: 23:33

But then I didn't realize how much they actually went through and how much financially, they didn't get the proper guidance to support five kids, right? No one told them hey, this is five kids, this is how you support it, this is how a budget looks, this is how you dream while you have five kids. Right, because that's time consuming. But it just got better and better and better over time, but it wasn't something that was just instant. Okay, we're stable. Now we got a man here, that's right, terry was something that we definitely had to develop over time, and they didn't. You know, they're very religious as well, which I think contributes a lot to how they were able to stay sane with five kids running around and all types of these and stuff.

Brittian Rivington: 24:12

So yeah are you religious? I am not practicing religious anymore. I did grow up Mormon and I love the Mormons. I think that they're great people, I think that they have great lifestyles, and a lot of my business partners and a lot of my friends are still LDS. But I think that it kind of made me develop my own kind of why of what I think you know. I say my own prayers. I have all of that connection there. It's just not something that I go and I guess I share with a lot of people.

Christina McKelvy: 24:38

Mm. Hmm, similar for me. I grew up, I say evangelical, though I think some of my friends that grew up in the church won't consider themselves evangelical, they just say non-denominational. You know big church. So now I'm looking at you know other perspectives. You know, especially like with financial literacy. I and I know there's other viewpoints regarding financial literacy looking at that and I know that financial literacy can help reaching your dreams and there's just probably various paths to that and that's kind of what I'm realizing, especially now with, like, our generation considering you know it's hard by house and different things like that.

Brittian Rivington: 25:14

Oh yeah, yeah, I know I agree, and that's that's actually with financial literacy. I mean, it took me a little bit. I had to get myself at least pointed in the right direction before I started to go and kind of teach you, and it took me a little bit to get comfortable with it, right Like a four year old kid that just went and got help. How is he going to go and help people?

Christina McKelvy: 25:31

Well, I'll tell you how. Oh my goodness.

Brittian Rivington: 25:34

I know, I know I get that all the time.

Christina McKelvy: 25:38

Okay, and I love it.

Brittian Rivington: 25:40

That's another reason. With, that's a benefit, with the military, I feel like I'm sometimes. I'm walking around and I'm like man am I like 40 years old or the way I've actually, you know, and it's, it's. I got to remember that I got to go be a kid sometimes too. But it's going back to the financial literacy. It's just so so important, right, and even if you're getting it from somebody, there's so many sources out there that you can get it from. I mean, you can literally go and Google it and you're going to be there for hours. It's a. It's a. It's a dark hole if you don't go and actually focus it on what you want to do. And that's one of the things that I've loved about our company going into it, which is through World Financial Group, is not only did they give me a financial education, but they actually brought me in and let me test drive the world.

Brittian Rivington: 26:25

The highest powered industry in the world right, which is the financial institution.

Christina McKelvy: 26:29

And while I got a test drive this.

Brittian Rivington: 26:30

They were right there in the passenger seat show me how to test drive it until I eventually got to the point where I'm kind of doing it on my own. But yeah, financial literacy is not being taught and I think that that is what correlates to a lot of these dysfunctional families, a lot of these marriages that don't last, a lot of these kids that grow up maybe not getting the right example, and it all stems from just not having that understanding. And when I was looking at that, when I first sat down and I was there for 30, 40 minutes listening to Kendall speak was I learned more in that 30 to 40 minutes than I had ever learned through high school or my education at ASU. I learned that 30 minutes and 45 minutes and I felt super excited about the information I had learned right Versus.

Brittian Rivington: 27:13

Now, when you go to school, a lot of people maybe don't get excited unless they're super into it, but I know that this is their destiny call. People are just showing up to do their homework and that's pretty much it right. So as we sat down and we got real vivid on it, we started setting our dreams. We got our wedding done that COVID delayed for years. I mean we could not put it together, I mean it just would not work. But then, as soon as we only got the understanding of a little bit of financial literacy, we got the understanding of how your actual projection of writing, bringing it into this world, not just thinking it, not just talking about it, putting it on pen and paper, all the old school stuff right. That's when things really started to formulate and come together.

