Excuses or Excellence? | Season 2 Episode 39

 What do Elon Musk, a former homeless man from Grants Pass (me), and Oregon's homelessness crisis have in common? More than you might think.  

See the Video Here :  https://youtu.be/76TJsmKHg0g

@elonmusk 

@LongIslandAudit 

In this episode of The JoCo Republican Podcast, I break down Elon Musk's incredible journey from South Africa to Canada, through failure, risk, near bankruptcy, Tesla, SpaceX, and ultimately becoming one of the most influential entrepreneurs in the world. Then I compare that journey to my own story. Years ago I was homeless right here in Grants Pass. 

Today I own RecTech (www.rectechgp.com) and provide public safety technology, surveillance systems, and security solutions to communities and law enforcement agencies throughout Oregon.

 The lesson isn't that everyone becomes a billionaire. The lesson is that success requires accountability, hard work, risk-taking, discipline, and refusing to quit. We also tackle Oregon's homelessness crisis, the Housing First model, drug enabling, the homeless industrial complex, and why compassion without accountability often traps people instead of helping them recover. 

Special thanks to Richard Emmons and the Oregon Eagle for sharing my story and helping show that recovery, redemption, and success are still possible. 

What do you think? Is accountability the missing piece in Oregon's homelessness policies? 

Leave your thoughts below. 

#thejocorepublicanpodcast #elonmusk #longislandaudit #SeanPaulReyes #spacex #tesla #starlink #entrepreneur #success #accountability #personalresponsibility #hardwork #neverquit #homelessness #housingfirst #oregon #grantspass #josephinecounty#publicsafety #lawenforcement #americandream #selfimprovement #motivation #politics #republican #conservative #community #freedom

