So I'm walking down this highway.
Cars are speeding past me at 60 miles per hour.
And I am barefoot and shirtless with my friend.
How did I get to this point?
Well, it all started in the previous summer when I started studying this man named Russell
Brunson, learning about business, and then he had this live event, a business conference
that he was hosting in Florida, which was all the way across the country from me.
But I wanted to go.
I told my friend, and he wanted to go too.
We had never been to a business conference before.
And we also, this was my first time traveling alone.
And I'm a high school student too.
We're both high school students.
So we find the money and get there.
Like we're in school, and then we end up, like in the middle of the school year, we
just randomly get up and leave and get on a plane and go across the country and go to
a business conference.
And once we get there, we realize that our place was a 10-minute walk away from the business
conference, except there was a massive concrete wall in between us and the conference.
Because we thought that we could just cut through looking at Google Maps, but we could
not.
We actually had to go the long way and go literally, the place was here.
And what we had to do, like just walking from here to there takes 10 minutes.
But what we had to do, since there was no pathway to get there, we had to literally
go around all the way like this, and then go like this, and then go like this, and then
we finally made it.
And this whole area is a highway.
It's literally a highway.
And there's no sidewalk.
So we literally have to walk on the side of the highway.
And it's nice outside.
So we're walking barefoot and shirtless.
And on the grass, there's like a bunch of prickly things that if you step on it, it
gets like, you get like burrs all over you and it hurts and it makes you bleed.
So we didn't want to walk on the grass.
So we literally had to walk on the asphalt along the highway, next to the cars driving
past us.
So just picture that sight.
Two dudes walking down in the beating sun of Florida, down a highway, shirtless, just
carrying our backpacks with our hands, like farmers walk style.
And we have a mission.
We're getting to that business conference.
We do that every day, every night.
We get there and we have to come back.
Get there, come back.
And this happens for like three days.
The conference is a five day event.
And so we're like going back and forth, we have to walk like hours every day.
And then one night was the longest night.
We literally got out of there at like midnight.
So we were done with the conference at midnight and we still had that long walk down the highway,
dark outside and they didn't have street lights.
So like we had to rely on the drivers to be able to see us with their car lights.
And we did not trust that because people were rowdy.
We were in a rowdy area.
Like people were drinking alcohol and we did not want to do that.
So we like took a risk.
We started walking.
Instead of going like the way we should have gone, we actually went straight towards our
villa.
And there is a massive wall and barbed wire, a barbed wire fence in between us and there.
So we're literally just walking along the barbed wire trying to find a spot that we
can jump the fence.
It's literally midnight.
We're walking.
We are barefoot and shirtless.
Midnight.
We're not using our phones.
And we're just walking along the fence trying to find a spot to jump, trying to find a spot
to jump.
And so after literally like 10 minutes of like getting nervous because if we like all of
this time is us losing time if we can't find a fence and we lose sleep because we have
to wake up early the next morning for the next day of the conference.
And eventually we get to a spot like in front of a security camera in front of like a bunch
of civilian cars, like all kinds of things.
And we're like, all right, this is our spot.
And we jump over it.
We jump the fence.
And it's not a fence.
It's like literally a concrete wall that is probably like this tall.
So we literally have to like jump and then like muscle up to get up.
It was no easy feat, but we did it.
And we both brought our phones, but we don't really use our phones.
We kept them powered off.
And we didn't realize at the time, but as we were jumping over the fence and jumping
into our gated community where our villa was, my friend's phone slipped out of his pocket.
We didn't realize it.
And we don't use our phones very often.
So we went to bed and we didn't know like we went to bed none the wiser.
We're just thinking, oh, we'll wake up in the morning.
Like we didn't even realize that he lost his phone.
And so the next day comes and as usual, we get ready, get all of our stuff packed for
the day.
And instead of going literally the hour long walk, we're like, you know what, let's just
spend a little bit more time in the morning at our house, like at our rented apartment
kind of thing and just like cook breakfast, have a nice morning.
Enjoy our time here.
And so we're like, okay, we're going to do that.
We're going to hop the fence in broad daylight this time to get through to save literally
45 minutes.
And so by the time it's when it's time to actually leave and get to the place, we start walking
over and we still don't realize that he lost his phone because we're not using our phones.
We don't really check it.
And so we just assumed it was still in our backpack because there's no need to charge
it at night time if we didn't even use it at all during the day.
And we get to the jump.
We get to the fence.
And I'm like walking ahead of him and I'm like, I see a phone on the floor.
I immediately recognize it as his.
I'm like, what the what?
And so I grab it, I pick it up and put it in my pocket.
I don't tell him because I wanted to play a little trick on him because that was not
the first time he lost something at the conference.
He lost his hat that he purchased and then we had to go buy another one.
So I wanted to play a little trick on him, teach him a little lesson.
So I hop the fence, get over and then I'm like sitting on the other edge waiting for
him to hop the fence, which is no easy feat by the way, literally a massive, not a fence.
It's a wall.
It's literally a wall.
There is no area to like step on.
You literally have to jump, reach up for the top of the fence and then pull yourself over.
No easy feat.
And we have backpacks on too.
And we're barefoot and shirtless.
So we do that.
I'm waiting for him to get over.
He gets over.
And as he's like falling down, as he's adjusting, because he's sitting at the top of the, because
it's like the top of the fence is like this and then you have to like, you're like this
and then you have to adjust your legs to get down.
And so as he's adjusting, I'm asking him like, hey, do you have your phone with you?
Did you remember to bring your phone?
And he's like feeling it for his pocket and I could see his face.
He is spooked.
He is literally nervous.
He like jumps down and I'm like, check, check your back.
And he's like, he's checking his back.
He checked every single pocket and I can just imagine his feeling right now.
He's like, his stomach has dropped.
He's like literally tingling because not literally five days before right or three or four days
before when we left, his mom told him, do not lose your phone.
Because his like, his mom knows that he has a tendency to lose some stuff.
She said, do not lose your phone.
And so he is literally sitting there in it, like rummaging through his backpack and that
memory is replaying in his mind, do not lose your phone, do not lose your phone.
And he is extremely scared.
And I'm just sitting here, I'm just sitting here looking at him, just having a laugh.
And then I'm like, dude, where is your phone?
Where's your phone?
And I'm like, oh, I found it.
I gave it to him.
But that was the time when we decided to walk barefoot and shirtless.
And then we ended up hopping the fence because we wanted to take a shortcut.
And it was a good time.