Christina McKelvy: 27:54

Hmm, yeah, having having your dreams written down, having those goals written down. Now I'm curious what your perspective is on those like maybe external barriers to being able to be financially stable or meeting your dreams, things that maybe people can't control, like healthcare or education. Well, for some people, education or maybe just living in the wrong town or just different things like that how can people still reach their dreams when they're having external barriers that they can't control?

Brittian Rivington: 28:29

That is an excellent question, and it's actually a question I thought of myself too when I look back at it. So in the dealership you can make a pretty good living, but it's not something that's going to give you that whatever life you want living if it makes sense.

Brittian Rivington: 28:44

So I think that a lot of people they need to start going out and trying new things Like that's where the complacency and the dream debt comes from. If you don't go out and try new things or try to look for something that's going to give you a better life, then it's not going to happen right, and that's what World Financial Group has kind of given for me it is. I mean, I went from just myself trying to learn financial literacy, so now we have nine agents underneath us and we're just building and building and building. And the reason why I've brought those people with me is because of the opportunity, right, the opportunity of actually going out, working and trying to accomplish that life and create a good income and cash flow and those types of deals.

Brittian Rivington: 29:19

Now, one of the things that a lot of people have to do is when they go and they start to look at their dreams and they remember all of those past experiences, like, as far as hey, why come from very poor wealth, not a very good childhood, not a very good family setting, all those things. That's where you have to learn to start to snap your brain out of it, because if you continue to focus on those, that's all that's going to start to keep coming your way. Right, you have to start worrying about, okay, where am I at today and where do I want to be, and do I have the hope and belief that that is going to come true? And do I have the actual vehicle like me being able to test drive this, the world's powerful vehicle in the background? Right, do I have something that's going to give me the opportunity to go and do that? So you have to continue to look for opportunities. You can't just sit in the same spot doing the same thing you're going to do. I mean, it's one of my favorite quotes, right? The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over, right? And expecting different results. It's not going to happen that way, and that's why you have to learn how to become uncomfortable, put yourself out there, learn to take the word no and just process it and continue to go for those dreams, because patience is going to have to be one of the biggest things you're going to have to learn, right? If you can't learn patience, then it won't work, because you don't know when it's going to come. It's just the hope of knowing it is going to come if you do X, y and Z. If you can do X, y and Z, it will happen for you one day. But you have to just believe, because you can go do X, y and Z, but if you don't believe it's going to happen, it's not going to happen. You have to believe and go into the action of it.

Brittian Rivington: 30:51

So I think that a lot of people that are in situations you're not. It's not your fault, you're in that situation, right, or maybe it is. Who knows right? Maybe it's your fault you're in that situation, but it is your responsibility to go and get yourself out of that situation. And that's one of the things that I've loved being around this entrepreneurship group and being a part of World Financial and being a part of WealthWave, and going out and teaching family literacy and leaving no family left behind so they can learn this information, because it had such a big impact in my life. And I come from that. I come from a disoriented family in the beginning. I come from a double Y trailer. We were double tank tops in the winter, you know double tank tops.

Brittian Rivington: 31:28

Double tank tops in the winter, that type of environment. But, to be honest with you, it's all about the mentality of it and kind of the opportunity I got is, I don't really ever think about any of those bad things Now because I don't think about them. It didn't reflect a lot of my action, though, because my action was those of those that were doing it before me. It was what I had saw going up, so I had to go actually go and change who I was around, who I was watching, and that's where just I mean it's names on names JR Heward, kendall McCrae, matt Heward.

Brittian Rivington: 32:01

I've been around a lot of great people that have installed a lot of belief in me and, most importantly, I found the love of my life early on. That's dumped a lot of belief in me. So you just got to control that who you're around. Maybe look at the vehicle you're in, whatever vehicle you have as far as cash flow goes, and is there something out there that maybe you'll enjoy a little bit better? They could have a higher upside, but maybe he's not going to pay out right away. Right, like that's a lot of what people look at is okay, how much is the pay? I've got to look at that anymore. I try to look at okay, is it worth it? Is it worth it to go and be going to do, is it worth it Because-.