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Josephine County Republican. It is June 15th, 2026. Uh yeah, yesterday, the 14th, that's getting pretty warm out there, huh, folks? Um, you know, and I just wanted to give a little shout out to uh Sean Paul Reyes, Long Island Audit, for providing these awesome hats. So if you are into uh the Constitution and you want to check some stuff out on YouTube, uh Long Island Audit. He he is uh uh from uh Long Island and he does some pretty interesting stuff. And so I bought these hats. I actually have three of them. First one I bought was the the gray one, right? And then I bought the black one, which has got my cool American flag pin on it, and then this is my third, which has got the Josephine County Republican Central Committee pin that I designed and created. Um, anyway, folks, tonight I was just uh looking on social media because that's what I do, and there's a lot of people and a lot of posts out there about Elon Musk, and you know, just a lot of people that are just really upset and that he is now a considered a trillionaire. So I, you know, I just wanted to start with this meme, and actually I took this and uh there was an actual there was another one of these, and I just expanded on this. Uh went in through basically his entire journey through uh you know being a young man in South Africa, all the way to to what he is right now. You you might have seen this floating around on social media. There's one side of it's Elon Musk, and he's swimming around in a giant vault of money like Scrooge McDuck. And on the other side, it shows, you know, factories, engineers, rockets, workers, customers, products, and business. So the caption says something like, you know, this is what Bernie thinks it is versus what it actually is. And, you know, at first it's kind of funny, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized the highlights are just, you know, a much bigger problem in our cult culture. You know, too many people look at successful people and only see where they ended up. They don't see the journey, they don't see the sacrifices, they don't see the failures, they don't see the risk, they don't see the finish line. And that's exactly what I wanted to talk about, you know, Elon Musk today. Not because he's a uh now a trillionaire, or he was a billionaire, but now he's a trillionaire, supposedly. Um not because he's famous, you know, but his story and and actually share something important that uh I have in common with Musk. Um, no, I didn't build rockets and I didn't start Tesla, but we both learned the same lesson. Nobody succeeds by being enabled into comfort. Um, now I know there's people that are born into money, that's not what I'm talking about. Let's let's talk about Elon first, though. He was uh born in in Pretoria, South Africa. Um he wasn't born into the life that he is today. At 17 years old, he left South Africa and moved to Canada. Um, so think about that for a moment. 17 years old, and you know, a lot of people that are 17 are worried about their prom and dating and what they're gonna do on the weekend. This kid moved to another country. He worked out uh, you know, in Canada doing little odd jobs, and he lived pretty modestly. Um, actually, my dad handed me five dollars in a bus ticket, told me get out. No joke. So that was uh 1997, and uh, you know, between 97 and 2010, roughly 13 years, I was basically drifting around homeless. Um, I tell people, you know, I was homeless about eight of those 13 years. I mean, because I was sleeping on couches, I had an apartment here a couple times. Um, so you know, but anyway, going back to Elon, uh, he made his way up to the University of Pennsylvania. He moved uh to California and he accepted, he was accepted into Stanford. Um most people at that point would have said, wow, you know, I've made it. No, not Elon. He dropped out for after just two days, and he saw the internet revolution was coming and decided to take a risk. That first company was called Zip2. Most people have never even heard of it. It wasn't glamorous, it wasn't like a household name. It was just two brothers grinding away to build something. Eventually, Zip2 sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. Most people would have retired, you know, but uh most people, you know, would have probably bought a mansion and brought some fancy cars and then just disappeared anyway. Elon rolled the dice again and he started x.com. Well, actually, it was yeah, it was it was it became PayPal later. I'm trying to remember. Um, but yeah, it eventually became PayPal. PayPal sold, you know, he actually sold PayPal and he suddenly suddenly had enough money that he could have lived comfortably comfortably for the rest of his life. Again, most people would have stopped at that point. Instead, he started SpaceX. Uh, then he got involved with Tesla, and let's pause it there. Most people look at SpaceX today and see rockets landing themselves, which is awesome, by the way. When I first saw that, I thought that was sci-fi. I actually thought it was like CGI. I saw the the two booster rockets landing simultaneously, and I was like, yeah, that's not real. Come on. And it was real. So, you know, but then there was, you know, the Starlink thing and and uh government contracts, and um, you know, what they don't remember is the years of failure. Uh rocket after rocket exploded, launch after launch failed, millions of dollars disappeared. People laughed at him. Experts say said it, you know, it couldn't be done. The media mocked him. Then there was Tesla. People forgot, you know, electric cars were just kind of a joke at the time to most Americans. They were slow, they were ugly. Nobody wanted them. Experts says that Tesla, you know, they were gonna fail. Wall Street said Tesla was gonna fail. The auto industry said Tesla was gonna fail. And at one point, uh Tesla and SpaceX were were pretty close to collapse, and Elon was putting nearly everything he had keeping them alive. One uh more major failure, and both companies might have disappeared. So you think about that. The richest man in the world today was once one of the failed launch, one one failed launch and was one missed payroll away from disaster. At one point, he was trying to scrape together enough money to pay his employees. Why? Uh because he was willing to take the risk, he was willing to take the sacrifice, he was willing to fail. He was um, you know, basically because he refused to quit. Now, going back to my story, and no, it's not the same scale. I realize that the principle is exactly the same. Many years ago, I was homeless right here in Grants Pass. I was, you know, struggling. I was uh, you know, not really, I never really thought of it as, you know, I I had never had a hard, super hard time. I don't I was kind of always a glass half full kind of guy, even when I was homeless, you know. Um I burned a lot of bridges, so I had nowhere to go. I had uh reached rock bottom, you know, there was no enabling at the time. So, you know, I had lunch at the soup kitchen, I had dinner at the mission. That was it back in I don't even remember. It was kind of a blur. 2002 to 2010. I came in drifting into Grants Pass in 2002. Uh anyway, eventually I ended up at the gospel rescue mission, and that that started to change my life. Not because they they uh handed me everything, though, um, not because they made life comfortable, not because they enabled me, they gave me structure, accountability, and expectations. And then they, you know, slowly I had starting started to get opportunities in the community, and that's where I started rebuilding. I volunteered at the Josephine County Community Library at the time. Um, I worked at odd jobs. I worked at a computer store, Michael Bourne, Clear Choice Computers on Rogue River