Christina McKelvy: 32:39

Is it worth it as opposed to the amount you're going to get paid?

Brittian Rivington: 32:43

Exactly the stability, the complacency. You can go and you know that you're going to be okay because you have that check coming in every two weeks, every week or every month, depending on whatever you're doing, right, but it's more so, okay, I really enjoy what I'm doing. I know that I'm going to be able to go all in because I enjoy what I'm doing, but does it have the upside potential to be able to start giving me some of that extra cash flow? Another part of it, too, is as we go and sit down with people and we talk to them. You'll be surprised that and I was, at least, for myself too is, man, you overspend in so many areas you don't really need to overspend it.

Brittian Rivington: 33:19

So when people talk to them about these things and they see these things and they see that they're overspending maybe it's in Uber Eats, maybe it's in going out and eating, maybe it's in a lot of those different realms, right, they start to maybe cut back on some of that, which starts to increase their cash flow, and then I think that law of attraction starts to come in.

Brittian Rivington: 33:38

As you start to cut back and start to save and start to do some of those things you're going to be now responsible with that little bit that you've saved up. So what's going to happen is the world is going to start to dump more into your bin because you're responsible, which means you need to be responsible for more. So I really believe, as we sit down with that and maybe someone's completely broke, maybe they have nothing in their life right, maybe they don't have any money, maybe they're completely broke I think that even just coming down and seeing the information and getting a little bit of hope and being around people with hope, that sparks people and it starts to get their mindset in that frame of okay, I need to work towards this, I need to work towards this, and then they work towards it and then they're able to actually start to free, open and get a little bit of wiggle room to start actually building something for themselves.

Christina McKelvy: 34:20

Hmm, having that hope, being surrounded by people that have that hope to move forward, believing that you can.

Brittian Rivington: 34:30

Oh yeah.

Christina McKelvy: 34:31

Yeah, so okay.

Brittian Rivington: 34:33

The financial side of it. I love it right. We can go and we put it on a paper. This is how much like a robot, right?

Christina McKelvy: 34:38

Yeah.

Brittian Rivington: 34:39

Unbound interest will give you this. No, this is your home. This is your trip to Hawaii. This is your family's ranch. This is your boat that you want. This is maybe just a house to pay off. You know all these different things. This is on this date. Look how much you could have here. And that's where we start to incorporate in it.

Brittian Rivington: 34:57

And then you start to go in. Okay, if you look at your industry because that's the biggest one, right, we want to teach people how cash flow really should work you should start trying to get some type of extra cash flow, because right now, I mean I don't know about anybody else, but inflation is just killing everybody. I mean it's absolutely throwing everybody. And then what I think happens is is that starts to happen. It starts to diminish the hope, it starts diminishing the belief and it starts putting out those dreams, causing people to go dream dead. So then they're just stuck in this rut. So that's why I'm so passionate about this career, because as we start to go in, man, it's like they really start to get so excited about it. They start to get so excited. Okay, maybe it's not the end. Maybe I'm not stuck in this, this, this trap box. Maybe I can get out of it.

Brittian Rivington: 35:42

You know things.

Christina McKelvy: 35:44

Curious, like you know some things that maybe you know with beyond someone's control, like if they have, like, a chronic illness and their medical expenses are super high cause you know healthcare care sucks. But also maybe yeah maybe they want to buy a house or something like that. I keep going to the house thing must be one of my goals, it's number one.

Brittian Rivington: 36:06

It's people's number one goal. So, and then, to go into this too, right, because you I've heard you mentioned this twice, which I think is so important right, being chronically ill? Yes, yeah, it's one of the biggest things I is my agency is we market and distribute for people. That is one of the biggest things we help with, right, okay, okay, when we don't set up a life insurance policy for somebody, right, and they don't even understand how life insurance works, other than when you die, you get paid.