Highway. Um, you know, did the library thing. I worked uh nonprofits. I did a website for Southern Oregon Aspire back then. Um I created a game server. Um, in fact, I ran that game server, you know, kind of um on a computer at a local computer store, PFG Computers. You know, you guys might know Michael down there. So I had a couple computers down there and I was homeless, you know, and I mean just ran this game, tried to get money off of this game. Um I worked for a couple private companies and I kept move moving forward one step at a time. And uh, you know, while I was at the library, uh, I was uh talking to Kate Lasky and I said, you know, hey, I can help out. I'm computer savvy. Um and I talked to her about creating a like a library Wikipedia. So yeah, she's she was like, cool, let's do that. And then um her the IT company that that was outsourced by the library, which was called Fast Server, uh, the owner of Fast Server, Ron Dow, said, Hey, do you want a job? So I was like, Yeah, sure. And then I worked uh for him for five years at options for Southern Oregon, the library, Josephine County Libraries, uh um at the time. And then it was also uh Copeland, YMCA. There was a couple other places that Fast Server um maintained Proelectric too. Um but anyway, and then in uh 2017, I started my company. So, you know, and our our technology helps protect parks, businesses, public spaces, construction sites, communities throughout Oregon. I work for um multiple police departments helping them, and I keep people safe. That's what we do. So, you know, we're working with close with uh law enforcement agencies all over the state. We help solve problems, we help keep communities safe. Again, I'm not comparing myself to Elon Musk, but I'm comparing the lesson. Whether it's, you know, a billionaire building rockets or a homeless man rebuilding his life here in Grands Pass, the common ingredient is not comfort, it's accountability, it's discipline, it's sacrifice, it's refusing to quit. And that's where I think Oregon is getting the homeless thing uh wrong. We're somehow convinced, uh, you know, not us, the Republicans, we're not convinced, but the state seems to be convinced that compassion means making homelessness easier. We spent years handing out tents, sleeping bags, food carts, phones, cash assistance, supplies, services, needles. Um, and somehow we're surprised that the homelessness keeps getting worse. At some point, we have to ask ourselves a difficult question. What if what if helping these homeless people stay homeless instead of helping them escape homelessness is actually causing more harm? Now, before anybody gets angry, let me be crystal clear with this. Not every homeless person is lazy, not every homeless person is addicted, not every homeless person made bad choices. I'm not trying to put every one of these folks into uh a lump category. I remember a kindergarten teacher, actually, it was recently who spoke before city council. I can't remember her name, but I did watch her. Um, you know, she she became homeless. She was a homeowner, but life happens, medical emergencies happen, you know, job loss happens, divorce, bad luck. Um, some of these people actually do deserve help. Absolutely. They deserve help. They're not addicted. Um, some of them fall into addiction. Um, so like I said, I'm not trying to get everybody into a lump sum, uh, you know, a lump group of the same people trying to handle the same stuff. You know, there's a lot of people that are going through all kinds of stuff: addiction, mental illness, criminal behavior, long-term term dependency issues, pretending otherwise is not really compassion, it's just denial. So enabling people, but that's my thing. Is enabling is not helping. So, you know, if somebody is addicted to drugs, helping them stay addicted is not compassion. If somebody is destroying their life through alcohol, drugs, gambling, whatever it is, keeping them happy and comfortable doing that is not compassion. It's not helpful. Um, so if someone refuses treat treatment, if they refuse work, if they refuse accountability, they refuse change, simply giving them more stuff isn't compassion either. I mean, it's surrender, really. So the whole housing first movement thing that these uh Democrats, and I'm sorry, I try trying to call those people out, but it's you know, kind of become the gold standard among many of these uh policy and lawmakers. Um housing first, housing first, more housing first. What? No. Housing first doesn't by itself solve addiction. Housing first, it by itself doesn't solve mental illness, it doesn't solve criminal behavior, it doesn't create responsibility. All it does is move the problem indoors. What works is managed housing. So, and I've seen that actually uh Midrogue Foundation here locally, they do a great job. They have Foundry Village, it's on Foundry Street. You guys could go take a tour. Um structured housing, it's it's housing with expectations, it's housing with accountability, and you know, it's connected to treatment, it's connected to progress, it's connected to goals. And the mission um, you know, is recovery and getting into a program and becoming successful and then eventually becoming members of our community. Accountability. And it's it's really accountability with love. Those people that um that helped me, they didn't tell me everything was somebody else's fault. They didn't tell me that I was a victim forever, they didn't tell me society owed me for a living, they challenged me. And because they challenged me, my life changed. That's why I think Elon Musk's story matters. And that's why I think this story, uh, my story matters. In fact, I've got this. Um, thank you, Richard Emmons. The Oregon Eagle newspaper, actually. Um front page, I have, and this is uh I believe this is still, this is the spring 2026 uh edition. So there's my story, it's right here. So if you guys pick up the Eagle and you can come down to the Republican headquarters in Grants Pass. I know this is actually distributed elsewhere, but uh Richard, thank you for putting that out there. And it is a story that I wrote, gosh, seven, eight months ago, something like that. He called me up one day and he's like, hey Jordan, you know, you mind if I publish this? And I'm like, Yeah, sure. Anyway, come pick that up, check it out. You know, so because human beings are capable of of incredible things when they take responsibility for their future. That's the you know, the path that I took, and it's it wasn't easy. Um, you know, and it won't always be fair, it's not always gonna be comfortable. Sometimes you're gonna fail, sometimes you're gonna get knocked down, sometimes you're gonna feel like quitting, but the answer isn't enabling, the answer isn't surrender, the answer isn't convincing people that they are powerless, the answer is helping people discover what exactly they are capable of. If anyone who is listening, who is homeless right now, struggling with addiction, stuck in a bad situation, or feeling like life has beaten you down, I want you to hear this. Your current situation is not your final destination. You are capable of more than you think. You can rebuild, you can recover, you can change your life. But nobody can do that work for you. Okay. At the end of the day, whether you're launching rockets or you're starting a business, overcoming addiction, you're climbing out of homelessness, the same rule applies. Nobody is coming to save you. But if you're willing to put in the work, there's an entire community here that is willing to help you save yourself. Anyway, thank you all for listening. Special thank you, Richard Emmons, Oregon Eagle, for sharing my story and giving the people hope that change is, in fact, possible. This is the Josephine County Republican. I will see you all next time.