Christina McKelvy: 36:31

And I did not know that. So that was just happy, happy stance that I mentioned it twice.

Brittian Rivington: 36:36

Oh nice, yeah well, it's super important because it's actually one of the biggest things that I tell people that it's so important to protect yourself for right, because you never know when it's gonna happen. You don't have any control over that. If you get chronically ill or something happens to you, you become disabled and now you can't go work. But I can tell you this I need to grow this agency so we can go and help more people with that, because part of our policies as far as going and setting that up, it's helped to protect people against that. It's helped to give them an income if something else happens like that.

Brittian Rivington: 37:04

Now the Medicare or the medical system sucks right. It maybe doesn't take care of people like it should. However, there are options and people don't know the options are out there for them that they could actually go and protect themselves in a really good area, like the products we do so, like, for instance, the life insurance. If somebody's chronically ill and they can't go and support themselves, we're able to actually go build something, give them a source of income off that death benefit from the life insurance policy. To where? Now, if they know they're gonna pass man, imagine the memories and how many trips they can actually go and do with, maybe their loved ones, while they're actually going through that. So that actually ties in so well to our business model, because you never know when it's gonna happen to you, but it's eventually going to happen to you, whether it be way farther down the road or maybe it happens in your early 20s, and that is so important for us to actually go out there and help people with that.

Brittian Rivington: 37:57

On that side of it. Maybe they can't go and build their dreams or any of that, right, but the more people we can affect, maybe we can affect someone that's next, that's close to them, and get them to start building their dreams Maybe their dreams to help them. So it sucks whenever the chronicle ill and all that stuff comes in, but man, our company really goes and helps out with a lot of that. As far as getting some of that stuff set up, they can access it. I mean we just hear story after story after story inside our company as far as, hey, this little girl, she got cancer. Guess what? They were able to access that death benefit, start to get income and take them on a trip as a family and actually go and live the life that they want, versus actually staying working that job, not being able to go spend the time that they would like with those people. It's so important.

Christina McKelvy: 38:41

Yeah, yeah, and it's always a hard conversation and I brought up a couple of times just because I'm a therapist, you know mental therapist so I have clients who have that chronic mental illness or chronic physical illness or both, you know, and they're trying to get out of it, but there's just these external barriers. That just makes it really difficult to do it, and so it's always good to like think about again that hope. You know what it gives them, that hope to move them forward. You know as much as they're able to.

Brittian Rivington: 39:16

Yeah, and I agree. And then it goes into this too, like with people with like the mental illness right, like when they handle that. I think that it's so important is us, as licensed professionals me being in the financial market, you being in the mental market is we need more people going out there and helping those people.

Christina McKelvy: 39:33

Yeah.

Brittian Rivington: 39:34

That's where a lot of it goes. And then helping them develop those relationships with people that actually can shower and throw hope onto them, Because if you just go and talk to your like, for instance, you, if they were just to come talk to you and then they go back to nothing, it's not helpful for them.

Brittian Rivington: 39:49

They have to be around that environment, right. And I think that as you can start to get around a good environment, it starts to help it out. So so much. And a lot of people getting that complacency were okay, well, I'm not gonna go and change my environment. You have to. You have to get really dramatic about it too. You can't just say go, get dramatic, maybe change whatever's not helping with you, get up, move the state, do whatever you gotta do and just continue to grow in that area. And it's so much easier said than done.

Christina McKelvy: 40:15

Right Like sitting here and saying well, that's what you did, almost Like you said. You left like like you're not Mormon anymore. You moved towns.

Brittian Rivington: 40:23

Yeah, so uncomfortable, so uncomfortable, right, and it gave me a lot of anxiety, a lot of depression and a lot of stuff like that. It's something that I had to just continuously battle through and continuously, and sometimes it was better than others. Sometimes I was around the right crowd. Sometimes there was around people that believed in me. Sometimes I was around the wrong crowd and that's where I felt my lowest right. I wasn't hanging around the right people. I wasn't hanging around people that had the same views.

Christina McKelvy: 40:47

Is that depression and anxiety?

Brittian Rivington: 40:48

Oh yeah, for sure, for sure, and I think that everyone deals with a little bit of depression and anxiety all the way around. I don't think that any human being doesn't have it. I just think that there's different levels and tiers to it, based off of your situations, what you've been through, and some of it is super severe, but some of it can be self-inflicted. As far as the side of okay, how do I go and make a change? I have to make a change. I'm not happy, I can feel it. I need to start getting that dream going. I need to start getting into that area and start to really push myself into that, you know, and go be uncomfortable and be uncomfortable with something that you want, to be uncomfortable with something that you've always dreamed about. You know, if I'm not saying go be uncomfortable in an area where you know you're not going to be happy, you've got to search for something that's going to make you happy and that should be your life mission is continually search for something that is going to make you happy, because if you're not looking for that, that's the quickest way to be unhappy. If you're not consistently searching, shoot. You can be happy just looking for happiness. That is such great hope right there. Right, you're looking for happiness, and the best way to look for happiness is try to be happy, and that's just something that can actually continue to help people. But it's definitely something that's helped me. Right, it's just, it's all about your environment, where you're around. It's not where you've come from as far as the environment, but it comes to who are you around now, right, if you're around four bums, you're probably going to be the fourth. Or if you're around four bums, you're probably going to be the fifth. If you're around five great, honest, loving, understanding people that do nothing but positive thinking, you're probably going to be the fifth. So it's something that I've always kept in my mentality and I continue to work with, as far as me, even being a little bit depressed or oh man, things aren't going as fast as I would like, things are not working out for me, things are not going in my favor, they're not this, then I have to go and snap myself out of it.

Brittian Rivington: 42:34

Okay, what's good about your life? Well, I have a loving wife. I have two great parents. I have a great side of the family on my mom's side. I have great mentors All of these great things that are not maybe monetary things, but they're all things that are such great cornerstones to actually my happiness and how I build it up. So I think that a lot of that goes from there. If you can think one negative thought and then backtrace and just start to flood your mind with positivity, it's weird. Sometimes you'll start thinking positive and you feel so weird about it. You're like why am I thinking like this? Why am I in a good mood?

Christina McKelvy: 43:07

It becomes natural.

Brittian Rivington: 43:09

Yeah, exactly.

Christina McKelvy: 43:11

Well, that leads me to my final question, because we are getting close to time, which went by really quick. I asked this to all my guests because it's the title of my show, hopology. But what brings you hope or what gives you hope?

Brittian Rivington: 43:27

What gives me hope is that there's more opportunity out there in the world than ever, and I think that times have changed and they are gonna continue to change. All that you have to do is you have to get into the game. If you can get into the game and start playing whether it's playing small or playing big as you start to go, there are so many opportunities out there. There's enough opportunities for everybody out there, and I just think that people have to start playing the game.

Brittian Rivington: 43:52

You're not gonna get opportunities if you don't play the game, and it's just very recently in the last year or two, I've started playing the game and it's been so much better as far as getting into something, getting licensed, start building something that you can be proud of, that your family's gonna be proud of, that your friends are gonna be proud of, and all these different things. You just have to get in the game. You have to start searching for opportunity and, yeah, that's what really gives me hope is that there's just so much opportunity out there and that it's available to everybody. You just gotta start positioning yourself and looking for it.

Christina McKelvy: 44:22

Hmm, opportunity for all.

Brittian Rivington: 44:24

Opportunity for all.

Christina McKelvy: 44:26

Awesome. Well, Bretton, it was a pleasure having you. Thank you so much for agreeing to come on and I'm looking forward to, yeah, seeing you go through your 25 lists and I think I'm gonna definitely do that with my husband and go through our 25 goals and we probably knocked out a couple of them, but still.

Brittian Rivington: 44:45

It's okay. There's always room for more. Once you finish up a couple, add some more on.

Christina McKelvy: 44:49

Yes, Exactly Well. Thank you so much again.

Brittian Rivington: 44:54

Yeah, thank you.